We investigate the impacts of state shareholding, corporate culture and employee commitment on corporate performance of privatized firms in the Vietnamese context. Using data collected from a structured questionnaire as well as companies annual reports, we show that only organizational integration significantly affects the performance of privatized firms. Furthermore, employee and customer satisfactions are among the most important drivers of corporate performance. Finally, there is evidence to suggest that privatized firms with less state ownership perform better than those with more state ownership.

The Project on Restructuring the Credit Institution System in the first period from 2011 to 2015 and the second period from 2016 to 2020 emphasizes the important role of reducing the relying on traditional activities and increase the share of income from non-credit services. The level of non-interest income, per contra, varies from bank to bank. The paper, therefore, was conducted to examine the relationship between market power and income diversity by using a sample of 26 commercial banks during 2007 to 2017. The market power was proxied by both conventional and adjusted Lerner index; the quotient of non-interest income to total operating income represents the income diversity; and ownership structure, treated as a dummy variable, plays a role as moderator this relationship. Additionally, bank characteristics and country characteristics were considered to be control and dummy variables in the research model. Based on panel data analysis with GMM estimator, the results point out that the bank with greater market power can generate more non-interest income. This relationship, moreover, is impacted by ownership structure, which explains the activities managers and owners do in a bank. For more specific, this paper also highlights the positive impact of state ownership on the association between bank market power and its income diversity. The findings are expected to add the gap in the existing literature, lacking of investigation the impact of market power on bank income diversity in Vietnamese banking sector and give some useful implications for investors, bank managers as well as policy makers to catch up the market fluctuations.

This paper examines empirically the net impact of residual state ownership on privatized firm efficiency in the transitional context of Vietnam. Vietnamese privatization has its own characteristics. Instead of mass and full privatization, Vietnam has chosen a partial and gradual path. Thus, it is important to assess the net impact of residual state ownership on privatized firms during the post-privatization period. This study employs stochastic frontier analysis to investigate the association between residual state ownership and the efficiency of privatized firms, using a sample of all privatized firms that are listed on the Vietnamese stock exchanges over the period from 2007 to 2017. Also, two-stage least squares regression is incorporated into the model to deal with potential endogeneity issues. Our study provides evidence that state ownership should not be considered as a pure source of agency problems. Indeed, the net impact of residual state ownership on privatized firm efficiency is non-monotonic, and the relationship between residual state ownership and privatized firm efficiency is under an inverted U-shape. A moderate level (less than 50%) of residual state ownership might be beneficial to privatized firm efficiency whereas too much state ownership is detrimental to the efficiency of privatized firms.

Privatization has played an important role in national economic reform in Vietnam. However, unlike other transitional countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Vietnam has chosen a partial and gradual privatization where the government still holds significant ownership in most privatized firms. Whether partial privatization can enhance privatized firms’ performance or full privatization should have been implemented is a critical question that needs to be answered. This paper utilizes semiparametric regressions to study the relationship between residual state ownership and firm performance. The results indicate an inverted U relationship between state ownership and firm performance. We show that the performance of privatized firms improves with an increase in the level of state ownership until around 40%, after which the effect of state ownership on firm performance tends to decline. This demonstrates that in a transitional context, relinquishing governmental control via privatization can significantly benefit privatized firm performance. However, further reduction of state ownership may decrease the performance of privatized firms. Overall, the study contributes significantly to the growing body of evidence on the nonlinear effects of state ownership. This suggests that in the transitional context of Vietnam, due to weak corporate governance and limited protection of minority shareholders, there could be a temporary optimal position where state and private investors hold balanced ownership to simultaneously supervise operations and promote the performance of privatized firms.

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