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This study analyzes the factors that affect the decisions of micro-businesses to switch to enterprises in Thanh Hoa, Vietnam.

In order to explain the behavior of micro-businesses in switching to enterprises, the authors designed a questionnaire and collected survey data from 404 micro-businesses. The generalized structural equation modeling was applied to analyze the structured model with the dichotomous dependent variable.

First, the behavior of micro-businesses to switch was indirectly affected by needs and directly affected by attitudes, perceived behavioral control, subjective norm and institutional quality. Second, the subjective norms exerted the most influence on the behavior of the micro-businesses in switching. This finding implies that (1) the behavior of the micro-businesses depended on the assessments, perceptions and views of their friends, relatives and colleagues, and (2) the behavior to switch stems mainly from the desire to improve the businesses' position in society. Finally, both formal and informal institutions play an essential role in the behavior of the micro-businesses to switch to enterprises.

There have been no previous studies that have applied structured models to test the behavior of micro-businesses to switch to enterprises. Furthermore, previous studies had mainly addressed the psychological factors or needs of micro-businesses. In this study, apart from the above factors, the authors discuss the impact of institutions on the behavior of micro-businesses to switch.

The purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate the perceptions of key stakeholders in Vietnam on the impact on audit quality and independence after major reforms to audit.

Using new institutional sociology, this study seeks to explain how Vietnamese external auditors and accountants have responded to audit reforms and provides perceptions on how audit quality and independence may have been impacted. This study draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with 33 highly experienced participants, representing various stakeholder groups in Vietnam.

The findings indicate that after almost a decade since the full implementation of the Law of Independent Audit (2011) in Vietnam, the audit and assurance market in Vietnam is characterised by low quality audits, a lack of compliance with standards and auditor independence concerns, specifically amongst the smaller audit practitioners. Participants indicated that competition for new audit clients or retaining existing clients is a priority over improving audit quality and independence.

By examining a combination of different factors relating to audit quality and independence, the authors further demonstrate the impact of these factors in Vietnam, helping audit professionals and regulators to have a better and more meaningful understanding of that state of the audit profession. This study also considers audit concerns or issues arising because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam.

This research identifies the level of labor misallocation in Vietnamese manufacturing sector for the period 2005–2019. The paper also examines the effects of labor misallocation on productivity in Vietnamese manufacturing firms controlled by industry- and firm-level factors.

The level of labor misallocation and efficiency gains in total factor productivity (TFP) are assessed using Vietnam's annual enterprise survey data for the period 2005–2019 and Hsieh and Klenow (2009) productivity decomposition framework.

The results indicate four main points. Firstly, labor misallocation tends to increase from 2005 to 2019. Secondly, labor misallocation by firm ownership and technology level is found to be highest in state-owned enterprise and low-tech industries, whereas foreign direct investment and high-tech firms have lowest labor misallocation. Labor misallocation in small- and medium-sized enterprises is higher than in large-sized enterprises and is equivalent to overall sample. Thirdly, labor misallocation decreases productivity in manufacturing firms. The firm-level factors such as bigger technology gap, external capital, firm scale and poor liquidity ratio decrease productivity in manufacturing firms. Whereas firm-level factors such as Vietnam's accession to the WTO, reasonable corporate tax structure, capital intensity, human capital and firm age increase productivity of manufacturing firms. The industry-level factors such as FDI horizontal, forward and supply backward spillovers promote productivity from foreign firms to domestic ones. Meanwhile, only backward linkages reduce productivity of firms. Finally, by difference-in-differences (DID) method, the result indicates foreign firms have higher average labor productivity than domestic firms before or after Vietnam's accession to the WTO. After joining WTO, the average labor productivity of foreign firms is increased by 854 million VND while the average labor productivity of domestic firms is increased by 895 million VND. The DID between the two groups (domestic firms and foreign firms) before and after Vietnam's accession to WTO is 41 million dong.

The main limitation of the study is that the market is assumed perfectly competitive. The model focuses on selective factors affecting labor productivity.

The focus of many previous international research papers was generally to look at the level of labor misallocation in developed countries. However, knowledge about labor misallocation is limited, particularly in the context of developing countries. This paper examines the level of labor misallocation by region, ownership, level of technology and firm size on productivity and the effect of misallocation on productivity in Vietnamese manufacturing firms.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2021-0552.

This paper aims to examine the levels of integrated reporting disclosure alignment in annual reports by listed firms in Vietnam and the factors influencing these disclosure levels.

Drawing on a sample of 200 listed firms in Vietnam in 2017, the authors constructed a disclosure index based on the content of the International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC) Framework. Using this index, the study measures the extent to which Vietnamese listed firms’ annual reports include the content elements required by the integrated reporting (IR) Framework. The study performs ordinary least square regression to investigate the influencing factors.

The study documents that, on average, Vietnamese listed firms disclose about 43% of the information required by the IIRC Framework. The disclosure levels are positively associated with manufacturing firms, board independence, foreign ownership, government ownership, audit quality and firm size.

Integrated reports have been widely adopted in many countries, but it is still a new issue in Vietnam. This is the first paper providing some insights into the inclusion of the content elements required by the IR Framework by listed firms in Vietnam. It also contributes to the disclosure literature by providing empirical evidence on the factors influencing these disclosure levels. Deriving from the findings, the authors offer recommendations for policymakers on the issue of regulating and implementing IR in Vietnam.

Vietnam’s 11th National Party Congress prioritised integration, modernisation and industrialisation as the new key orientations for Vietnam. It outlined Vietnam’s integration with the world, not only economically, but also in terms of the social, cultural, educational, scientific and technological areas that can support social and economic development and sustainability. Vocational education has been recognised as pivotal to the nation’s sustainable workforce development and transformational changes. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how foreign approaches and practices have been filtered and appropriated to bring about sustainable development and transformational changes for Vietnamese vocational education.

The paper is derived from a study that involves documentary analysis, observation and semi-structured interviews with vocational learners and staff across three different vocational education and training (VET) sites in Vietnam. The overall study includes three vocational education providers and 22 participants altogether, but this paper involves observation and semi-structured interviews with eight participants, including one leader, two teachers and five students. It focusses on a Germany-funded vocational college in the northern central area of Vietnam that came under the management of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, and the local province where the college located.

The findings of the study show a critical need to develop a new “Vietnamese VET pedagogy” that filters international influences and flexibly and creatively combines them with the existing local pedagogy. To meet the local and global demands and bring transnational changes for Vietnamese vocational education, new VET pedagogies need to align with both Vietnamese historical and political situations, especially the emergent demands of the open market socialist economy and to capitalise on international influences – Confucian, French, Soviet and Western. Such a balance will ensure Vietnam makes use of both international forces and local strengths for sustainable development and transformational changes rather than passive dependence on foreign practices.

The research provides valuable insights into the appropriation of foreign practices and principles in Vietnamese vocational education. However, it focusses only on three vocational education sites in central Vietnam. Further studies with larger scale of participants and across a variety of vocational education settings including public and private institutions, community centres and family workshops will offer broader findings related to this important topic.

The study suggests practical implications for institutions to deal with the challenges associated with the adaptation of international forces into the vocational education context in Vietnam. It outlines the transformational changes in pedagogical practices related to the increased requirement to move from the traditional didactic teaching to more self-directed learning, to meet the requirements of a modern vocational education system.

This study provides unique insights into the practices and challenges of filtering foreign VET practices and principles to bring about transformational changes in Vietnamese vocational education. It, therefore, responds to the paucity of literature in this area. In addition, it examines internationalisation in Vietnamese VET, an under-researched area in the field of internationalisation of education as most of the literature in this field concentrates on the higher education sector.

This paper aims to explore how entrepreneurial culture (EC) and psychological empowerment (PE) support innovative work behaviour (IWB) of employees in organizations. First, it examines the impact of EC on IWB. It also explores the mediating effect of PE to support the EC – IWB relationship. Accordingly, it suggests a mechanism model to explain the relationship between EC and IWB.

This is an empirical research using quantitative methods. Data were collected via both face-to-face and online surveys from 308 employees in Vietnamese enterprises. The partial least squares-based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach was applied to test hypotheses in the research model.

Significant R-square values were achieved for both EC – PE and PE – IWB relationships, according to the PLS-SEM. The most interesting finding is the full mediating role of PE in the relationship between EC and IWB. Despite the non-significance in the direct impact of EC on IWB, the role of EC in promoting IWB is important in an indirect way through PE. The significant role of PE in facilitating IWB has been proven.

This research is one of the initial attempts to empirically build the roadmap from EC, as a typical type of organizational culture, through the mediating effect of PE to improve IWB. This roadmap provides top managers with a hierarchical view that effectively cascading interventions from the organizational level, such as EC, through a significant mediator as PE at the group level, and then down to IWB as a result at the individual level.

Based on the contingency theory and resource-based view, this study develops and tests a moderated mediation model explaining the performance implications of the interaction between the accountants’ participation in strategic decision-making (APAR) and accounting capacity (ACAP) in promoting the use of management accounting systems (MAS) toward enhancing firm performance.

Using partial least squares structural equation modeling, the authors tested the proposed model and its hypotheses with survey data from 340 large Vietnamese firms.

The results indicate that (1) MAS act as the full mediator in the positive relationship between APAR and firm performance, and (2) ACAP positively moderates the effect of APAR on the use of MAS.

This study bridges the gap between accounting and strategic management literature by elucidating the mechanism by which the involvement of accountants in strategic issues improves the use of MAS toward enhancing firm performance and increases the current understanding of ACAP as a boundary condition for this mechanism.

This paper examines the role of the annual report’s linguistic tone in predicting future firm performance in an emerging market, Vietnam.

Both manual coding approach and the naïve Bayesian algorithm are employed to determine the annual report tone, which is then used to investigate its impact on future firm performance.

The study finds that tone can predict firm performance one year ahead. The predictability of tone is strengthened for firms that have a high degree of information asymmetry. Besides, the government’s regulatory reforms on corporate disclosures enhance the predictive ability of tone.

The study suggests the naïve Bayesian algorithm as a cost-efficient alternative for human coding in textual analysis. Also, information asymmetry and regulation changes should be modeled in future research on narrative disclosures.

The study sends messages to both investors and policymakers in emerging markets. Investors should pay more attention to the tone of annual reports for improving the accuracy of future firm performance prediction. Policymakers should regularly revise and update regulations on qualitative disclosure to reduce information asymmetry.

This study enhances understanding of the annual report’s role in a non-Western country that has been under-investigated. The research also provides original evidence of the link between annual report tone and future firm performance under different information asymmetry degrees. Furthermore, this study justifies the effectiveness of the governments’ regulatory reforms on corporate disclosure in developing countries. Finally, by applying both the human coding and machine learning approach, this research contributes to the literature on textual analysis methodology.

Groundwater plays a critical part in both natural and human existence. When surface water is scarce in arid climates, groundwater becomes an immensely valuable resource. Dak Lak is an area that frequently lacks water resources for everyday living and production, and the scarcity of water resources is exacerbated during the dry season. As a result, it is critical to do study and understand about groundwater to meet the region's water demand. This study aims to extend the use of the MODFLOW model for groundwater simulation and assess the overall groundwater reserves and water demand in the highland province Dak Lak.

The MODFLOW model is used in this work to compute and analyze the flow, prospective reserves of groundwater from which to plan extraction and estimate groundwater variation in the future.

The application of the MODFLOW model to Dak Lak province demonstrates that, despite limited data, particularly drilling hole data for subterranean water research, the model's calculation results have demonstrated its reliability and great potential for use in other similar places. The use of the model in conjunction with other data extraction modules is a useful input for creating underground flow module maps for various time periods. The large impact of recharge and evaporation on groundwater supplies and water balance in the research area is demonstrated by simulations of climate change scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5.

None of the studies has been done previously to analyze water resources of Dak Lak and the scarcity of water resources is exacerbated during the dry season. Therefore, this study will provide useful insights in the water resource management and the conservation of Dak Lak. The groundwater in Dak Lak can meet the area's water demand, according to the results obtained and water balance in the study area. However, the management of water resources and rigorous monitoring of groundwater extraction activities in the area should receive more attention.

This study aims to investigate the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on corporate sustainable performance (CSP) of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by looking into the significance of mediating factors, namely, brand image (BI) and brand loyalty (BL), within the context of an emerging economy.

The authors conduct an extensive literature study on the subjects of CSR, BI and BL to assess their influence on the sustainable performance of SMEs in an emerging market. The study adopts a quantitative methodology. A total of 438 answers were obtained from a sample size of 513. The data of the SMEs in Vietnam was analyzed using the smart partial least squares structural equation modeling software, specifically version 3.3.2.

The results of the authors demonstrate notable and favorable correlations between CSR and CSP, CSR and BI and CSR and BL. Importantly, the findings contribute to existing knowledge by looking into the mediating influence of BI and BL in the relationship between CSR and CSP.

According to the authors’ understanding, a number of research have investigated the correlation between CSR and CSP within the realm of SMEs. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of scholarly research examining the mediating function of BI and BL in this association. The study’s findings have important implications for entrepreneurs and senior management in effectively guiding their enterprises and improving their business strategies with an emphasis on sustainability in emerging markets. The outcome of this study has the potential to significantly contribute to SMEs in Vietnam as well as other emerging countries.