Search results

The purpose of this paper is to lay the necessary conceptual and empirical groundwork that advances knowledge about paternalistic leadership (PL). PL is reinterpreted as a leadership style consisting of authoritative, moral and benevolent leadership. The mediating role of trust is examined, and a formal, unified construct model of PL is suggested through evidence of construct validity.

An on-site survey was used to collect data from 312 full-time employees in nine organizations in China. Factor analysis, reliability and validity test, and an analysis of bivariate correlations were conducted.

The new construct of PL achieved a positive alignment and coherence among the three dimensions. Subordinates’ trust was found to be critical for paternalistic leaders to be perceived as effective leaders.

Leadership and its effectiveness were examined only at the dyadic level. The levels of the supervisors and their effectiveness differ because some were from middle management, whereas others were from first line managers.

Trust is an important explanatory mechanism for the relationship between PL and employee performance, especially in China. It is a key factor that creates loyalty and builds a good relationship between leaders and subordinates.

Trust signals a strong sense of sharing within the relationship. It induces positive emotional feelings in their leader by the subordinates and, therefore, taps into positive evaluations about the effectiveness of their leader.

This study developed the theoretical underpinnings and provided measurement instruments for PL. It offered a formal, unified construct model of PL.

This study examines employee emotional exhaustion and turnover intention as the consequences of problematic customer behaviors and tests the role of perceived organizational justice and job satisfaction in mitigating these consequences.

A four-hypothesis model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) based on a two-phase survey of 369 frontline services employees in Vietnam with a three-month time lag.

The study shows that abusive and unreasonably demanding customer behaviors have positive effects on emotional exhaustion, which, in turn, reduces job satisfaction and, subsequently, turnover intention. It also reveals that organizational justice mechanisms attenuate the positive association between emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. Job satisfaction indirectly mitigated the turnover intention of emotionally exhausted employees who had to deal with problematic customer behaviors, especially in the service sector in Vietnam, an emerging market.

Building upon the social exchange theory (SET) and the conservation of resources theory (COR), this study extended the research on organizational justice with respect to emotional exhaustion in the customer service sector that received less attention previously. Rather than merely focusing on the interpersonal factors (e.g. respect and sensitivity) as organizational support does, organizational justice encompasses employees' perception of fairness of outcome and the whole process in an organization to reach decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how individual differences predict personal business ethics of business students with a particular focus on how these factors moderate the relationship between ethical organizational interventions and personal business ethics perception.

Totally, 488 participants completed Clark’s Personal Business Ethics Scores (PBES) survey. ANOVA analyses were then performed.

Significant correlations were observed between personal business ethics and diversity professional development, age, and education. The authors found significant difference on ethical behavior and diversity professional development. Professional development focusing on diversity was positively related to reports of ethical behavior for women but no significant relationship was observed for men. Furthermore, professional development focusing on ethics was positively related to reports of ethical behavior for younger employees but no significant relationship was observed for older employees.

Researchers and scholars in cross-cultural management and business ethics fields can benefit from this study as it provides more empirical results in understanding the impact of demographic, educational, and cultural factors on the ethical maturity of business students in different countries.

Leaders, managers and practitioners, can benefit from this study as it provides managerial implications in managing this workforce in the most effective and efficient manner. The results from this research suggest that ethics education and diversity training play the critical role in creating an ethical climate on workplace.

This study fills the gap within the literature and offers a unique analysis of the personal business ethics of Russian business students. Determining the types of business ethics education and training that are the most effective in Russia would be beneficial to researchers and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how perceived organisational support (POS) enhances the well-being of migrant workers in Taiwan by strengthening their resilience. In addition, the moderating role of ethical leadership in this association was investigated based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory.

The data were gathered from migrant workers from Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines with structured questionnaires during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 420 samples were analysed by testing the mediation and moderation model.

The results showed a significant effect of POS on migrant workers' well-being in Taiwan through the mediating role of resilience. Moreover, ethical leadership moderated the effect of POS on employee resilience and work well-being.

The sample was restricted to Southeast Asian migrant workers who were employed in industrial sectors in Taiwan. The study considered several demographic variables, including language proficiency, nationality and marital status, which could result in cultural and language biases. A cross-sectional design and self-reported data were utilised, which could potentially create common method variance biases and inflated correlations across the research variables.

The present study may be helpful to organisational leaders in the process of designing approaches for promoting a people-oriented and harmonious workplace. Employee well-being can be strengthened through employee resilience (individual factors), as well as POS and ethical leadership (organisational factors).

This study supports the use of COR theory in confirming POS as a resource that strengthens employees' resilience capabilities and work well-being. Employee resilience serves as a mediator of the relationship between POS and employee well-being. Ethical leadership serves as a moderator in strengthening the relationships between POS and employee resilience, as well as between POS and work well-being of migrant workers.

The purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes toward business ethics of Vietnamese business students based on gender and the experience of having taken a business ethics course.

A quantitative self-administered survey was conducted with a convenience sample of Vietnamese business students at a banking university in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. This study used the 30-item Attitudes Toward Business Ethics Questionnaire (ATBEQ) constructed by Neumann and Reichel (1987) based on the work of Stevens (1979). The Vietnamese version questionnaire was distributed, and 282 surveys were used for analysis. An item-by-item analysis was conducted based on gender and the experience of having taken a business ethics course.

Significant differences were found on seven items based on gender and four items based on the experience of having taken a business ethics course. However, respondents appeared to have similar attitudes on the majority of the items.

Perhaps the greatest limitation of this study is the relatively uneven distribution of the respondents in the sample. The sample is skewed slightly toward women who are a bit older, fourth year or post-graduate and those who have not taken a business ethics course. In addition convenience sampling technique reduced its generalizability. This study is important because it supports the idea of ethics education to improve ethical decision-making of future business leaders and that education has an effect in Vietnam.

As business students are the main subjects of this research, it can be useful for those involved in development of management and business education in Vietnam to have an overview on how gender impacts business students’ ethics perception. For the executives of multinational corporations, this study provides important information and adds support to a decision to do business in Vietnam.

Although there may be a perception of a less than ethical climate in Vietnam based on its Corruption Perception Index scores, it appears that Vietnamese business students in general express an ethical viewpoint. This study emphasizes the importance of ethics education that is culture-specific to build a strong ethical business environment that can help Vietnam prevent bribery and corruption and achieve sustainable growth and prosperity.

This study contributes to the attitudes toward business ethics research and sheds light on the impact of gender and education (business ethics course) on Vietnamese business students’ ethical attitudes. There has been little research on business ethics in Vietnam. Academicians, managers, practitioners, policymakers, government leaders and the like can benefit from the findings of this paper.

This paper aims to present a new discrete method to predict average excess pore pressure and degree of consolidation for soft ground using prefabricated vertical drains under time-dependent surcharge and/or vacuum loading and multi-soil layers.

The drain is discretized into a number of mesh points at which the average excess pore pressure is estimated. The conventional Laplace technique is used to solve the analytical equations. The proposed method is validated with previous findings reported in the literature. Moreover, field measurements are used to verify the accuracy of the proposed method with a case history of ground improvement by prefabricated vertical drains using the vacuum consolidation technique.

In comparison to past studies, this new discrete method is simpler to be implemented in a spreadsheet calculation to achieve a rational solution with less computational time for similar consolidation problems. Moreover, the current approach also incorporates a solution for multi-soil layers, which can hardly be derived by analytical solutions.

According to authors’ knowledge, this is the first-time discrete method by Laplace transform technique is applied for the vertical drain.

This study aims to explore how the inhibitor-loaded nanocontainers can be used in the epoxy coating for protection of steel against corrosion. A self-healing anticorrosive coating can be easily fabricated by embedding the inhibitor-loaded nanocontainers into the epoxy coating matrices. For this purpose, first, cerium (a catholic corrosion inhibitor) is encapsulated into silica nanoparticles (SiO₂@Ce). Thereafter, an epoxy nanocomposite coating has been prepared on steel substrate using these SiO₂@Ce nanoparticles as nanofillers.

To examine the effect of SiO₂@Ce nanocontainers on mechanical properties of epoxy coating, the abrasion resistance, impact resistance and adhesion strength of coating have been evaluated. To reveal the effect of SiO₂@Ce nanocontainer on corrosion behavior of epoxy-coated steel, the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) has been conducted in NaCl solution.

Transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy/Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analyses indicate that Ce³⁺ cations have been successfully loaded into the surface of silica nanoparticles (at the content of approximately 2 Wt.%). Mechanical tests of epoxy nanocomposite coatings indicate that the nanocomposite coatings with nanoparticles content of 2.5 Wt.% provide the highest values of abrasion resistance, impact resistance and adhesion strength. EIS results show that the presence of SiO₂@Ce³⁺ nanocontainers increases both coating resistance and polarization resistance. Along with the improvement the coating barrier performance, Ce inhibitor plays an important role in improving the anticorrosive performance at the steel–electrolyte interface.

The application of self-healing epoxy/SiO₂@Ce nanocomposite coatings for the protection of carbon steel is very promising.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to explain access to formal and informal credit in agriculture of Vietnam; and to compare the effectiveness between regular econometrics and machine learning techniques.

The multinomial logit (MNL) regression model and the random forest (RF) technique are employed for comparison purposes. To avoid heteroskedasticity, the robust covariance matrix is computed to estimate the sandwich estimator which in turn provides an asymptotic covariance matrix for biased estimators. Additionally, multicollinearity is tested among independent variables with variance inflation factors less than 3. Adequacy approach and sensitivity analysis are used to determine relevant levels of predictors. For models comparison, statistical evaluation metrics including Cohen’s κ, mean absolute error, root mean squared error and relative absolute error are employed.

The discrepancy between sensitivity analysis and adequacy approach revealed that MNL is more compatible for explaining determinants of credit participation. Due to insignificant differences in the evaluation metrics between models, the winner of choice is undetermined. Among other determinants, collateral, farmsize, income, procedure, literacy and all risk variables stand out to be critical factors when deciding borrowing schemes. While financially literate farmers tend to acquire loans from both sources, borrowing decisions against different risk sources depend on risk type and famers’ own desire to borrow.

Results of the MNL model are more consistent with literatures, which reinforce the role of collateral in the local credit scheme. Besides, financial literacy and farmers’ perception on different risk sources also influence how farmers’ borrowing strategies vary among sources.

Managing complex construction projects is a challenging task because it involves multiple factors and decision-making processes. A systematic evaluation of these complex factors is imperative for achieving project success. As most of these factors are qualitative or intangible in nature, decision makers often rely on subjective judgements when comparing and evaluating them. The hybrid techniques that integrate fuzzy set theory and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) are able to deal with such problems. This chapter discusses various hybrid techniques of the fuzzy AHP and presents an application of these techniques to the evaluation of transportation project complexity, which is essential for prioritising resource allocation and assessing project performance. Project complexity can be quantified and visualised effectively with the application of the fuzzy AHP. This chapter enhances the understanding of construction project complexity and fuzzy hybrid computing in construction engineering and management. Future research should address the calibration of fuzzy membership functions in pairwise comparisons for each individual decision maker and develop computational tools for solving optimisation problems in the constrained fuzzy AHP. In the area of construction project complexity, future research should investigate how scarce resources are allocated to better manage complex projects and how appropriate resource allocation improves their performance.

Building on my earlier work (Dang, 2007, 2008), this chapter provides an updated review of the private tutoring phenomenon in Vietnam including the reasons, scale, intensity, form, cost, and legality of these classes. In particular, this chapter offers a comparative analysis of the trends in private tutoring between 1998 and 2006 using all available data.

This chapter analyzes data from different sources, including (i) the 2006 Vietnam Household Living Standards Measurement Survey (VHLSS), (ii) the 1997–1998 Vietnam Living Standards Measurement Survey (VLSS), (iii) the 2008 Vietnam Household Testing Survey (VHTS), and (iv) local press in Vietnam. Quantitative methods are used.

Several (micro-)correlates are examined that are found to be strongly correlated with student attendance at tutoring, including household income, household heads’ education and residence areas, student current grade level, ethnicity, and household sizes. In particular, I focus on the last three variables that received little attention in the previous literature on the determinants of tutoring.

This chapter provides an updated and systematic review of the private tutoring phenomenon in Vietnam. Findings are highly relevant to the ongoing debates on private tutoring among all stakeholders in Vietnam, as well as policymakers/researchers in other countries. Suggestions are proposed on current gaps in the literature for future research.