How swelling debts give rise to a new type of politics in Vietnam

Vietnam has seen fast-rising debts, both domestic and external, in recent years. This paperreviews the literature on credit market in Vietnam, providing an up-to-date take on the domesticlending and borrowing landscape. The study highlights the strong demand for credit in both therural and urban areas, the ubiquity of informal lenders, the recent popularity of consumer financecompanies, as well as the government’s attempts to rein in its swelling public debt. Given thehigh level of borrowing, which is fueled by consumerism and geopolitics, it is inevitable that theamount of debt will soon be higher than the saving of the borrowers. Unlike the conventional wisdom that creditors have more bargaining power over the borrowers, we suggest that—albeitlacking a quantitative estimation—when the debts pile up so high that the borrowers could not repay, the power dynamics may reverse. In this new politics of debt, the lenders fear to lose the money's worth and continue to lend and feed the insolvent debtors. The result is a toxic lending/borrowing market and profound lessons, from which the developing world could learn

An open database of productivity in Vietnam's social sciences and humanities for public use

This study presents a description of an open database on scientific output of Vietnamese researchers in social sciences and humanities, one that corrects for the shortcomings in current research publication databases such as data duplication, slow update, and a substantial cost of doing science. Here, using scientists’ self-reports, open online sources and cross-checking with Scopus database, we introduce a manual system and its semi-automated version of the database on the profiles of 657 Vietnamese researchers in social sciences and humanities who have published in Scopus-indexed journals from 2008 to 2018. The final system also records 973 foreign co-authors, 1,289 papers, and 789 affiliations. The data collection method, highly applicable for other sources, could be replicated in other developing countries while its content be used in cross-section, multivariate, and network data analyses. The open database is expected to help Vietnam revamp its research capacity and meet the public demand for greater transparency in science management

Serendipity as a Strategic Advantage?

Who, over the age of 20, hasn\u27t experienced a serendipitous event: unexpected information that yields some unintended but potential value later on? Sitting next to a stranger on a plane who becomes a business partner? Stumbling onto an article in a journal or newspaper that helps tackle a nagging problem? Creating a new drug by accident

Getting to the Real Story: What Vietnamese Business People Wish Foreigners Understood About Doing Business in Emerging and Transition Countries Like Vietnam – BEFORE They Start

Knowledge sharing typically examines organizational transfer of knowledge, often from headquarters to subsidiaries, from developed country sites to emerging country sites, or from host to local employees. Yes, recent research, such as Prahalad\u27s Bottom of the Pyramid, raises the question of reverse transfer of knowledge, or whether knowledge could and should be transferred from local sites to home country sites within an organization. As several emerging economies build their capabilities in knowledge, research and development, marketing, and the like, it only makes sense to consider what type of knowledge and how to transfer it in reverse or bi-directional manners. This reflection paper takes one step back in the process. Rather than focusing on what knowledge transfer may make sense within an organization, we consider, through a series of small case studies and experience, what types of knowledge are important for foreigners to know at the initial stages of engagement abroad as they consider whether to do business in an emerging country

Resource Curse or Destructive Creation in Transition Turmoil

This paper explores the “resource curse” problem as a counter-example of creative performance and innovation by examining reliance on capital and physical resources, showing the gap between expectations and ex-post actual performance became clearer under conditions of economic turmoil. The analysis employs the method of logistic regressions with dichotomous response and predictor variables, on a count data sample containing 154 point derived from the transition economy of Vietnam. Performance of analysis has shown significant results. Several findings that have use for economic and business practice follow. First, in a transition period, a typical characteristic of successful firms was their reliance on either capital resources or physical asset endowments, whereas the innovation factor was not significant. Second, poor-performing enterprises exhibited evidence of over reliance on both capital and physical assets. Third, firms that relied on both types of resources tended to downplay creative performance. Fourth, reliance on capital/physical resources and adoption of “creative discipline/innovations” tend to be mutually exclusive. In fact, some evidence suggests that firms face more acute problem caused by the law of diminishing returns in troubled times. The Vietnamese corporate sector’s addiction to resources may contribute to economic deterioration, through a downward spiral of lower efficiency leading to consumption of more resources. The “innovation factor” has not been tapped as a source of economic growth. The absence of innovations and creativity has made the notion of “resource curse” become identical to “destructive creation” implemented by ex-ante resource-rich firms, and worsened the problem of resource misallocation in transition turmoil

Integration of MATLAB Simulink(Registered Trademark) Models with the Vertical Motion Simulator

This paper describes the integration of MATLAB Simulink(Registered TradeMark) models into the Vertical Motion Simulator (VMS) at NASA Ames Research Center. The VMS is a high-fidelity, large motion flight simulator that is capable of simulating a variety of aerospace vehicles. Integrating MATLAB Simulink models into the VMS needed to retain the development flexibility of the MATLAB environment and allow rapid deployment of model changes. The process developed at the VMS was used successfully in a number of recent simulation experiments. This accomplishment demonstrated that the model integrity was preserved, while working within the hard real-time run environment of the VMS architecture, and maintaining the unique flexibility of the VMS to meet diverse research requirements

Anatomy of the 3D Innovation Production with the Cobb-Douglas Specification

This paper focuses on verifying the relevance of two theoretical propositions and related empirical investigation about the relationship between creativity and entrepreneurship. It draws upon a creativity process that considers three “dimensions” or “disciplines” (3D) critical for creative organizations—within discipline expertise, out of discipline knowledge, and a disciplined creative process. The paper first explores the Cobb-Douglas production function as a relevant tool for modeling the 3D creative process. The next part discusses the 3D process as a production function, which is modeled following the well-known Cobb-Douglas specification. Last, the paper offers implications for future research on disciplined creativity/innovation as a method of improving organizations’ creative performance. The modeling shows that labor and investment can readily enter into the 3D creativity process as inputs. These two inputs are meaningful in explaining where innovation outputs come from and how they can be measured, with a reasonable theoretical decomposition. It is not true that the more capital investments in the creativity process, the better the level of innovation production, but firm’s human resource management and expenditures should pay attention to optimal levels of capital and labor stocks, in a combination that helps reach highest possible innovation output

The Mediating Effect Of Perceived Quality on The Customer Loyalty in Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in The Mobile Phone Sector in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC)- Vietnam

This paper is to analyze the relationship of branding on perceived quality of the service enterprises towards customer loyalty in marketing managementrsquos perspective in Vietnam particular in the retail market in a time of intense competition for the products or service supplied by the SMEs in the mobile sector. In the business organization, the primary target of enterprises is to convince customers to buy products or services in the long-term relationship. Nowadays, the most important issue for the business organization is to create an advantage of sustainable competition. In addition, brand is a vital asset of any business organization because it leads to the customerrsquos loyalty. Hence, the customer loyalty is the most important factor to enhance the competitive advantage in any enterprises. Besides, perceived quality of customers on their products or services when they purchase remains one of the most significant values in marketing management. There are two reasons why the perceived quality is important for the mediating role between in customers and branding firstly, the perceived quality determines the success or failure of business secondly, it influences the rate of acceptance of the products or service for the business organization. Therefore, this paper aimed to explore the mediating effect on customersrsquo perceived quality towards their loyalty the branding in the SMEs in the mobile sector. In the first stage, the study has applied the expertrsquos opinion to analyze the factors effect on the customerrsquos loyalty. In the second one, the researcher applied the qualitative method to interview around 10 buyers who regularly purchase in The Gioi Di Dongrsquos Shops and Vien Thong Arsquos Shops in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) with the convenient method to observe the process of service to get the close ideas of service to build the questions for the observed variables in the SMEs in mobile phone sector as well as enhance customersrsquo loyalty. In general, the author composed 5 factors including 34 observed variables from total of 50 observed variables chosen to build the questionnaire scale such as (1) Brand trust, (2) Service Organization, (3) Brand Awareness, (4) Perceived Quality, and (5) Customerrsquos Loyalty to study in Vietnamese SMEs in mobile phone sector in HCMC, Vietnam.nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbspnbs

Innovation as Determining Factor of Post-M&A Performance: The Case of Vietnam

This research aims to communicate new results of empirical investigations to learn about the relationship between determination of controlling an acquired firm’s capital, assets and brand versus its capability of innovation and ex post performance of Vietnam’s M&A industry in the 2005-2012 period. The analysis employs a categorical data sample, consisting of 212 M&A cases, and performs a number of logistic regressions with significant results being reported on relationships between pre-M&A strategic pursuit of innovation (versus capital/physical assets) of the acquired and post-M&A performance. In addition, pre-M&A capital expenditures tend to cause poor post-M&A performance. As a general conclusion, this study shows that creative performance can be a factor to pursue in M&A transactions, which suggests the need to emphasize capable and willing human capital. However, in a wave of M&A where there is an overwhelming emphasis on assets and brands, the innovation factor’s impact is limited