A study based on collected data from survey of 239 enterprises and in-depth interview of 40 enterprises showed that a large proportion of businesses still misunderstood or incompletely understand the concept of internal control and code of conduct. Many of those believed that internal control is merely the responsibility of the internal controller, not corporate governance.

In compliance, for example in relation with state agency, two key issues would be concerned including (i) a large proportion of enterprises violated some regulations; (ii) non-formal fee for government officers seem to be a common business practice in Vietnam. To explain this fact, businesses convinced some challenges to comply that is difficulty in law implementation or law is overlapped, contradictory and changed often while companies have no legal staffs to handle and update those changes. Moreover, business partnership is mostly formulated from non-formal and familiar relationship and this partnership is popular in Vietnam.   

Personal relation, non-formal cost is disguised in various forms taken account of 25-30% in business transaction. One third of the companies surveyed said that they have never applied a competitive procurement method. Abnormal transactions in procurement and sales account for a large proportion in the surveyed companies and this fact seem to be a risk making impact on business integrity. In procurement, not good practice such as «order not for demand», «order not of right quality », «quotation is revised in untransparency» account for 10%.

Similarly, in sales, 11% – 16% of the surveyed companies (equivalent to 24% – 34% of the respondents) recognized these irregularities clearly such as «incorrect invoicing », «do not comply the company sale policies», «do not deliver in accordance with the contract». More alarming is that there are anomalies in human resource management where about 27% to 38% of the respondents recognized that they aware the “inadequate implementation of cost payable to employees” but “do not comply yet the labor code in practice with employees», «recruitment is mostly based on acquaintances, relationships rather than capacity”  

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