Search results

This paper aims to explore how research and development (R&D) scientists and engineers can contribute to sustainability initiatives in their organisations.

This paper uses a critical case study methodology, focussed on a large Vietnamese company in which business leaders sought to engage R&D scientists and engineers in sustainability initiatives focussed on eco-innovation and eco-efficiency. Bourdieu’s theoretical lens of habitus, capitals and field facilitates a relational analysis of the findings.

While R&D scientists and engineers adapted well to early changes aligned with eco-innovation, they struggled to engage with sustainability initiatives in the case firm. This study explains adaptions and constraints as scientists and engineers’ professional habitus and capitals, and their broader organisational field.

This paper provides insight into how organisations might integrate professional acculturation and appropriate facilitators to promote the additional contribution of scientists and engineers to sustainability initiatives in the context of an organisation.

Although eco-innovation and eco-efficiency are only potential dimensions of comprehensive organisational sustainability reform, this research provides insight into how engaging scientists and engineers with a broader social sustainability agenda might be advanced.

The study addresses calls for empirical insights into ways that scientists and engineers can commit to organisational sustainability practices based on the configurations of habitus, capital and organisational field.

This study explores the effects of gender and participation in agricultural cooperatives on biodiversity conservation farming practices in vegetable production.

This study used data collected from a survey of 627 vegetable farmers in Viet Nam and employed the Ordered Probit regression model to examine the effects of gender and participation in agricultural cooperatives on biodiversity conservation farming practices.

We find that female vegetable farmers are more likely to conduct biodiversity conservation farming practices than male farmers. This gender difference is, however, removed when participation in agricultural cooperatives is controlled, suggesting that agricultural cooperatives effectively facilitate biodiversity conservation farming practices.

It is noted that our study is not free from some limitations. First, we conducted our study on vegetable farmers only. The biodiversity conservation practices in vegetable cultivation might be different from other types of farming. Future studies should be conducted with other types of agricultural cultivation. Second, we do not have enough data to explain why female farmers are more likely to adopt biodiversity conservation practices than male farmers. Future studies should capture biological and social aspects of gender differences to address this limitation.

This study contributes to the literature on biodiversity conservation by presenting empirical evidence on the effects of gender and agricultural cooperatives. Participation in agricultural cooperatives is revealed to facilitate the adoption of biodiversity conservation practices. In addition, we find that the education of farmers, the number of years that farmers have been living in the local area and the quality of land and water are positively related to the adoption of biodiversity conservation practices in vegetable production.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the impact of corruption on foreign direct investment (FDI) and its two major modes of entry: greenfield investment (greenfield) and cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As).

Data are collected from 131 countries. Modern econometric techniques, including the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator, two-stage least square estimator and two-step system GMM estimator, are used to evaluate the impact of corruption on FDI activities.

The empirical results illustrate that corruption is a deterioration factor that significantly hinders FDI inflows. However, this finding turns out to be contradictory when the two major components of FDI – greenfield investment and cross-border M&As – are separately examined. Specifically, while corruption consistently discourages cross-border M&As over time, it appears to exert positive effect on greenfield investments.

This is among the first to empirically examine the impact of corruption on FDI and its modes of entry in a number of countries spanning different time windows. In this sense, this paper also captures the changing nature of societies and economic conditions overtime and, therefore, enable academic researchers, policy-makers and business practitioners to draw broad inferences from the empirical results.

This study aims to examine the relationship between corporate environmental responsibility (CER) practices and different types of innovation carried out by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam.

The authors employ the bivariate probit model and the two-stage least squares regression model to estimate the effects of CER on process innovation and product innovation of SMEs.

The findings show that while CER is not significantly related to product innovation, it has a positive and significant effect on process innovation. Further analysis indicates that CER engagement increases labor productivity and financial performance of SMEs.

Corporate managers should view implementation of environmental responsibility practices as a strategy to foster process innovation and boost labor productivity and financial performance. For policy makers, government support for firms proactively engaging in CER practices could encourage firms to pursue innovative activities, which are vital to their long-term success as well as to the society's prosperity.

This study makes several important contributions. First, the authors provide new empirical evidence regarding the different effects of engaging in environmentally friendly practices on firm innovation in an under-examined emerging market setting. Second, the authors enrich our understanding of potential benefits of CER implementation. Third, the findings suggest that firm innovation may play a mediating role in the CER–firm performance association.

This paper introduces a novel method to improve building safety management by leveraging building information modeling (BIM) and adaptive information retrieval techniques. The integration aims to overcome the limitations of traditional safety management methods in connecting construction processes with risk management efficiently.

The proposed method involves developing industry foundation classes (IFC) ontologies and integrating them with a safety document ontology to form a comprehensive BIM-based safety context framework. Custom reasoning rules and an inference engine are constructed to enable automatic context-aware safety information retrieval. The methodology is demonstrated through an adaptive information retrieval system using job hazard analysis (JHA) documents.

The implementation of the BIM-based adaptive information retrieval system shows significant improvements in identifying and managing construction risks. By mapping job-specific risks to corresponding safety measures, the system enhances risk detection and management tailored to particular construction tasks. The results indicate a marked improvement in the precision and accuracy of safety assessments and recommendations, aligning them closely with planned construction activities and conditions.

This paper offers an innovative approach to construction safety management through the development of a BIM-facilitated context-aware information retrieval system. This approach provides a more intelligent and automated framework for identifying and managing risks in construction projects. By focusing on specific job steps and related risks, the system enhances the effectiveness and accuracy of safety measures, contributing to better overall building safety management.

Travel destinations worldwide are seeking smart ways to reduce the negative impact of tourism, and the public bike rental service (PBRS) is one of them. To investigate the usage intention of this service among visitors, the author of this research employs an integrated approach consisting of two psychological frameworks: the Norm Activation Model (NAM) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM).

The integrated NAM-TAM model is implemented to conduct a survey (sample n = 777) with visitors to Hanoi, Danang, and Ho Chi Minh City regarding the factors underlying their intentions to continue using the PBRS TNGo.

Structural equation models suggested that: (1) the NAM-TAM can explain behavioural intention to use a smart PBRS. Perceived Usefulness (PU), Perceived Ease of Use (PE), and Awareness of Consequences (AC) have positive and significant impacts on Attitude Towards Using (AT) and, thus, on Behavioural Intention to Use (BI). Also, Personal Norms (PN) positively influence BI. (2) Among the four independent variables, tourists' AC produces the most potent effect on the intention to continue using a PBRS.

This study can start a new research direction of combining the NAM with other theoretical frameworks to explain customer behaviour in the field of sustainable tourism practices. Future research should explore the proposed model based on comparisons of different tourists’ backgrounds, including nationality, length of stay, spending level, visiting purpose, etc.

This research provides strategic implications for destination management organisations in boosting the use of PBRS amongst tourists, contributing to the environmental sustainability targets of the tourism industry.

This study responds to the existing gap by examining both functional value (indicated by PU and PE) and perceived environmental/social value (proxied by AC) in forming tourists’ attitudes towards PBRS and their usage intention. Our study, therefore, actively contributes to the research stream of tourist behaviour in the field of sustainable tourism practices from the altruistic behavioural perspective.

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.

The paper aims to examine the impact of tighter banking regulation on banks’ loan loss provisioning in an emerging market context.

The authors exploit the adoption of the Basel II Accord in Vietnam as a quasi-natural experiment and use Difference-to-Difference (DiD) method to examine the impact of tighter banking regulation on Vietnamese banks’ provisioning during the period of 2010–2019.

The paper finds that affected banks (i.e. those taking part in the pilot adoption programme) manage to reduce their provisions significantly compared to their control peers in the post-adoption period. More importantly, this paper further finds that the affected banks manage their provisions primarily for incomes smoothing and signalling. This paper also finds that those banks expand their lending significantly and experience an increase in financial performance in the post-adoption period. Overall, the results provide supports for the “borrowing from the future” proposition that banks may perceive that a tighter banking regulation provides them with growth opportunities, so they have the tendency to manipulate their provisions to facilitate their current income.

This paper contributes to the established literature on the manipulation of bank provisioning as well as the impact of banking regulation, and especially Basel II on bank economic decisions. As compared to prior literature, the adoption of Basel II in Vietnam provided an ideal shock for us to conduct a DiD design to estimate the causal impact of tighter banking regulation on banks’ provisioning practices.

Decision-making seems simple, but, in reality, it is not an easy task to decide the cause for its profound result or consequence, leading to inevitable failures. Therefore, a leader must recognize whether there is something incorrect so as to avoid bad results. A good leader is a person who carefully reviews and analyzes aspects of a problem, knows the strengths and weaknesses of his organization and evaluates what the advantages or risks are. It cannot be denied that the appropriate options will reap many benefits to the business. For such important things, this paper will discuss the dilemma of Viettire, a tire distributor company in Vietnam. Accordingly, its CEO was worried about what strategic option he should adopt to approach the Myanmar market while ensuring a strategic fit to its company’s resources and capabilities and also to the overall market demands of the tire industry environment in both countries. However, with different ideas, the expansion strategies in this new market become controversial. The General Director and Founder of Viettire were wondering how Viettire could expand its existing business into Myanmar. To expand the company to new emerging market in Myanmar, Hoang Nguyen – CEO of Viettire – had conducted a strategic analysis of external environment factors to define the opportunities and threats when doing business in Myanmar by using Porter’s five forces model, S.W.O.T and competitive advantages analysis. The results indicated that Myanmar’s business environment is highly risky for foreign investors because of uncertain political, economic, social reforms in the process. Among three options, namely, exporting, licensing and wholly owned, however, Option 2 is illustrated as the best strategy for its dilemma.

Postgraduate/Graduate Business level.

As for a market mechanism, what produces, how and for whom, is not the business’s demand but the consumer’s demand. The business sells only what the market needs, not what it has. In the period of increasingly competitive conditions, stabilizing and expanding markets are a prerequisite for survival. If stability is seen as a “defensive” way, expansion is a “defensive attack” like trying to hold on the “pie” that the market gives to itself. This strategic action is to strengthen regular, close relationships with existing customers and establish new customers. As a result, the potential market is transformed into a target market. Hence, decision-making of which market, which method is the issue that a leader has to think the choice to avoid risks. Mr Hung, Viettire’s co-owner, suggests that Myanmar should be taken into account as a company’s new entry, thus exploring this potential market to increase the company’s growth and profitability. In the progress, Viettire’s marketing team had been doing a thorough tire market investigation in Myanmar. It was concluded that this emerging country, especially Yangon City, was the most suitable for those who were willing to embark on an overseas investment expansion. They believe this was a good opportunity to gain market share compared with other entrants and competitive rivals; if Viettire hesitated to invest, others definitely had jumped in with a first-mover advantage. However, the CEO, Mr Hoang, was worried about what strategic option he should adopt to approach this new market while ensuring a strategic fit to its company’s resources and capabilities and also to the overall market demands of the tire industry environment in both countries.

Understand the basic decisions that firms contemplating foreign expansion must make: which markets to enter, when to enter those markets and at what scale. Recognize the current strategic decisions an organization is facing: positioning, portfolio and market expansion approach. Learn how to develop an effective strategic plan. Be familiar with different strategies for competing globally and their pros and cons. Evaluate various strategic options and decisions in accordance with a company’s resources and capabilities.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 11: Strategy.

This study aims to investigate the cognitive factors and e-social interactions that influence the green purchase intention of Vietnamese consumers.

This study conducted the survey with 453 samples of young consumers in Vietnam, using the partial least squares structural equation modeling approach to evaluate the measurement quality to deal with research objectives.

The findings of this study demonstrate that cognitive factors positively impact green purchase intentions in Vietnam. Moreover, the analysis revealed that the attitude variable played a mediating role in this model, whereas the social norms factor did not.

This study presents several valuable findings on the green purchase intentions of young Vietnamese consumers. Therefore, the results can potentially advance and strengthen green purchasing theories in the Vietnamese market. Moreover, the recommendations indicate that cognitive factors and e-social interactions are crucial in shaping green purchasing intentions among Vietnamese consumers. Thus, it is suggested that the firms in the Vietnamese market focus on green marketing based on leveraging these factors.

This work provides a valuable contribution to the knowledge related to cognitive and e-social interactions among young Vietnamese consumers. It demonstrates the significant impact of these elements on green purchase intentions through e-commerce.