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This paper investigates how different types of corporate political connection, including government-linked investment (GLI), former officials as politically-connected directors (PCD), cronyism (CRO) and government leaders' family ties (FAM), influence financial distress risk in Malaysian firms.

We separate political connections into four distinct categories and investigate their relationship with firm distress risk and compare the results with the one-size-fits-all treatment which is popular in the literature. We apply a battery of sensitivity test to ensure that our inferences are robust to a wide range of test specifications, endogeneity concern and sample selection methods.

The empirical results show that the effect of political connections on distress risk is strongly heterogeneous. GLI and PCD firms tend to have higher distress risk via increased risk-taking behaviors because of the different incentives of the connections, while this nexus does not directly exhibit in CRO and FAM firms. Further analyses reveal that CRO and FAM firms are more likely to venture into risky international diversification, thus indirectly amplifying their distress risk.

Our findings are novel and provide practical implications for financial analysts, investors and portfolio managers operating in the capital markets.

The purpose of this paper is to find out the distribution of benefits, costs, and value added among the actors and problems in the practical management in dairy milk value chain, especially in one of the most important dairy areas in Vietnam to see how they upgrade in the value chain.

A survey was carried out in Bavi, Hanoi where a large amount of fresh milk is produced annually. The content of the survey was built before conducting in Bavi with 160 questionnaires. The questionnaires were based on the criteria which reflect the main objectives of the paper such as the actor’s profits and costs, the relationship among these actors, and the advantages and disadvantages in the dairy milk’s value chain. Some part of results of the paper was evaluated by conducting interviews with the relevant target groups in the value chain of dairy milk. Data collected were aggregated and analyzed by SPSS20, Excel. The calculation of cost and profit margin of each actor in the chain was also be presented by a quantitative tool for value chain analysis.

This study pointed out the systemized problems in the value chain of one of the biggest dairy companies in Vietnam. This study revealed some wicked problems in the value chains of Vietnam under globalization.

This study could not cover all of the detailed actors in the dairy value chain.

The value of income in the chain is distributed unequally. The benefits that farmers receive are inadequate with the costs they have to pay. This is a particular chain, in which the main factors boosting the chain are factories, and an increase in revenue also reflects the benefits of them. The result is that the value added in the chain is also biased toward the dairy plant. The paper also pointed out the shortcomings in the cost calculation of farmers. All the expenses, such as wages and the opportunity cost, are calculated in the total cost of the dairy plant, whereas dairy farmers do not mention these costs. Thus, in terms of benefits, farmers suffer more disadvantages, thus they should be received more value. In terms of management, Bavi’s authorities could not manage the output of milk in the perfect way. The lax management has led to a series of counterfeit goods that appear on the market today. These low-quality products are sold right on the highway and the Bavi’s tourist destination.

This article explores factors influencing the participation of industry professionals in Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) in three Vietnamese public universities. The impact of the unique socio-cultural background of Vietnam on WIL is also addressed.

A qualitative approach that included three focus groups and 15 individual in-depth interviews was applied. In total, 30 key university and industry WIL stakeholders were involved. Thematic analysis was employed to identify enablers and inhibitors to the participation of industry professionals in WIL in Vietnamese universities.

Industry professionals faced more challenges than support when involved in WIL in three Vietnamese public universities. Four enablers of their participation in WIL stemmed from industry and nine inhibitors emerged from a variety of sources. The overwhelming number of inhibiting factors indicated difficulties associated with implementing WIL.

The rationale behind limited industry involvement in Vietnamese universities has not been explored previously. A holistic understanding of all key WIL stakeholders’ perceptions of factors influencing industry participation in a non-Western tertiary context may provide leads for higher education policy in Vietnam and add to the international literature.

The purpose of this paper is to review both international and domestic (i.e. Vietnamese language) journal articles and graduate theses and dissertations on educational leadership in Vietnam. The review addresses two specific goals: first, to describe and critically assess the nature of the formal knowledge base on principal leadership in Vietnam, second, to synthesize findings from the existing literature on principal leadership in Vietnam.

The paper employed a method for conducting systematic reviews of research. The authors conducted a detailed, exhaustive search for international and “local” papers from Vietnam, yielding 120 research sources. Information from these papers was extracted and evaluated prior to analysis. Data analysis included both quantitative description of the “review database” as well as critical synthesis of substantive findings.

The review supports and extends an earlier review which found that the practice of educational leadership in Vietnam remains largely “invisible” to the international community of scholars. The review also yielded a highly critical assessment of research perspectives and methods used in the “local” Vietnamese studies which comprised the bulk of the authors’ database. Synthesis of substantive findings highlighted the manner by which organizational, political, and socio-cultural forces in the Vietnamese context shapes the practice of school leadership.

First, qualitative studies are recommended that seek to describe, in-depth, the enactment of leadership in the Vietnamese context. Second, broad-scale surveys of characteristics, attitudes, and beliefs of school leaders across Vietnam are warranted. Third, the authors encourage graduate students and scholars studying school leadership in Vietnam to undertake a new generation of theory-informed studies that connect with the global literature.

Due to the relatively weak nature of the existing knowledge base, the authors were unable to identify specific implications for leadership practice. However, practical implications are identified for developing the research capacity needed to improve research quality in Vietnam’s universities.

This review is the first systematic review of educational leadership and management conducted of the Vietnamese literature. Moreover, the authors suggest that the review is original in its comprehensive coverage of both the local and international literature on educational leadership in Vietnam.

Internationalization is viewed as an important strategy in the context of a country in transition from central planning to market orientation. Efforts to internationalize universities are being carried out at both national and institutional levels. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been no study to investigate how individual institutions approach internationalization and what they gain from that process. This paper aims to investigate the enhancement of teachers’ and students’ knowledge and skills using internationalization in Vietnam universities as a strategy.

Semi-structured interviews with leaders from 12 universities were conducted to investigate their perceptions, strategies and perceived outcomes of the internationalization process of their universities. Data analysis involved coding the transcripts of interviews into themes.

Results show that current approaches to internationalized activities in Vietnamese universities are ad hoc in nature, while resources and language incompetence of staff and students are limited. In line with other previous studies, limited resources and lack of English competence among educators and students were found to be the key obstacles and challenges for internationalized activities. The authors also note an issue that apparently has not been raised elsewhere in the relevant research literature, which is the challenge for the sustainability of knowledge production via research and publications.

Findings from this study not only contribute to Vietnamese universities but also to other developing institutions which do not have strong international exchange programs or have not experienced strong benefits from international exchange programs.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate a recent trend in climate change and its impact on livelihood of community living in Nam Dinh province, Vietnam. Further, it aims to increase the government attention for adaptation measures by providing awareness of climate change and its negative impacts on livelihood.

For study purpose, cross-sectional and secondary data sets were used. The community perceptions about climate change were recorded by face-to-face interviews of 500 respondents from Nam Dinh province, Vietnam in April 2015 by using a well-structured questionnaire, whereas secondary data were collected from the statistical yearbook of General Statistics Office of Vietnam. To accomplish the study objectives, Cobb–Douglas production function and Likert scale were used to estimate the community perceptions of climate change and impact of climate change on livelihood, respectively.

Results depict that climate change negatively impacted on the productivity of rice and livestock. Particularly, frequently occurring of droughts, floods and salinity intrusion negatively impacted on rice productivity, while livestock productivity is decreased by frequent occurring of flood storms in study area.

The study results suggest a government support is essential to achieve sustainable livelihoods for coastal communities living in the Red River Delta, particularly some adaptation measures in the context of climate change are required in study area.

This paper aims to examine motorcycle driving norms and their implications for social marketing practice. It investigates whether misperceptions of descriptive norms related to motorcycle speeding behaviour are prevalent among young motorcyclists, and whether there is an association between these misperceptions with their speeding behaviour.

A cross-sectional survey of 541 young motorcyclists was carried out as the second phase of a larger project, which examined the role of social norms related to road safety attitudes and behaviours.

The results showed misperceptions of perceived speeding norms among both male and female young motorcyclists. There was an association between normative misperceptions and speeding behaviour, and between speeding behaviour and approval to speeding behaviour by young motorcyclists. In addition, peer presence was found to moderate the relationship between misperceptions of speeding norms and speeding behaviour.

The study contributes to addressing the call for study of social norms marketing and health risks in non-Western contexts. Further, the results provide support for social marketers to consider the use of social norms approach in designing social marketing campaigns to promote safe motorcycle driving behaviours.