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The case covers capital budgeting practice in a real estate company in Vietnam.

The case is ideally suited for participants in MBA, Executive MBA, and Masters in Finance programmes. It can be taught near the end of a course on corporate finance/financial management. It can also be taught as an advanced topic in financial management courses.

A real estate company in Vietnam has prepared a capital budget for, what it claims is, a 600 billion VND project. The weighted average cost of capital used by the company is 10.64 percent. An analyst in a consulting company is asked to thoroughly review the capital budget of what appears to be a project that is too good to be true. Lending rates in Vietnam at this time were around 15 percent.

Participants will learn how to correctly apply the principles of computing: net after tax cash flows from a project; and weighted average cost of capital, particularly in the context of real estate companies.

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

Limited previous studies about Vietnamese returned migrant workers reviewed that a relatively high rate of migrants returned home before their contract ended. This paper aims to explore how the decisions to return were made under social lenses.

This paper analyses data obtained through in-depth interviews of contract workers who had worked in Taiwan with a focus on Phu Tho province in Vietnam.

The authors followed O’Reilly’s (2012) adaption of Practice theory in migration research to examine a group of Vietnamese labour migrants returning from Taiwan. Under this theory, external and internal structures are the two divisions of the social environment. The authors identified external structures that might enable or constraint migrant’s mobility. When negotiating internal structures, Vietnamese women might end their contract early in response to family obligations.

The findings provide insights into how women make their decisions when to return, which may contribute to a better understanding of how to assist women engaged in transnational labour migration.

Adopting a view that migration is an investment, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the risk-adjusted returns that migrant domestic workers from Vietnam to Taiwan can expect to earn.

The study analyses data obtained through interviews of a sample of migrant domestic workers, all from Phu Tho in the north of Vietnam, who had migrated to Taiwan.

The study found that migrants were driven strongly by financial motivations. Analysis of the typical costs of migrating, wages in the host country, average length of stay and especially, uncertainties affecting the length of stay, found that the investment in migration is a highly risky one for migrants. In most cases, migration does not pay.

Estimates of costs and benefits can be improved with larger samples of respondents and data sources that can help validate the interviews.

There is a need to improve financial literacy among migrants to help them better assess their investment in migration.

This paper highlights the inequity in risk allocation in the context of migration.

To the knowledge, there is no research of the financial costs and benefits of migration as domestic workers, especially from Vietnam to Taiwan.

The purpose of this paper is to map the “migration pathways” (King and Skeldon, 2010) followed by interviews with a group of Vietnamese international labour migrants.

Through 50 in-depth interviews, the authors identify the reasons that explain the pathways observed.

The authors found that more than half of the interviewees did what King and Skeldon describe as a U-turn, whereby the migrants go abroad for work directly from their home town and return to settle there. The remainder did a J-turn, meaning the migrants returned and settled elsewhere. The majority of those doing a J-turn moved to another town/city within the province of their home town. Few return migrants settled outside their home province. The main explanations for the U-turn choice include existing investment in immobile assets in their home town, strong family ties, parental care obligations, lack of skill acquisition from international labour migration, age and for married migrants having children. Poor conditions in their home town, the absence of local job opportunities and better schooling for children were important considerations that made the J-turn more desirable. Having family ties in a new location, and affording the investment needed to settle in a new town, were important explanations to make the J-turn possible.

This paper highlights the need for economic development in rural Vietnam, including the creation of decentralised and sustainable livelihoods, so that return migrants have opportunities to reintegrate within their home communities.

The aim of this study is to explore, identify and understand the impact of technology affordance in the context of social networking sites (SNSs). Moreover, this study incorporates user experience as a moderator, in order to explore behavioral differences between veterans (high-experience users) and newbies (low-experience users).

A research model was developed to examine the influences of three technology affordances: interactivity, information and navigation on user satisfaction and SNS stickiness. Totally 266 data were collected from a famous college in China using an online survey, and structural equation modeling technique was used to examine the proposed research model.

The empirical research findings indicated that the three technology affordance attributes exhibited different degrees of influence on user satisfaction, which in turn facilitated SNS stickiness. Particularly, high-experience users were more likely influenced by interactivity and information affordances, while low-experience users are more susceptible to navigation affordance.

This study can provide guidelines to the platform administrators to design SNSs from the aspects of interactivity, information and navigation attributes and pay attention to the preference differences between high-experience users and low-experience users.

This study uncovers the significant antecedents of SNS stickiness from a technology affordance lens and reveals the moderating effect of user experience on the relationship between three technology affordance attributes and satisfaction.

The purpose of this study is to employ a user-centered approach to identify subgroups of people with similar profiles based on their perceptions of multiple dimensions of digital products' coolness and to test the differences across subgroups in the intention to use these products.

In Study 1, 1,161 adults rated a virtual digital product on four dimensions of coolness. In Study 2, 660 college students made similar ratings and also reported their intention to use a real digital product. Participants' ratings were analyzed using a user-centered approach, namely latent profile analysis.

Study 1 identified groups of participants who had similar profiles of product ratings on the four dimensions of coolness: niche cool, mass cool, uncertain cool and uncool. Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 and in addition showed that these groups varied in their intention to use the product and in whether a specific dimension increased or decreased this intention.

The cross-sectional data preclude inferences about causality, calling for experimental or longitudinal research. Additionally, future research should explore whether the results generalize to other product categories and other age groups.

Managers should design digital products, segment the market and develop flexible strategies based on combined responses to dimensions of coolness perception.

The present research employed a user-centered approach to identify groups of people who share similar patterns of coolness perception. This study provides new insight that was not available in variable-centered research.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key psychological determinants of smart watch adoption (i.e. affective quality (AQ), relative advantage (RA), mobility (MB), availability (AV), subcultural appeal) and develops an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) that integrates the findings into the original TAM constructs.

An online survey assessed the proposed psychological determinants of smart watch adoption. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were conducted on collected data (n=363) using the AMOS 22 statistical software. The reliability and validity of the measurement assessing the proposed factor structure were examined via CFA, while the strength and direction of the hypothesized causal paths among the constructs were analyzed via SEM.

The AQ and RA of smart watches were found to be associated with perceived usefulness, while the sense of MB and AV induced by smart watches led to a greater perceived ease of the technology’s use. The results also indicated that the devices’ subcultural appeal and cost were notable antecedents of user attitude (AT) and intention to use, respectively.

Though smart watches are becoming increasingly popular, empirical studies on user perceptions of and ATs toward – them remain preliminary. This paper is one of the first scholarly attempts at a systematic prediction of smart watch usage, with implications for the adoption of future wearable technology.

With growing interest in the uses of hedonic technologies and gamification in system design, the concept of cognitive absorption (CA) has become increasingly salient in the information systems literature. However, little effort has been made to evaluate the research status and consolidate the current literature findings. To fill these research gaps, the authors conducted a literature review on CA. The authors then proposed an integrative framework that summarises the key elements of and variables related to CA and their relationships. The major findings of the study are discussed, and an agenda for future research is proposed.

The research aims to understand how smart speakers are perceived by their actual and potential users, their attitude towards smart speakers and consequently their intention to use them.

The authors apply a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach to test the research hypotheses through data coming from a structured questionnaire.

The results show that the higher the importance attributed to usefulness and ease of use, the higher the positive attitude that in turn positively affects the intention to use smart speakers. A significant relationship also emerged between task technology fit and attitude towards smart speakers, as well as between perceived enjoyment and attitude towards smart speakers. Perceived privacy risk, innovativeness and social attraction have been found to not significantly impact attitudes towards smart speakers.

Although several academic studies have focused on various aspects of smart technologies, only a few studies discuss the factors that push consumers to use smart speakers for activities related to commercial transactions. Therefore, looking at the rapid rise of smart speakers for daily tasks and the gradual acceptance of voice interaction with digital tools, the authors proposed a study about Italian users' intention to use smart speakers. Specifically, to fill the gap in the existing literature, the authors applied a SEM approach to identify utilitarian and hedonic benefits that motivate the use of these devices.

The high rate of internet penetration has led to the proliferation of social media (SM) use, even at the workplace, including academia. This research attempts to develop a topology and thereby determine the dominant use motive for faculty’s use of SM.

In this two-part study, a two-stage research design has been adopted for topology development based on the application of Uses and Gratifications Theory. In the second part, the Technology Acceptance Model is applied to discern the dominant motive for SM use in academia.

The work is able to develop a seven-item topology, conforming to the basic three use motives, namely, hedonic, utilitarian and social. The work shows faculty attach more value to the instrumental utility of SM, while the hedonic function is also significant.

Discerning dominant motive implies that SM use at the workplace should not be banned, rather effective regulated use will instil the faculty to enhance work outcomes. The conceptualisation of topology for SM use in academia at the workplace can aid in designing an effective organisation policy, and design of an internal SM platform.

The study is unique towards topology development for academic faculty and has many important implications for management and academia, especially towards policy design for SM use at the workplace.