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This study aims to apply Benford’s law to examine the earnings management of companies listed in emerging ASEAN-5 countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

The authors follow Amiram et al. (2015) to measure deviations from Benford’s law of the first digits of numbers reported in financial statements. The authors use the Jones-modified performance-match model (Jones, 1991; Dechow et al., 1995; Kothari et al., 2005) to estimate accrual earnings management. The authors use a sample of 47,389 observations of listed companies in ASEAN-5 countries from 2006 to 2019. The authors also run ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions to test the hypotheses.

The authors find that the first digits of numbers reported in the financial statements of companies in the sample closely conform to Benford’s law. Further evidence shows that the deviation from Benford’s law is positively related to abnormal accruals. The relationship between deviation from Benford’s law and abnormal accruals is more pronounced for the post-international financial reporting standards adoption period. The results survive for some robustness checks.

The authors show that Benford’s law holds for financial statements of companies listed in the emerging ASEAN-5 countries.

Auditors could use Benford’s law as an analytical procedure to assess the risks of material misstatements. Also, other users could apply Benford’s law on audited financial statements to foresee undetected misstatements.

The authors provide original evidence that financial statements of ASEAN-5 countries follow Benford’s law. The evidence supports the usefulness of Benford’s law in developing markets.

Wisdom is considered as crucial in decision-making in both management and auditing practice. This research aims to investigate the concept of wisdom in auditing, thereby empirically exploring the determinants of wisdom in audit decision-making and explaining inter-relations among these determinants.

This study employs grounded theory methodology that is based on in-depth interviews with twenty-seven practicing auditors who are audit partners, managers, seniors and assistants of auditing firms. Guided by the grounded theory, data collection and data analyses were conducted simultaneously to look into the new insights of the research phenomenon. The coding process was constantly compared until the research's theoretical saturation is reached after four rounds. At the end of the research process, the study conducted a survey to confirm the proposed framework as well as examine the inter-relationships between the defined determinants.

Results suggest developing a conceptual framework to interpret wisdom-based decision-making process in auditing. A wise process of audit decision-making is defined as an integrated exercise of multiple determinants including knowledge assimilation, judgmental ability and ethical orientation. The research also explains and examines the potential interrelationships among these determinants in the audit decision-making process.

Wisdom is a valuable tacit ability for all external auditors. The development of wise decision-making abilities of auditors should be considered an integral part of multiple virtues including knowledge and judgmental and ethical aspects.

The contributions of this study are original and significant because it proposes a new approach to explain for the audit decision-making process and enhances better understandings of the concept of wisdom in auditing practices and its roles in audit decision-making.

This paper aims to investigate the link between uncertainty in banking and bank lending behavior, particularly shedding light on the modifying role of bank competition in the nexus.

The study uses a panel of Vietnamese banks over the 2007–2019 period for empirical analysis and the dispersion of shocks to bank-level variables to measure banking uncertainty. To strongly confirm our findings, the authors perform a battery of alternative checks based on different econometric techniques, including fixed effect regressions with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, the two-step system generalized method of moments estimator and the least squares dummy variable-corrected estimator.

Uncertainty induces multifaceted unfavorable impacts on bank lending. Concretely, banks tend to restraint loan growth, suffer more credit risk, and charge higher lending rates during periods of higher uncertainty. Further investigation reveals that lending activities of banks with greater market power are less sensitive to adverse uncertainty shocks; in other words, increased competition in the banking system is associated with more substantial consequences of uncertainty on bank lending.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to simultaneously explore the impacts of uncertainty on quantity, quality and prices of bank lending. This paper also aim at putting forth the level of uncertainty particularly related to the banking sector. Importantly, examining the conditionality of the linkage between uncertainty and bank lending with respect to bank competition is entirely novel.

This paper aims to explore how family culture can contribute to support the development of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in a Korean immigrant enterprise in Vietnam.

This research highlighted a critical case, in which entrepreneurs and most of the organisational members share a common family culture and the culture support management capability of an entrepreneur, during the introduction of a new organisation initiative. In addition, Bourdieu’s tripartite analytical framework of field, capitals and habitus was adopted to facilitate the case analysis.

Firstly, the motivation behind the development of CSR came from the intention to gain access to the local capital market. Secondly, family culture plays an important role in maintaining the support of organisational actors to support the decision of the entrepreneur.

This research contributes to the emerging literature about CSR and immigrant entrepreneurship. This study sheds light on how family culture can aid the leadership of CSR initiatives and CSR practices in the context of the immigrant organisation.

This study identifies processes that immigrant entrepreneurs can use to inspire organisational members to engage in a new initiative in which organisational culture and norms can help to overcome challenges to enable engagement with a novel initiative.

This paper explains how family culture supports the leading role of an entrepreneur, in which the absolute pressures inherited from family values and traditions in the place of origin help an organisation to overcome existing barriers such as lack of time and financial support towards a new initiative.

This paper aims to explore green technology (GT) transfer through the perceptions of both business managers and technology specialists, who have been identified as the foremost practitioners of this practice.

A total of 22 semi-structured interviews were conducted with business leaders and technology scientists. The interviewees were asked to share their views on the motivations for importing GT; their familiarity with, knowledge of and understanding of GT transfer and the current GT performance in their organization; the key strengths of GT transfer and its limitations; the barriers to the use of GT; and their usefulness. The theoretical framework of actors’ resistance to institutional demands of Oliver (1991) is used as a theoretical lens to investigate the perceptions of the interviewees.

This study suggests that despite some benefits of the adoption of GT, such as increasing competitive advantage and improving green operations, there are huge concerns over the use and importation of GT. More specifically, almost all the technicians were concerned about the technical risks resulting from the lack of operational tests, the old technologies and the lack of knowledge transfer. Meanwhile, the paucity of specific regulations, guidance and environmental standards has been reported by business managers as one of the primary constraints for this movement.

This research contributes to the emerging literature on GT transfers in the developing world. It proves that the lack of communication and the scarcity of a true champion for GT efforts have reduced the efficiency of GT transfer.

By shedding light on the intricate nature of the relationships arising from GT adoption in organizations, this paper aims to support business leaders and standard setters in making a decision regarding the implementation and promotion of GT transfer, especially in the context of developing countries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to explore eco-friendly technology transfers in a developing country from the micro-level perspective of both business and technology practitioners of GT-recipient organizations.

The paper investigates the link between uncertainty and banks' balance sheet reactions.

The study employs bank-level data in Vietnam during 2007–2019 to measure micro uncertainty in banking through the dispersion of bank-level shocks. Empirical regressions are performed by the two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator and then verified using the least squares dummy variable corrected (LSDVC) technique.

Banks tend to reduce risky loans, hoard more liquidity and decrease financial leverage in response to higher uncertainty. The relationship between uncertainty and banks' balance sheet reactions is more pronounced for banks that suffer more credit risk and overall risk, thus supporting the precautionary motive of banks. Additionally, uncertainty also leads to a decline in the Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR) under Basel III, implying that banks may fail to find a more stable source of funding and be more subject to maturity mismatch during periods of higher uncertainty.

The paper is the first to explore comprehensively the relationship between uncertainty and banks' balance sheet aspects as simultaneously estimated by bank loans, bank liquidity and bank leverage. While many other uncertainty measures display aggregate uncertainty sources, an important contribution in this study is to anatomize uncertainty originating exclusively from banking at a disaggregate level. Besides, shedding light on how uncertainty drives bank funding liquidity as captured by the NSFR under Basel III is entirely novel in the literature.

The purposes of this paper are twofold. First, it analyses the income structure in cooperative financial institutions and examines how traditional and non-traditional incomes are related. Second, it evaluates whether increasing diversification towards non-traditional incomes facilitates or hampers the benefits of financial cooperative owners.

Data are collected from over 3,100 US credit unions over the period of 1994–2016. A number of modern econometric techniques are employed throughout the analysis, including the use of panel fixed effect, generalised method of moments (GMM) and two-stage least square (2SLS) methodologies.

Using US credit unions as the empirical setting, the empirical results reveal that the expansion of traditional income leads to a corresponding increase in income from non-traditional activities. However, an increasing reliance on non-traditional income causes a significant drop in interest margins. The authors also find that the extent to which income diversification affects owner benefit varies across credit union types and period of time. While income diversification negatively affects owners' benefits in single common bond credit unions, it has no significant influence on multiple common bond and community credit union owners' benefits. Third, diversification can be beneficial during crisis time, but can be detrimental to owner benefit during normal time.

This paper provides some of the first empirical investigations on the diversification strategy of cooperative financial institutions. Therefore, the results offer significant policy implications for policymakers and market participants on whether financial cooperatives should diversify or specialise.

The study examines the impact of uncertainty on bank opacity while particularly taking into account the moderating role of market structures.

Using a sample of Vietnamese banks from 2007 to 2019, the paper measures uncertainty at the disaggregate level of the banking sector through the dispersion of bank shocks and capture bank opacity from the perspective of bank earnings management based on discretionary loan loss provisions. The authors apply both structural and non-structural proxies of bank competition/concentration to better explore the role of market structures. Empirical regressions are conducted using the fixed effect regressions with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors and the two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) technique, and then verified by the least squares dummy variable corrected (LSDVC) estimator.

Bank earnings opacity is less severe in periods of higher uncertainty. Further analysis documents that the negative impact of uncertainty on bank earnings opacity is stronger when the level of bank competition increases or when bank market power decreases.

The finding highlighting the conditioning role of market structures is entirely novel in the uncertainty-bank opacity literature. Moreover, in providing additional evidence on the significant impact of uncertainty on bank opacity, while prior related studies explore economic policy uncertainty, the authors utilize micro uncertainty in banking that exhibits enormous superiority.

This chapter provides information on the development of Vietnamese education under the influence of global forces based on the analysis of relevant education research and policies using Wolhuter’s frameworks. In the process of coming up with ways to develop education in the face of different influences of globalization, besides having reactions with patterns commonly found in countries around the world, Vietnam also has responses that reflect its own political, sociocultural and economic characteristics. The state still plays a controlling role in education at all levels and many culture-related features that have existed throughout the country’s history have hardly changed, namely aspects related to teachers, learners and teaching and learning methods. To sustain its education in the globalized era, Vietnam must make more efforts in various aspects such as the link between education and employment, the logic of education objectives, the feasibility and appropriateness of curricula, quality of education, especially of higher education and equality in education for underprivileged groups.

Intellectual capital, corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are generally considered three essential pillars to enhance firms’ performance in the developed world. However, in developing countries such as Vietnam, these pillars have not received sufficient attention from practitioners. In addition, this study aims to investigate the interrelationship between these three essential pillars and their combined effects, in the Vietnamese context.

This study uses data collected from the annual reports of the largest listed banks in Vietnam from 2011 to 2018. Intellectual capital is measured using a modified value-added intellectual coefficient model. CG is proxied by board remuneration. This study measures CSR using the ratio between charitable contributions and profit before tax. In addition, this study uses the generalized method of moments to overcome several econometric problems exhibited in previous empirical studies.

Results indicate that CG and CSR have a positive impact on intellectual capital. Intellectual capital plays a moderating role in the relationship between CG and CSR. Moreover, CG and intellectual capital in the previous year significantly affect CG in the current year.

Based on the findings from this study, policy implications have emerged for bank executives and policymakers in formulating and implementing policy about the balance between intellectual capital accumulation, CG and CSR.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study conducted to examine the interrelationship between intellectual capital, CG and CSR and their combined effects in emerging countries such as Vietnam.