Page 270 - Social Enterprise A New Business Paradigm for Thailand

use their scores as a guide to improve internal practices. That same year, the Thai Listed
Companies Association, the SEC, and the Thaipat Institute jointly introduced the country’s first
Sustainability Report Awards, designed to encourage corporate awareness of environmental,

social, and governance (ESG) factors. These awards responded to growing investor demand for
non-financial disclosures as part of the investment decision-making process. The program
continues to this day.

In 2015, the Stock Exchange of Thailand launched the Thailand Sustainability Investment (THSI),
also known as the Sustainable Stock List. This initiative highlighted companies that
demonstrated strong commitment to sustainability and ESG principles. It offered investors an
alternative option for long-term investing by integrating ESG criteria alongside traditional
financial indicators. Later, on July 2, 2018, the Stock Exchange of Thailand officially launched
the SET THSI Index, the first sustainability index created within Thailand’s capital market. This

index is composed of sustainable stocks drawn from the latest THSI list, with additional
screening criteria based on company size and liquidity. The selected companies are recognized
for excellence in environmental, social, and governance performance and serve as a benchmark
for sustainable investment in the Thai market.

Since 2022, all companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand have been required to
disclose CSR-related information as part of their regulatory filings. This disclosure is now
presented in a unified format that consolidates Form 56-1 and Form 56-2 into a single document
called the 56-1 One Report. Within this report, the former section titled Corporate Social

Responsibility has been renamed Driving Business for Sustainability to reflect a strategic shift,
from isolated CSR activities to a more integrated model in which sustainability is embedded
throughout all stages of business operations.

The Thaipat Institute, one of Thailand’s leading research organizations on corporate social
responsibility, has played a pivotal role in advancing CSR practices nationwide. It established
the Thai CSR network to foster a culture of shared responsibility among businesses and has
been documenting CSR trends in Thailand since 2007. Every two years, the institute publishes
a Corporate Sustainability Status Report to track progress in the field. The latest edition,

published in 2024, notes that corporate social responsibility thinking in Thailand has evolved in
roughly ten-year cycles, a pattern illustrated in Table 9.1.

Table 9.1 Evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility Thinking

Environmental,
Corporate Social Creating Shared
Development Social and
Responsibility – CSR Value – CSV
Governance – ESG
Key Year of 2001 (B.E. 2544) 2011 (B.E. 2554) 2021 (B.E. 2564)
Transformation
Driving Force Social-driven Market-driven Investor-driven
Implication License to operate License to grow License to earn
Source: ESG 2024 and Beyond: Who Cares Earns, Episode 6 “The Path of CSR,” Thaipat Institute (2024)
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