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This paper aims to examine how independent directors (IDs) affect a firm’s performance measured on profitability, with corporate social responsibility (CSR) interaction.

The study uses an international data set of 1,817 firm-year observations from 545 large companies in 20 countries across Asia, America and Europe, and the fixed-effects estimation method.

The direct effect of IDs alone on profitability is statistically insignificant; however, the synergic effect of IDs and CSR on profitability becomes significantly positive when firms disclose CSR information.

The profitability is partially sourced from the synergy of IDs and stakeholders through CSR. IDs may use CSR disclosure to win stakeholders’ goodwill. This goodwill will likely be transformed into profitability. The empirical results indicate that there should be more need for IDs’ engagement in CSR projects as the resources of IDs combined with external stakeholders can be of important value to firms.

This paper reveals the underlying mechanism that firm-idiosyncratic value is formed using a combination of ID resources and stakeholders through CSR. This research extends the literature of IDs’ efficiency and effectiveness and confirms the agency theory and resource dependence theory.

The COVID-19 pandemic created not only a public health crisis but also the largest disruption to the global economies. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the adverse impacts of the pandemic on self-employment including job loss, income reduction and cut back in work hours and how these impacts were related to the well-being the self-employed. The authors also examine how self-employers responded to adversity in different cultural settings.

The main sample was obtained the Gallup World Poll that covers more than 39,000 individuals across 55 countries over the period from October 2020 to June 2021. The ordinary least square was the main choice of methodology. The paper employs the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique to quantify the gap in financial loss between self-employed and employed individuals. Finally, the moderated mediation analysis allows the authors to examine how financial loss mediates the reduction in well-being of self-employers.

The paper finds that self-employers were 29% more likely to lose their businesses than paid individuals to lose their jobs and perhaps as a result, they were 50% more likely to experience lower work hours and less income. The findings suggest that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic varied across countries. The financial gap between self-employment and full-time employment was narrower in countries with individualism, low uncertainty avoidance and propensity for long-term future. Finally, the paper shows that although financial loss associated with the coronavirus situation mediated the relationship between self-employment and reduced wellbeing, the positive relationship between self-employment and life satisfaction (wellbeing) held amid the pandemic. Despite all the pecuniary setbacks relative to full-time employment, self-employers report higher subjective wellbeing than regular wage earners during difficult times.

The earnings gap between self-employers and employees persists (and increase) during adverse conditions may cast into doubt the efficiency of the economic system that ensures no one is left behind. In addition, contextual factors such as cultural values should also be taken into consideration in reducing the earning gap between self-employment and regular employment. It is also implied that the self-employed choose to engage in self-employment due to psychological and emotion benefits rather than material achievements.

This study has quantified the income gap between self-employment and employed individuals in the context of adverse economic conditions. This study also highlights the fact that despite all the financial setbacks, self-employers are happier than employed individuals and they engage in self-employment as an important way to pursue happiness. This highlights well-being as the critical non-pecuniary benefits of the career choice of and transition into self-employment that have been confirmed in extant entrepreneurship literature.

This study aims to integrate predictions from clinical psychology and UPPS impulsivity with the theory of planned behaviors (TPB) to draw a conceptual framework and test the prediction that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, impulsivity would contribute to the prediction of the reasoned cognitive process of entrepreneurship over and above key predictors from an extended TPB model.

This study utilized a sample of 2,482 students from 14 universities/institutes in Vietnam; confirmatory factor analysis was employed to test the validity and reliability. Then, regression analysis with PROCESS macro approach (5,000 bootstrap sample and 95% confidence interval) was employed to estimate the association paths and multiple mediators.

The study reveals that ADHD symptoms and impulsivity substantially contribute to the exploration of an entrepreneurial intention throughout TPB predictors, with those higher in ADHD symptoms and impulsivity having higher intentions to engage in business venturing. Moreover, UPPS impulsiveness might valuably be incorporated with TPB predictors while predicting behaviors that are often examined as the process of rational cognitive strategies business venturing.

This study showed that a start-up business can be seen as a career choice for students who exhibit extensive ADHD symptoms to use their talents effectively, thus contributing to creating value for society and improving personal well-being.

This article stood to make contributions to entrepreneurship literature by investigating the effects of ADHD symptoms, four impulsivity traits on an entrepreneurial intention via three precursors in TPB, including attitude toward entrepreneurship, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control.

Well-designed and implemented working capital management (WCM) will encourage positive returns for a business and establish the firm’s value, while ineffective management will undoubtedly lead to failure of the enterprise. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In business, fixed capital and working capital are the two main forms of capital used. The current assets used in the business as working capital for day-to-day operations include raw materials, work in progress, finished goods, bills receivable, cash and bank balance. This paper analyses the relationship between WCM and profitability in Vietnamese small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) after integration into the global economy.

The results suggest that SME owner-managers can increase their firm’s profitability by reducing the number of days of accounts receivable, accounts inventories and accounts payable to an optimal minimum. In addition, a robustness check of this study indicates that high profitability will be achieved, with an optimal level of working capital investment in accounts inventories, accounts receivable and accounts payable.

No work of this sort has been applied to Vietnamese circumstances. It is also rare in SE Asia more generally.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how and why disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) information was influenced by independent directors in Japan and the USA.

The author used a pooled cross-sectional data set of 498 Fortune Japanese and American firms between 2006 and 2011 and fixed effects estimation method. The author analysed the results by employing a comparative approach between the two national contexts.

This study found that independent directors in Japanese firms had a significant positive effect on CSR disclosure whilst no evidence was found in the US firms, although the proportion of independent directors on American boards traditionally and largely outnumbers that of the Japanese counterparts.

The study results offer an insight that independent directors could be evaluated in terms of effectiveness and efficiency in CSR disclosure. The findings support the stakeholder theory in Japanese globalised companies while challenging the theory in the US context, thereby calling for further research into the stakeholder engagement models, particularly in the USA.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of board model and board independence on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure of multinational corporations (MNCs).

The authors developed an empirical model in which CSR disclosure is the dependent variable and board model (two-tier vs one-tier), board independence (a proportion of independent directors on a board) and the interaction variable of board model and board independence together with several variables conventionally used as control variables are independent variables. The authors collated the panel dataset of 244 Fortune World’s Most Admired (FWMA) corporations from 2005 to 2011 of which 117 MNCs use the one-tier board model, and 127 MNCs use the two-tier board model from 20 countries. They used the random-effect regression method to estimate the empirical models with the data they collated and also ran regressions on the alternative models for robustness check.

The authors found a significantly positive effect of a board model on CSR disclosure by MNCs. Two-tier MNCs tend to reveal more CSR information than one-tier MNCs. The results also confirm the significant moderating impact of board model on the effect of board independence on CSR disclosure. The effect of board independence on CSR disclosure in the two-tier board MNCs tends to be higher than that in the one-tier board MNCs. The results do not support the effect of board independence on CSR disclosure in general for all types of firms (one-tier and two-tier board). The impact of board independence on CSR disclosure is only significant in two-tier board MNCs and insignificant in one-tier board MNCs.

The authors advise the MNCs who wish to improve CSR reporting and transparency to consider the usage of two-tier board model and use a higher number of outside directors on board. They note that once a firm uses one-tier model, number of IDs on a board does not matter to the level of CSR disclosure. They advise regulators to enforce an application of two-tier board model to improve CSR reporting and transparency in MNCs. The authors also recommend regulators to continue mandating publicly traded companies to include more external members on their boards, especially for the two-tier board MNCs.

This paper is the first that investigates the role of board model on CSR disclosure of MNCs.

The main aim of this paper is to verify whether the modern mainstream economic theory of multinational enterprise that explains foreign direct investment (FDI) from developed countries is also able to account for investment decisions of multinational enterprises (MNEs) from emerging economies.

Using Knowledge-And-Physical-Capital (KAPC) model as an analytical framework and Poisson-pseudo maximum likelihood estimation technique, the authors identify determinants of FDI flows from emerging economies. The data set consists of 38 home and 134 host countries during the period 2000–2012. Empirical evidence supports high explanatory power of KAPC model. Further, compared with the earlier Knowledge-Capital (KC) model, results confirm the importance of physical capital.

The estimation results confirm the hypothesis that mainstream economic theory can explain FDI flows from the emerging economies by highlighting the roles of total market size, skilled-labor abundance, investment and trade costs and geographical distance between two countries.

This study casts doubt on the alternative way that the KAPC model suggests to distinguish between horizontal and vertical FDI. The argument that horizontal MNE headquarters would be relatively more abundant than vertical MNE headquarters in countries that are abundant in physical capital relative to skilled labor seems reasonable but the idea of variable specification in the estimated equation should be revised.

Firms should be allowed to move their resources freely into and out of specific activities, both internally and internationally across border. To reach that goal, governments of potential host countries can adopt several measures, most importantly remove restrictions on payments, transfers and capital transactions and open previously closed industries to welcome foreign investment. In addition, to improve investment climate in general, governments need to pay attention to enhancing security of property rights, regulating internal taxation (i.e. corporate income tax), guaranteeing adequacy of infrastructure, efficient functioning of finance and labor markets and fighting against corruption.

The location choice of emerging investors set priority on similarity in economic size, geographical and cultural proximity. It is because shared borders or common official languages would reduce information costs and enhance information flows. Also, investors consider horizontal FDI (with motivation to expand market demand) as one of main modes of entry into a foreign market and a substitute for export. Likewise, distance is often understood as an important investment friction.

The outstanding contribution is that the research has uncovered the positive and statistically significant effect of physical capital on FDI activity, which has not been discussed in the earlier KC model. However, at the same time, the study casts doubt on the KAPC model's argument that relative abundance in physical capital to skilled labor between two countries determines FDI types and suggests that this argument and its empirical model specification should be carefully reviewed.

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence and policy implications on the link between corporate social responsibility, financial inclusion and financial performance of the banking sector in an emerging market.

This study uses data collected from the annual reports of 13 listed banks in Vietnam from 2011 to 2019. CSR is proxied by the ratio between charitable contributions and bank profits. Besides, this study uses the number of branches and the number of agents as the proxies for a level of financial inclusion. The generalized method of moments and various tests are used to ensure the robustness of the findings.

Findings in this study indicate that CSR activities do matter, and they contribute positively to financial inclusion. In addition, the bank’s size is also associated with an increased level of financial inclusion.

Findings from this study provide important implications for bank executives and policymakers in Vietnam in managing and extending CSR activities with the view of supporting and enhancing financial inclusion.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first empirical study in the context of the banking sector in Vietnam in which the impact of CSR activities and financial performance of the banking sector on financial inclusion at the bank level is examined.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to use the particulars of a single case study (Vietnam) to underscore common pitfalls that several governments have made during the emerging and concentrated stages in their policy responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and to underscore much needed actions in the HIV/AIDS prevention realm.

Methods – Literature syntheses, policy reports, interviews with in-country stakeholders, and a case study approach are used to explore key issues regarding common government missteps at the concentrated epidemic phase.

Findings – These include coverage of the history of social ills in the country and how these intersect with – first, myths about the spread of HIV within a given region; second, inadequate intervention with high-risk groups and lack of consideration of the ways in which high-risk groups interact with the general population (neglect of bridge populations); and third, poor emphasis on women and young women, who are disproportionately affected by key epidemic transitions, particularly the transition from emerging to the concentrated epidemic phase.

Contribution to the field – Documenting policy lessons in emerging and concentrated epidemics is urgent and can assist within and across nations to help control the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of leadership styles on different organizational outcomes and value structure such as: overall business performance, working style, motivation and trust of employees, management efficiency and corporate culture in the context of Vietnamese small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The authors perform a qualitative analysis and gather data by conducting conversational semi-structured interviews with 51 SME managers from different industries. Data were analyzed using a step-by-step approach following Creswell.

The study explores the effects of leadership styles on various organizational outcomes. Given the features of SMEs, it sheds light on the significance of leadership styles in changing work environment, increasing staff retention, and promoting the viability of SMEs. It also discusses the selection of leadership styles in accordance with Vietnamese culture.

This study has practical implications on human resource management in the context of SMEs. SME managers, training providers and support agencies may utilize the research outcomes to raise the awareness of SMEs leaders. Based on the research findings, appropriate training programs should be developed to assist managers in tackling major problems.

Although several previous studies have tried to investigate the influence of leadership styles on organizational outcomes, this is the first research to explore the topic in the context of SMEs and in conjunction with the Vietnamese culture.