Investigating the factors that affect business students' attitudes towards sustainable business practices - The case of Vietnamese students
Abstract
This research‟s purpose is to enquire into the attitudes of business students toward sustainable business practices. The research‟s findings come from the analysis of 300 student‟s self-reported answers based on the researcher‟s designed questionnaire. Moreover, the researcher also conducted the interviews with 5 students who are the leaders of the famous departments in some universities in Ho Chi Minh city. At first, four factors were considered to be the antecedents of business students‟ attitudes toward sustainable business practices: personal values, individualism-collectivism, leadership styles. The results, which are conducted by using hierarchical regression analysis, implied that there is a positive relationship between the individualism, collectivism, transactional leadership and sustainable business practices. The gender‟s difference is not significant. The research is based on Eddy S. Ng and Ronald J. Burke‟s article published in Journal of Business Ethics in Spring, 2010. The researcher duplicates the article to find whether there are any differences in the results between Vietnam and western United States and suggests some suitable recommendations.
Keyword: sustainable business practice, cultural orientation, collectivism, individualism, transformational leadership, transactional leadership, human values, personal values, moral values, social values, competent values.