Responsible Entrepreneurship, Nation Brand, and Public Policy

In this paper, we test the relationship between companies’ “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR) and the national image of their “home” country. After situating this hypothesis within current CSR literature, we proceed to case studies of Korea’s country image among factory workers in Vietnam and China. A survey of local employees in small and medium-size Korean firms operating in China and Vietnam reveals casual evidence of the relationship between CSR and country image. The paper recommends policies for governments to improve their SMEs’ CSR in order to enhance the country’s image and, consequently, its global “soft power.”