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The growing awareness of climate risks associated with food safety issues has drawn the attention of stakeholders urging the food industry to carry out a sustainable food safety management system (FSMS). This study aims to investigate whether the critical success factors (CSFs) of sustainable FSMS can contribute to achieving climate neutrality, and how the adoption of FSMS 4.0 supported by the Industry Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0) technologies moderates the impact of the CSFs on achieving climate neutrality.

Survey data from 255 food production firms in China and Vietnam were utilised for the empirical analysis. The research hypotheses were examined using structural equations modelling (SEM) with route analysis and bootstrapping techniques.

The results show that top management support, human resource management, infrastructure and integration appear as the significant CSFs that directly impact food production firms in achieving climate neutrality. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the adoption of FSMS 4.0 integrated with the three components (ecosystems, quality standards and robustness) significantly moderates the impact of the CSFs on achieving climate neutrality with lower inputs in human resources, infrastructure investment, integration and external assistance, and higher inputs in strengthening food safety administration.

This study provides empirical findings that fill the research gap in understanding the relationship between climate neutrality and the CSFs of sustainable FSMS while considering the moderating effects of the FSMS 4.0 components. The results provide theoretical and practical insights into how the food production sector can utilise IR 4.0 to attain sustainable FSMS for achieving climate neutrality.

Digital transformation in supply chains (SCs) has emerged as one of the most effective ways to minimize SC disruption risks. Given the unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global SCs, this study aims to identify and provide empirical evidence about the drivers of digital SC transformation, considering the interactivity between environmental dynamism, technology, and organizational capabilities during the pandemic era.

Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), this study examines 923 firms in Vietnam to ascertain the drivers of digital SC transformation between small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises, based on the technology–organization–environment (TOE) as an overarching framework.

This study finds that greater digital SC transformation adoption could be achieved under the interactivity between the TOE components of firms' technological competencies, learning capabilities, and disruptions in socioeconomic environments due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, a multigroup analysis shows that the drivers of digital SC transformation differ between SMEs and large enterprises. SMEs were found to be more motivated by the COVID-19 disruption risk when adopting digital SC models.

This study represents an original and novel contribution from Vietnam as an emerging market to the literature on the impact of COVID-19 on the global value chain. Apart from the unique dataset at the firm level, the analysis of interactions between external and internal drivers of digital SC transformation could provide crucial managerial implications for SMEs to survive major disruptions, such as those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper aims to explore how research and development (R&D) scientists and engineers can contribute to sustainability initiatives in their organisations.

This paper uses a critical case study methodology, focussed on a large Vietnamese company in which business leaders sought to engage R&D scientists and engineers in sustainability initiatives focussed on eco-innovation and eco-efficiency. Bourdieu’s theoretical lens of habitus, capitals and field facilitates a relational analysis of the findings.

While R&D scientists and engineers adapted well to early changes aligned with eco-innovation, they struggled to engage with sustainability initiatives in the case firm. This study explains adaptions and constraints as scientists and engineers’ professional habitus and capitals, and their broader organisational field.

This paper provides insight into how organisations might integrate professional acculturation and appropriate facilitators to promote the additional contribution of scientists and engineers to sustainability initiatives in the context of an organisation.

Although eco-innovation and eco-efficiency are only potential dimensions of comprehensive organisational sustainability reform, this research provides insight into how engaging scientists and engineers with a broader social sustainability agenda might be advanced.

The study addresses calls for empirical insights into ways that scientists and engineers can commit to organisational sustainability practices based on the configurations of habitus, capital and organisational field.

Expanding the market share of safe food through a modern retail system has faced a lot of difficulties in Vietnam. Thus, a further understanding of consumer behaviour and loyalty towards such food is essential for food retailers. This study aims at exploring segments of consumer loyalty and its influential factors towards safe food brands in the country.

Based on a sample of 250 consumers buying safe food in Hanoi city in February 2019, two-step cluster and multinomial logistic regression analyses were applied.

The results show that four segments of brand loyalty were formed from the interaction between attitudinal and behavioural loyalty as the framework of Dick and Basu (1994), namely, true loyalty, spurious loyalty, latent loyalty and disloyalty. Notably, over 60% of the consumers were in latent loyalty and spurious loyalty, indicating variety-seeking behaviour, multi-brand loyalty or low recognition of the brand. Consumer satisfaction was the most vital motivating consumers to higher loyalty levels. Additionally, brand trust and brand familiarity played significant roles in developing true brand loyalty. An attractive selling store and friendly staff were also important in enhancing brand loyalty.

This study is one of the first to elicit consumer loyalty and identify factors driving the loyalty towards brands of safe food in a developing country like Vietnam.

This study aims to analyse the impact of the degree of internationalisation (DOI) on firm performance (FP), with the moderating role of organisational slack resources, namely, absorbed slack human resources, absorbed financial slack resources and unabsorbed slack resources, in the context of Asian emerging markets.

Data includes 45 companies and 225 observations in 2014–2018. The authors adopted the generalised least squares method to test their hypotheses.

DOI negatively influences FP, indicating that the link between DOI and FP is not U-shaped but relatively linear. Absorbed human resources and absorbed slack financial resources significantly enhance FP, absorbing resources associated with DOI and FP. Unabsorbed slack resources play a minor role in mitigating the deleterious impact of DOIs on FP.

Firms in an emerging market should begin exploring and expanding into overseas markets with characteristics similar to the domestic market. The firm should optimise the benefits of slack resources by appropriately allocating resources to strategic operations.

This study reveals the beneficial effect of organisational slack resources on the DOI-FP relationship via the lens of the resource-based view.

This paper aims to examine the mediating role of job satisfaction in the relationship between psychological empowerment and employee engagement. There is also an investigation of the moderating effect of religiosity on psychological empowerment and job satisfaction as well as job satisfaction and employee engagement.

Data were obtained from 265 employees working in the service industry in Nigeria. The hypotheses were tested and analysed using structural equation modelling and bootstrapping procedure.

The results show that the direct relationship between psychological empowerment and employee engagement was partially mediated by job satisfaction. Intrinsic religiosity (IR) was found to have a moderating effect on job satisfaction and employee engagement. IR and extrinsic religiosity (ER) does not moderate the impact of psychological empowerment on job satisfaction and employee engagement. ER was found to have a negative insignificant moderating effect on job satisfaction and employee engagement.

A cross-sectional study reveals the relationship between variables at one point in a time. As such this study may not precisely predict the dominant pattern of the association over time. Future research can use longitudinal study to establish a dominant pattern of relationships.

This study informs human resource practitioners and scholars by demonstrating that religiosity and job satisfaction are important factors that should be considered in managing and keeping employees engaged.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first atte`mpts to enrich the literature in the fields of psychological empowerment and employee engagement by highlighting organisational mechanisms that amplify the relationship.

The qualitative (focus group) portion of this study aims to examine the perceptions and opinions of corporate and nongovernmental organization (NGO) executives in Vietnam about corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, issues and priorities in Vietnam, the role of various external stakeholders in supporting CSR practices and how corporates and NGOs can work together to support each other’s CSR agendas. The quantitative (survey) portion of this study aims to examine how Vietnamese companies across different sectors prioritize CSR issues and goals, budget for CSR, report on CSR and centrally (or decentrally) manage CSR programs.

This is a qualitative and quantitative research study of executives in NGO, multinational and domestic-only firms operating in Vietnam. Qualitative (focus group) data were collected from 20 participants in three focus groups. Quantitative data were collected through an online survey of respondents from 186 companies throughout Vietnam.

The focus group findings support the research literature that CSR agenda and priorities amongst Vietnamese domestic companies are strongly influenced by long-standing norms, values and religious beliefs embedded in the Vietnamese culture that support their role in charitable giving and improving the welfare and well-being of Vietnamese citizens. The findings also indicate that CSR and sustainability programs are more fully funded and developed by multinational subsidiaries in Vietnam who have more capital and human resources to support their initiatives. The survey findings indicate that enhanced reputation, attracting new customers, securing more sustainable supply chains, developing innovative or new products/services and improving risk management are the top five business goals amongst the 186 companies surveyed.

While the qualitative research uncovered important trends and issues in CSR amongst NGO and corporate participants, the focus was limited to the defined geographic areas of two main urban hubs.

Blockchain-based traceability technology (BTT) is an emerging digital technology that claims to have the potential to fulfil the demand for traceability to safeguard fruit safety. Drawing on the technological, organisational and environmental (TOE) framework, this study aims to investigate the perceived facilitators and barriers that influence the behavioural intentions of multiple stakeholders in the Vietnamese fruit supply chain (i.e., farmers, trading enterprises and consumers) to adopt BTT.

This study utilised a qualitative approach of semi-structured in-depth interviews with 60 stakeholders in the Vietnamese fruit supply chain to achieve the research objectives. NVivo 12 was employed to analyse the collected data using content and thematic analysis.

The findings identify several perceived facilitators that motivate BTT adoption. These include trust, transparency, business performance, the formation of alliances, consumer awareness of food safety and ethical agricultural practices, fruit branding and the pivotal role of farmers' cooperatives. Meanwhile, the perceived barriers to BTT adoption include a lack of digital literacy amongst the stakeholders, poor organisational culture, the high cost of traceability-enabled products and data privacy and security governance.

This study suggests that technology awareness and perceived facilitators and barriers should be incorporated into the design and deployment of blockchain-based traceability technology in the agri-food supply chain in developing countries.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first qualitative paper that attempts to fill the research gap of understanding the perceived facilitators and barriers that influence the intentions of multiple stakeholders in the fruit supply chain to adopt BTT in the context of a developing economy.

Research on the determinants of consumer behavior toward food with safety certifications in Vietnam remains little. The primary objective of this study is to identify the factors affecting Vietnamese consumer intention to purchase safely certified vegetables (safe vegetables) based on an extended theory of planned behavior (TPB).

Using a sample of 361 urban consumers in Hanoi city based on a stratified sampling technique, we applied structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the model.

The results revealed that the extended TPB succeeded to predict 62% of the variance of intention to purchase safe vegetables. Attitude played the most important role in consumer intention. Notably, the attitude of consumers was the most largely influenced by subjective norms (social effects). Also, subjective norms had a direct effect on intention. Furthermore, consumer trust motivated a favorable attitude to increase purchase intention. The effects of past behavior on intention were verified as direct and indirect through subjective norm and trust combined with attitude. Few socio-demographic variables (e.g. age and education) were found to affect intention indirectly through attitude and subjective norm.

Further research on the relationship between intention and the actual purchase of safe food is needed.

This extends the application of the TPB to predict consumer intention to purchase safely certified food in a developing country like Vietnam by examining both direct and indirect effects of socio-demographic variables, trust and past behavior on intention.

The paper aims to assess the impact of weather-induced shocks on household food consumption in the rural Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD) through the case of Long An province and evaluate the effectiveness of widely used coping strategies in mitigating weather-related shock impacts.

The system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method is applied to explore information on shock incidence, recovery, and time occurrences. The paper uses a sample of 272 repeated farming households from 5-wave survey data from 2008 to 2016, resulting in 1,360 observations.

The paper confirms the robust negative effect of a natural shock on food consumption. Additionally, using savings proves to be the most potent measure to smooth food consumption. Other favorable coping strategies are “getting assistance from relatives, friends” or “getting assistance from the Government, and non-government organizations (NGOs).” The mitigating effects are also traced in the current analysis.

Using caution when generalizing the results from Long An to the whole VMD is reasonable. The rather limited observations of coping strategies do not allow the authors to analyze any specific strategy.

The proposed approach employs the GMM technique and controls for endogenous coping strategies and thus provides accurate estimates of the effects of weather-related shocks and the mitigation effectiveness in the rural VMD.