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COVID-19 hits every country’s health-care system and economy. There is a trend toward using automation technology in response to the COVID-19 crisis not only in developed countries but also in those with lower levels of technology development. However, current studies mainly focus on the world level, and only a few ones report deployments at the country level. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of automation solutions in Vietnam with locally available materials mainly in the first wave from January to July 2020.

The authors collected COVID-related automation solutions during the first wave of COVID-19 in Vietnam from January to July 2020 through a search process. The analysis and insights of a panel consisting of various disciplines (i.e. academia, health care, government, entrepreneur and media) aim at providing a clear picture of how and to what extent these solutions have been deployed.

The authors found seven groups of solutions from low to high research and development (R&D) levels deployed across the country with various funding sources. Low R&D solutions were widely spread owing to simplicity and affordability. High R&D solutions were mainly deployed in big cities. Most of the solutions were deployed during the first phases when international supply chains were limited with a significant contribution of the media. Higher R&D solutions have opportunities to be deployed in the reopening phase. However, challenges can be listed as limited interdisciplinary research teams, market demand, the local supporting industry, end-user validation and social-ethical issues.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first study analyzing the use of automation technology in response to COVID-19 in Vietnam and also in a country in Southeast Asia. Lessons learned from these current deployments are useful for future emerging infectious diseases. The reality of Vietnam’s automation solutions in response to COVID-19 might be a reference for other developing countries with similar social-economic circumstances and contributes to the global picture of how different countries adopt technology to combat COVID-19.

For small businesses, the strategic objective of going green may be a gendered process. Male and female entrepreneurs, due to their gender roles, respond differently to intrinsic motivations and extrinsic pressures to go green. This study aims to investigate whether women-run or men-run firms are more likely to go green due to intrinsic motivations versus extrinsic pressures. Moreover, it examines how the effect of gender on going green is moderated by market competition and gender inequality.

This study employs a dataset of small businesses in 40 countries, mostly developing, in Eastern Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa.

Women-run firms are more likely to go green due to both intrinsic motivations and extrinsic pressures compared to men-run firms. Notably, market competition weakens the positive effect of female ownership on firm going green while gender inequality amplifies the relationship.

This research is one of the first to examine the gendered process of going green in small businesses. Using the social feminist and institutional theories to understand how male and female entrepreneurs go green for different types of motivations, this research expands understanding of the green transition of small businesses.

This study aims to investigate the impact of several factors on customer satisfaction and intention of reusing ride-hailing services that is a new type of passenger urban transport service.

This research applied the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling analysis method to examine the measurement scale and to analyze the primary data collected from 388 passengers in Vietnam.

This study demonstrates that three dimensions of perceived value, namely, functional value, hedonic value and economic value, positively influence customer satisfaction. The other dimension of perceived value, which is social value, has an ambiguous effect on satisfaction. In addition, personal innovativeness promotes all dimensions of perceived value. In particular, this study highlights that customer satisfaction and corporate image positively impact reuse intention, and corporate image moderates the relationship between customer satisfaction and reuse intention.

This study enriches knowledge about customer behavior using services based on the sharing economy business model. In particular, theoretical and practical implications are provided for researchers and enterprises to find suitable strategies for business.

This research examines how universities enhance the virality of their social media messages among students. Specifically, we explore whether and how positive affective content in universities’ social media posts can influence sharing behavior. We also investigate the mediating roles of perceived effort and positive emotional reaction, as well as the moderating effect of visual content (i.e. photos).

Drawing upon the emotions as social information model, we conducted (1) an online experiment (N = 222) and (2) text analysis of 1,269,798 Twitter posts extracted from the accounts of 94 UK universities over 11 years (2010–2020) to test our hypotheses.

The findings show that social media posts containing positive affective content encourage sharing behavior and the relationship is mediated by both perceived effort and positive emotional reaction. An additional finding suggests that the use of visual content (photos) strengthens the relationship between positive affective content and sharing behaviors through an interaction effect.

This study contributes to the scant research focusing on positive affective content in the higher education context. The findings shed light on how universities could create social media communications that engage current and prospective students.

This study investigates the influence of entrepreneurial experience on small business investment. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether entrepreneurs with more prior start-up experience are better able to identify business opportunities and successfully transform these opportunities into investment projects.

The empirical setting in this study is Vietnam. The authors employ a panel data of small businesses (mostly households) from 2005 to 2013, and use a fixed effect method to estimate the regression coefficients. The results are also re-checked using the general method of moments and matching technique.

Empirically, it is found that entrepreneurial experience is an important determinant of investment decisions. Specifically, entrepreneurs with one start-up experience make more investments than novice entrepreneurs. However, entrepreneurs with more than one start-up experience do not make more investments than entrepreneurs with one start-up experience.

This is country-specific research. Further study may employ data from multi-countries to re-test the validity of the hypotheses.

This study provides a new perspective for analysing the role of entrepreneurial experience on entrepreneurial investments. It shows that prior start-up experience may turn out to be a liability to entrepreneurs since it restricts their ability to identify new opportunities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether higher levels of transparency, accountability, and participation have a statistically significant association with corruption, and whether corruption is highly correlated with lower public service quality in the context of Vietnam’s transition economy.

Using individual-level survey data from Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index, the research employs an ordered probit model to test whether greater transparency, accountability, and participation is associated with lower levels of corruption. Moreover, district-level data are used to test the relationship between corruption and quality of public services particularly in healthcare and primary education.

Results show that a higher level of transparency, participation, and accountability is associated with a lower level of corruption, and that corruption is negatively associated with public service quality.

The use of cross-sectional data does not allow the establishment of causal relationships among variables.

The research suggests that fostering accountability to citizens and non-state sectors and promotion of genuine participation from these actors are critical for the future anti-corruption agenda.

In developing countries, whether corruption enhances efficiency of service provision is highly debatable. This research contributes to this debate by suggesting that corruption significantly decreases the quality of public service, and that improving local governance helps reduce corruption.

Traditional construction procurement is generally used for projects with no unusual features and a well‐established scope. In this method, work progresses sequentially because each step is completed before the next step is started. As such, making changes during construction is problematic and expensive. Design and build (D/B) method allows the client to introduce the contractor's design at any stage resulting in the possibility of having different levels of initial scope establishment. Consequently, the project can gain benefit through buildability and the integration of design and construction. The client's main criteria for selecting D/B procurement are to reduce the time and cost of projects through one point responsibility. Factors that are related to time and cost performance include: the completeness of the client's brief (the level of initial scope establishment by the client), changes made to the project by the client, the stage and manner in which the changes are reffected, degree of project difficulty and coordination efforts with the contractor. It is widely recognized that the initial states of those factors at the beginning of a project affect time and cost performance, but the degree of impact has yet to be studied in details. This study focuses on the effects of different levels of the initial scope establishment prior to engaging the D/B contractor. This is investigated using dynamic simulation approach. It is found that the initial scope development should be roughly in the range between 50 and 70%. Experimentation with the model developed also shows that D/B fast‐track construction with fixed design, procurement and construction schedule is most effective in saving time, whereas D/B with traditional method is best for cost saving.

This article aims to draw a conceptual model that integrates the view from the entrepreneurial event model with entrepreneurial education and prior self-employment experience. The model tests the role of entrepreneurial education on the formation of intentions to become an entrepreneur and examines whether prior self-employed experiences moderate the route from entrepreneurial education, entrepreneurial perceived feasibility (PF) and perceived desirability (PD) into the entrepreneurial intention (EI).

The authors operated on a sample of 389 master's students by applying Cronbach's alpha, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling to illustrate the links between constructs.

The study found that entrepreneurial education is positively correlated with PF, PD, and intention to enter entrepreneurial activities. PD is determined as a partial mediator in the entrepreneurial education–intention link and full mediator in PF and EI. Moreover, the study revealed that prior self-employed experiences serve as a positive moderator in the path from entrepreneurial education and PD to EI.

The study offers several recommendations based on research findings so as to nurture and promote entrepreneurial activities among master's students.

The current research provides novel insights about the relationship between entrepreneurial education and intentions to become an entrepreneur over and about the central antecedents in the entrepreneurial event model and moderation effects of prior self-employed experiences.

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.

This paper aims to examine the impact of competition on firm performance using a data set of 352 firms listed on Vietnam’s stock exchanges from 2015 to 2019.

The two-step system generalized method of moments is used to estimate this impact.

The findings reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between competition and firm performance. Competition improves firm performance if its intensity is moderate. However, if the competition intensity exceeds the optimal level, the performance deteriorates accordingly.

The authors only studied Vietnamese firms due to the limited ability in data collection. It would be better to validate the findings using data from other transition economies.

The non-linear relationship between competition and performance implies that government should pay more attention to retaining competition at an appropriate level.

Firms contribute a lot to the prosperity of Vietnam. Therefore, the findings have a meaningful implication for Vietnam’s government to moderate competition to improve its firms’ performance.

This paper contributes to the extant literature by providing firsthand evidence of the impact of competition on firm performance in Vietnam – a transition economy.