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Drawing from institutional theory and organizational learning perspectives, the purpose of this paper is to examine how social norms of corruption in home countries and those in host localities influence firm bribery behavior. It also investigates factors that moderate the influence of these norms.

The study is based on survey data of foreign invested firms (FIFs) in Vietnam, conducted by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry between 2010 and 2018 along with Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. The authors run ordinary least squares regressions to test the hypotheses.

The study provides evidence that social norms of corruption in both home countries and host localities influence firms’ bribery behavior, but their effects are moderated by different sets of factors. Specifically, the use of local leadership augments the impact of the host province’s corruption norms on the firm’s bribe payments. By contrast, the relationship between the home country’s corruption norms and a FIF’s bribe payment is weaker if local leadership is used, and stronger if the FIF’s home country belongs to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Repeated cross-sectional data do not allow us to genuinely keep track of the changing roles of home country and host province corruption norms over time. In addition, the use of perception measures for corruption norms is subject to potential biases.

As the hiring of local executives weakens the impact of the home country’s norms which are embedded in the MNCs’ general practices, a stronger learning measure and regular review of the headquarters’ policies and practices is needed to ensure the overseas branch’s compliance. For policymakers, it is critical to recognize that local corruption plays a role in shaping FIFs’ bribery behavior.

While the effect of social norms of corruption on firm bribery behavior has been recognized, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that examines the learning processes FIFs may take to make sense of and cope with these norms, and also the first one to specify factors that moderate the influence of these norms.

Cambodian and Laotian students (CLS) are among the largest groups of international students in intra-ASEAN student mobility as well as in Vietnamese higher education institutions (HEIs). However, little has been researched on the factors influencing CLS’s decision to choose Vietnam as destination country. The purpose of this study is to investigate why CLS decide to go overseas and choose Vietnam as their host country among other opportunities as well as their perceptions of the decision.

Using qualitative methods and employing purposive sampling, data were collected by semi-structured interviews from CLS studying in a HEI in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The data were analysed against the push–pull framework to understand factors influencing the participants’ decision.

The findings show that CLS in the study were “pushed” by the perceived higher value of a foreign qualification and family encouragements. In terms of pull factors, they were attracted to choose Vietnam as the host country most observably due to scholarship opportunities. However other pull factors were also significant, especially the lack of certain skills in home countries and its congruence with Vietnam’s competitive strength in offering courses for those skills. In retrospect, the participants expressed a sense of optimism, though there was also certain reservation.

The small sample restrict the generalisability of the findings.

As an exploratory study, the findings can lay the ground for largerscale studies investigating CLS mobility in Vietnam and be employed for inbound student mobility policymaking reference for HEIs in Vietnam as well as in other developing countries.

This study investigates why Cambodian and Laotian international students decide to go to Vietnam, a developing country in the lesser-known part of international student mobility landscape. This is a topic that remains under-researched in the Asia-bound student mobility literature. Insights from the study can not only contribute to the scholarly gap but also offer implications for HEIs in Vietnam and other Asian countries.

Drawing on scholarships of workplace romance, LGBT at work and sexual fluidity, this present research aims to investigate the effect of female sexually fluid romantic relationships at work on their work and life.

The authors used qualitative approach and interviewed 30 female workers who experienced sexual fluidity at work.

From interviews with 30 female employees in Vietnam who experience fluidity in their romance, the authors find out positive and negatives effects on their psychology at work (affective/behavioral/cognitive change and mental health), work outcome (job attitudes and performance/productivity) and relations with coworkers.

This research discovers common and distinct features in the workplace romance of female sexually fluid employees. The research finding supports queer perspective which is exerting more salient impacts on our contemporary society and workplace.

The authors estimated the hidden overhead (capital diversion or wasteful use of capital) of Vietnam state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

The authors used a panel data set of 10,200 Vietnam SOEs observed over the period 2010–2018. The authors modeled and estimated the hidden overhead by using a stochastic production frontier. The hidden overhead parameter is modelled as the technical inefficiency in the production function.

Vietnam SOEs are very capital intensive. The hidden overhead (or the wasteful use of capital) is very high with an average rate of 69%.

Alternative estimation methods should be used to account for endogeneity in production inputs. Lack of comparison with the Vietnam private firms.

The paper proposes an original way to quantify hidden overhead (or capital diversion) in the Vietnam SOEs. The finding (a capital diversion rate of 69% on average) is astonishing. It calls for an urgent and profound reform of the Vietnam SOEs.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the contribution of capital formation, labor, and technological progress to the growth of the Vietnamese economy, the impact of economic reforms (doi moi) since the end of 1986, and the rates of returns to capital and labor.

Cobb‐Douglas production functions are built for Vietnam's economy and then estimated using annual data for 1975‐2005.

The two major findings are that: technological progress was statistically absent in the growth of the Vietnamese economy throughout the period studied; and the most important source of economic growth is capital accumulation, accounting for between 84 percent and 89 percent of Vietnamese economic growth throughout the period 1975‐2005, and between 85 percent and 90 percent in the reform period (1986‐2005).

This paper is the first of its kind in the Vietnamese literature that successfully sheds light on, among other things, the roles of capital and technological progress in the Vietnamese economy during the period 1975‐2005. It also makes clear that Vietnam's economic growth has been fueled mainly by foreign funds and, thus, the continued heavy reliance of the economy on this financial source will make its growth unsustainable. In order to achieve sustainable growth in the coming decades, Vietnam must shift to rely more on productivity growth, which has been absent so far, and less on factor accumulation growth.

The textile industry has consumed large quantities of water and discharged large volumes of wastewater in the dyeing process. The study aims to characterize self-dyed silk with Rhodamine B (RhB) for fashion applications to reduce textile hazards to the environment and increase the added value of silk.

Bombyx mori was fed with RhB-colored mulberry leaves (1500 ppm). The effects of self-dyeing were investigated via color strength K/S, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffraction, tensile strength, color fastness to washing, rubbing, perspiration and light.

Self-dyed silk possesses effective coloration and impressive color fastness (4–5/5), higher crystalline index (CrI) (73.26 ± 2.28%), less thermal stability and tenacity, slight change in amino acid composition compared with the pristine and no existence of harmful aromatic azo amines and arylamine salts.

The application of self-dyed silk with RhB dye has expanded new technology into fashion industry, contributing partly to economic growth and adding value to silk in the global supply chain. Besides, the self-dyeing will yield practical values in the reduction of dyeing discharge in textile industry.

Self-dyed silk was characterized for textile applications in comparison with pristine silk in terms of color strength and fastness as well as determined its polymeric properties relating to crystallinity, morphology, chemical composition, tensile properties and thermal stability which have not been investigated before.

This article studies the moderating effect of institutional pressures on the impact of bank ties on the capital structure of small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs).

The study uses an unbalanced longitudinal dataset covering three years—2011, 2013 and 2015—from a project on small manufacturing enterprises in Vietnam. The sample consists of 7,680 firm-year observations.

Pressures from formal and informal institutions lessen the positive effect of bank ties on the capital structure of SMEs. These moderating effects are more salient in regions having lower institutional quality.

Empirically showing how institutional factors can be investigated together with relational factors to explain the capital structure of SMEs in a developing economy. Distinguishing between formal and informal institutional pressures and revealing their indirect effect on SMEs' capital structure through impacting the effect of bank ties.

This study aims to examine the effects of three-perspective motivations including task interdependence, normative conformity, affective bonding on team knowledge sharing (KS) and the moderating effects of project stage on the proposed model paths.

The quantitative method was applied through surveying senior auditors representing 263 audit teams in Vietnam.

Findings show that task interdependence has salient effect on team KS. Normative conformity and affective bonding become more important when projects move to later stages where knowledge shared is more tacit and the team involves more social interactions.

This study puts forth the limitations related to the study scope of financial statement auditing teams that may influence the generalization.

This study recommends auditing managers to be aware of diverse motivations for team KS and their increasingly important role in specific project stages.

The novelty of the research is to integrate three knowledge-sharing motivations based on economics, social and psychological perspectives and to affirm the dynamic nature of KS within team projects.

Single-party regimes increasingly use Subnational Performance Assessments (SPAs) – rankings of provinces and districts – to improve governance outcomes. SPAs assemble and publicize information on local government performance to facilitate monitoring and generate competition among officials. However, the evidence are sparse on their effects in this context. The authors argue that built-in incentive structures in centralized single-party regimes distort the positive impact of SPAs.

The staggered rollout of the Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) created a natural experiment. Due to 2010 budget constraints, the first iteration of the PAPI survey covered only 30 of Vietnam’s 63 provinces before covering all in 2011. The PAPI team used matching procedures to identify a statistical twin for each province before randomly selecting one from each pair. The authors use randomization inference to compare the outcomes of these control and treatment groups in 2011.

Exposure to PAPI helped improve almost all aspects of governance; however, significant evidence of prioritization bias exist. The positive effects only persisted for the dimension of administrative procedures, which was the one area of governance that was prioritized by the central government at the time. Other dimensions only registered short-term effects.

Our study provides an examination of the impact of SPAs in a single-party regime context. In addition, the authors leverage the natural experiment to identify information effects causally. The authors also look past short-term effects to compare outcomes for five years after the treatment occurred.

The paper analyzes the effects of the capital structure on company performance (return on assets). The analysis is conducted in a large sample of high-tech manufacturing and service companies in the transition economy (Russian Federation). In addition to the aggregated analysis, separate investigations are conducted to scrutinize the impact of company age, size and location factors (the effects of agglomerations). This research postulates the existence and variability of the optimal capital structure and its dependence on economic crisis.

We utilized a large sample that includes 1,826 enterprises over the period from 2013 to 2017. The estimation was performed using the panel-corrected standard error estimation technique (Prais–Winsten regression) to account for the panel nature and distributional properties of our data. The existence of the optimal capital structure was assessed based on a curvilinear (quadratic) function.

The results are consistent with the Static Trade-off Theory and show that this theory is applicable to countries with transition economy. They demonstrate that effective management of the capital structure can increase return on assets by 16–22%. The optimal share of borrowed capital is higher for small businesses compared to larger ones and for enterprises located in agglomerations compared to those located in other regions. A greater increase in profitability can be achieved by larger firm companies compared to smaller ones. High share of borrowed capital leads to negative profitability, i.e. to losses by enterprises. No significant differences in profitability growth were identified between young and mature enterprises. The optimal share of borrowed capital that maximizes return on assets is in the range of 0–21%.

Due to the SPARK policies, our access to the data has been limited to a five-year window, which imposed certain limitations on the choice of econometric methods we could have employed and somewhat limited our ability to contrast the effect of the crisis period with the period of stability. In this sense, although our results pertaining to the effect of the crisis could be treated as conservative, future research should consider extending the panel to include more years into consideration.

We identified significant differences between optimal capital structures and actual capital structures for high-tech enterprises. The contribution of this study is that the calculations were made for a country with a transition economy under crisis conditions. Countries with transition economies and developing countries tend to be characterized by a high level of interest rates on loans and a high proportion of borrowed capital in total assets. This poses difficulties for companies relying on borrowed capital to finance their operations. At the same time, our results demonstrate that in transition economies, enterprises in high-tech industries do have an optimal capital structure that allows maximizing firm performance. That is, Static Trade-off Theory is applicable to transition economies characterized by high interest rates on loans.

The novelty of this study lies in the detailed analysis of high-tech industries in Russian Federation. This analysis makes use of sophisticated econometric techniques for the first time in this context.