Private firms in transition economies are operating in an extremely uncertain environment, with underdeveloped market institutions, poorly defined property rights, and absence of reliable business data. This raises a very basic question of how owners of these firms persuade bankers to make much needed loans. This study employs an institutional perspective and argues that firms' legitimacy positively influences their accessibility to bank financing. Specifically, this study develops a model that links networking, professional management practices, and growth stage with bank financing and tests that model using a sample of Vietnamese private firms. The results support the hypotheses that growth stage and networking greatly influence firms' accessibility to bank financing, and that the impact of networking on financing is contingent on the growth stage.

Purpose – 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. Design/methodology/approach – 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. Findings – 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. Research limitations/implications – Estimates of costs and benefits can be improved with larger samples of respondents and data sources that can help validate the interviews. Practical implications – There is a need to improve financial literacy among migrants to help them better assess their investment in migration. Social implications – This paper highlights the inequity in risk allocation in the context of migration. Originality/value – To the knowledge, there is no research of the financial costs and benefits of migration as domestic workers, especially from Vietnam to Taiwan.

This paper portrays an empirically grounded theory research on the impact of organizational culture on technological innovation adoption in 8 private hospitals in Vietnam. It identifies the dimensions of organizational culture underlying technological innovation adoption, namely cause vision, organizational structure compound, support mechanisms, and innovation stimulators, as well as highlights the fashion in which these dimensions operate will either activate or inhibit technological innovation.

This article is an attempt to open the lid a little of the “black box of migration” i.e. brokers. Analysing contracts between brokers and labour migrants, we identify four different forms of exploitation of migrants by brokers: expropriation of skill premium, risk shifting, over‐charging, and non‐refund of deposits. Opportunistic behaviour by brokers, as evidenced by such exploitation, is seen as a market failure that is explained by human attributes and transactional characteristics. Given the rigidities in the human attributes of the contracting parties and the nature of migration as a risky multi‐period transaction, proposals are made for non‐market interventions, which can lead to more equitable contracting.

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