Journal of International Economics and Management

24-49

Authors: Melissa Jardine, Duong Thi Thanh Thuy

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of the chief executive officer (CEO) demographic characteristics including CEO age, CEO gender, and CEO education on the performance of firms in the scientific research and technology development (SRTD) industry context. The crosssectional data employed are collected from the General Statistics Office of Vietnam’s survey on corporations in 2017 with three samples, which include SRTD firms, certified SRTDs as CSRTD firms, and the SRTD industry as a whole. The least-squares analysis, robust regressions, statistical parametric and non-parametric tests are conducted to analyze the data. Firstly, it is found that the association between CEO age and firm performance is different between SRTD firms and CSRTD firms and statistically non-significant to the SRTD industry as a whole. Secondly, female CEOs of SRTD firms operate their businesses better than their male counterparts while the opposite is witnessed in CSRTD firms. For the whole SRTD industry, male CEOs outperform. Thirdly, for SRTD firms, the higher education of CEOs does not ensure higher performance. Nonetheless, CEOs with master’s degrees do have better performance than CEOs with bachelor’s degrees. These results are consistent in all estimation models being employed. The study is the first to examine factors affecting the performance of firms in the SRTD industry.

63-85

Authors: Van Hieu Duong, Duong Thi Hoai Nhung, Tran My Linh

IT professionals’ job satisfaction is important in minimizing turnover, improving job performance, minimizing absenteeism, and increasing the level of job involvement. The primary purpose of this study is to measure the job satisfaction of IT professionals and to identify which factors influence job satisfaction the most in Hanoi’s IT companies. The study also investigates the relationship between job satisfaction factors and the overall job satisfaction by using the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) and Job General Index (JGI) questionnaire to evaluate the construct validity of factors. Data were gathered from a survey of 326 IT professionals in systems development to capture perceptions regarding workrelated factors on job satisfaction and organizational commitment. The results of this study indicate that compensation and benefits, co-worker, promotion opportunities, nature of work, and supervision are positively related to job satisfaction. Based on these findings, the study provides implications to business executives in the IT businesses.

108-122

Authors: Tran Tu Uyen

While developed countries have been aware of the important role and built successful models of business-university cooperation, in Vietnam, this cooperation has not been paid enough attention to and has not yet been implemented. To improve the situation, this study develops a model of factors that affect the businesses willingness to participate in the business-university cooperation of Vietnamese companies. Utilizing data collected from interviews with 58 enterprises and applying the EFA factor analysis and regression analysis, the study finds that two factors, which are the awareness of benefits, and barriers, affect the willingness to participate in business-university cooperation have been found with a regression model. While awareness of benefits promotes the businesses willingness, Barriers prevent owners/ managers from engaging in such relationships. Based on the research results, some solutions are proposed to enhance the willingness of companies.

17-41

Authors: Nguyen Thi Quynh Nga, Bao Quynh Nhu

The fourth industrial revolution (the 4.0 era) has provided companies with more opportunities to attract potential clients across technology-based platforms, thus, bringing new factors that offer a tremendous incentive to buy impulsively, namely Contextual Targeting. Nevertheless, far too little attention has lately been paid to impulse buying behavior in Vietnam. This study offers a comprehensive view on how impulsive behavior is produced, analyzes factors having considerable significance to the impulsiveness, and proposes tactics businesses may use to maximize their sales. The data for this study were selected randomly from the population of Ho Chi Minh city via a survey in the second half of February 2020. From Exploratory Factors Analysis and Multiple Regression Analysis, results reveal that contextual targeting of advertising, packaging, and moods are strongly linked to impulse buying behaviors of Vietnamese consumers, especially in Ho Chi Minh city in the 4.0 era. The study proposes appropriate tactics for businesses to employ as a cheat-sheet, which helps manipulate customer mannerism to maximize profits.

60-74

Authors: Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen

This paper analyses the effect of brand image, perceived quality, perceived uniqueness on loyalty of customers in the mobile telecom industry. The data for this study were gathered through face-to-face questionnaires that were distributed to target participants, who reported their consumption experience with mobile telecom services. The survey was conducted in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city with the sampling of 453 respondents. We used the Structured Equation Model to evaluate the suitability of the framework and examine the hypotheses. The results reveal that brand equity impacts directly customer satisfaction and has indirect effect on loyalty via customer satisfaction.

96-117

Authors: Dao Thi Thu Giang, Cao Thi Hong Vinh

Business linkages are of interests to many firms as they can have positive impacts on firms’ performance. Nevertheless, there have been few studies on possible influence of business linkages on motivation to upgrade workers’ skills among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Applying a Probit estimation model with Fixed-Effects techniques for panel data with a sample covering more than 6,000 observations of SMEs from Vietnam, the study provides key findings. First of all, the increase in the number of business linkages helps SMEs to upgrade workers’ skills by reducing the percentage of unskilled workers. Secondly, the rise in workers’ skills increases the probability that SMEs train their existing workers, but not new workers. Finally, the increase in firm size plays an important role for SMEs in Vietnam to upgrade their workers’ skills.

16-33

Authors: Vuong Thi Thao Binh, Nguyen Van Thang

Previous studies on responses of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) firms to policy changes mainly focus on the impact of government policies on foreign investment flows in a country or in a province. So far, there has been no research on how Foreign Direct Investment enterprises, which are investing in Vietnam, react to unexpected changes in policies. We focus on studying some main factors affecting the behavior of FDI firms in Vietnam when the policy changes adversely. Using the data set of the annual Vietnam Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) survey with the foreign invested firms (FIFs) in Vietnam for 4 years from 2013 to 2016, the study shows that enterprises’ behaviors strongly depend on the capacity to predict changes in government policies. The policy changes directly affect business activities, so policymakers need to make a long-term stability plan to attract the FIFs. In addition, the FIFs tend to choose moving production to another country or coordinating with other businesses if local leaders are highly transparent. The opposite is true for the proactivity. In the case that local leaders are proactive, it helps FIFs feel secure to invest with enthusiastic support so the desire to move location or coordinate with other businesses is reduced. On the other hand, the FIFs are more likely to employ both formal and informal diplomacy if there is an increase in the number of employees, time spent interacting with government officers and prediction about policy change. Moreover, it is more likely to employ formal diplomacy than informal diplomacy in the case of FIFs’ size expanding. Similar to that case, it is true when increasing the capability of predicting harmful policy changes. We also find that the tendency of choosing formal diplomacy of foreign leaders is higher than that of Vietnamese leaders.

49-59

Authors: Yuki Higuchi

Effective government programmes should be taken up by their potential beneficiaries. This study investigates the factors associated with the decision of Vietnamese small business owners to participate in free business training programmes. Based on the original survey data, I find that most business owners were unaware of the importance of learning business, and thus, did not take up the training offer. The regression analysis, using bivariate probit model, shows that the risk-taking owners and owners with their relatives also invited to the same training were more likely to participate in the training. These findings suggest that providing ex-ante information about the usefulness of the training and allowing group participation can encourage training participation.

75-88

Authors: Pi-Yun Chen, Bui Manh Cuong

Globalization has become increasingly popular. Nevertheless, education in Vietnam has lagged behind developed countries. Thus, one of main reasons for Vietnam to engage in international collaboration is to improve training quality and enrich the human resource for economic development. This study aims to assess joint master programs at the Faculty of International Education at Foreign Trade University based on the overall student satisfaction. The SSI model developed by Temizer and Turkyilmaz (2012) to measure student satisfaction at private university is applied in the research. The data of this research are analyzed by the SPSS 20.0 software. The online questionnaires in the research are used for collecting opinions of joint master students at the Faculty of International Education at Foreign Trade University. From the analysis of 237 respondents, the results show that image (IM), perceived value (PV), perceived quality (PQ), and student expectation (EXP) impact on student satisfaction, in which perceived value and image mostly affected the overall satisfaction of students coming from joint master programs at Foreign Trade University.

18-41

Authors: Nguyen Thuy Anh, Tran Hue Ly

This paper aims to observe corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and to identify the determinants of CSR disclosure (CSRD) of Vietnam’s listed companies in chemical industry from 2014 to 2017. A rating system was built by incorporating the comprehensive Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) reporting framework to measure firm’s CSR disclosure. The financial data was collected from FiinPro and manually collected from annual reports. The findings show that CSRD in Vietnam’s chemical companies is still inadequate, and most of the firm disclosure is far below the international standards. In addition, it is found that firm size, profitability and female board members have a positive correlation with CSR disclosure. On the other hand, CEO gender has a significant relationship with CSR disclosure. The results strengthen the previous studies and give more detailed implications to managers in this industry.

53-64

Authors: Tran Quoc Trung, Vo Thi Thien Trang

Although many prior studies show that oil price affects negatively macroeconomic environment and stock prices, there are few studies on the impact of oil price on firm profitability. This paper posits that oil price tends to affect firm profitability negatively via increases in production costs and negative changes in the macroeconomic environment. As a transition economy, Vietnam has been gradually integrated into the world economy and affected by international economic shocks. Therefore, Vietnam is a potential laboratory to investigate the effect of oil price as an exogenous factor on firm profitability. Using a sample of 6,960 observations from 951 firms listed in Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HOSE) and Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) between 2005 and 2016, we find supporting evidence for the negative impact of oil price on firm profitability.

80-100

Authors: Nguyen Dac Thanh, Luu Thi Thuy Duong, Nguyen Huu That

This study is conducted to clarify the impact of the factors on the competitiveness of retail banking services inVietnam’s commercial banks from the customer’s approach. The hypothesis in this paper is proposed that the competitiveness of retail banking services is related to the following factors: service quality, fees, distribution channels, promotion activities, and brand. The data is used from the survey conducted by 438 individual customers who have been using retail banking services in Vietnam’s big cities. This paper shows that the specific factors which are positively impact the competitiveness of retail banking services in Vietnam can be seen as prices (service fees), promotion activities, brand and distribution channels and service quality. The findings in this research could be an academic basis towards the improvement of the policies for retail banking services in Vietnam.