FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER RELATING ISSUES
5. Conclusion and research implication
From previous studies on usage IS, applying the successful IS model of DeLone &
McLean and UTAUT model, the author has built a relationship model between quality of Top management support, system quality, facilitating sondition, usage of information system and user satisfaction. The results show that the measurement scales of research concepts are
highly reliable. The accepted hypotheses include hypotheses H2 and H4, whereby the system quality has an impact on usage of information system and usage of information system affects the user satisfaction.
5.2. Research Implication
With the research results shows that the need to improve the quality of IS in enterprises. IS is now a system with the support of IT, mainly in the application environment of accounting software and ERP, so improving the quality of IS should focus on:
- Continue to improve processes and procedures in the process of collecting, processing, storing data and providing information to different users, creating ease of access and use the system. These procedures should be specific in writing and stored in the system with system documentation tools such as data flow diagrams and flowcharts for each of the different processing processes but have full approval.
- Increased IS connectivity in the enterprise through the help of processing software.
Orientation and apply technology effectively in accounting and management, creating convenience and ease in using the system.
- Control the ERP software evaluation and selection process in IS, regularly update new software versions and suit business needs, to ensure flexibility, integration, and customization requirements and high control over software.
- Further improve the quality of data of enterprises and business operations of enterprises, create a diverse and scaled data warehouse to serve the needs of data mining and analysis to support more useful information for administrators.
- Improve the quality of IT infrastructure, regularly monitor and manage computer systems, peripheral devices, and communications to promptly detect problems and risks and take appropriate corrective measures. Strengthening network security solutions, especially in the case of information transfer on computer networks. When the IS on the computer platform has stable operation and effective management, the quality of IS will be enhanced.
- Improving the quality of IS will contribute to improving the quality of accounting information, currently most businesses have applied IT in accounting, although the level of IT application in accounting is not the same, but basically businesses are applying accounting software and ERP system in accounting work and enterprise management. The level of IT application will affect the way of collecting, processing data and providing accounting information, thus affecting risks as well as the management and control of IS. The awareness and assessment of the possibility of errors and frauds for IS in the computer environment, thereby having important control procedures, will contribute to improving the quality of IS. In IS control, it is necessary to focus on general control and application control, general control including control activities related to the entire processing system and affecting all processing application systems in business. Application control includes the implementation policies and procedures that affect a specific application system and performance in IS. These two controls
are established and coordinated will help ensure the entire IS operates effectively and efficiently.
5.3. Limitations and future research
Although the initial purpose of evaluating the impact of factors including top management support, system quality, facilitating conditions on the usage of IS and the impact of usage of IS to the user satisfaction has been achieved, this study also has some of the limitations.
First, the survey is mainly in Ho Chi Minh City and a neighboring province, so the generality of the study is not high and may be certain limited. In addition, the study used convenient sampling by sending questionnaires directly or via email to survey subjects.
Therefore, further studies should conduct additional surveys in different regions of the country and have a classification of survey subjects.
Second, according to the UTAUT model, there may be many external factors influencing the usage of IS và user satisfaction. Further studies need to develop additional factors influencing the usage of IS such as performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence in the operation of the IS.
Third, it is possible to learn and apply more relevant background theories in IS to build research models and use some more moderating, mediating variables in relationships between research concepts, the usage of IS and user satisfaction.
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AUTONOMY IN PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION:
A CASE STUDY OF VIETNAM
Nguyen Thi Thuy - Mai Ngoc Anh National Economics University
Abstract
This study focuses on assessing the context of autonomy in Vietnamese universities (the current situation and the issues) and suggesting the recommendations. Although the number of universities in Vietnam is large (237 ones in 2019), the number of high-ranking universities is very limited. In addition, in the context of international integration, these university should be in the requirement of autonomy, especially in term of finance. The desk research, interviews and surveys were applied to initially assess four issues: organizational autonomy, financial autonomy, human-resources autonomy and academic autonomy. The research results show that financial autonomy is an urgent requirement at present because it will affect other autonomy aspects. Finally, some policy implications are proposed to increase current university autonomy.
Keywords: Academic autonomy, financial autonomy, human-resources, organizational autonomy, university autonomy.
1. Introduction
Education is one of the conditions to ensure the realization of Vietnam's equitable goals, a premise for the fast and sustainable socio-economic development, and a development opportunity for each individual in society (Trinh, 2014). When higher education grows in size and diversity in types and the role of higher education becomes more and more important in promoting socio-economic development, investment in higher education through policy programs plays more necessary role. However, schools should promote their own autonomy because it helps schools reduce their dependence on the state budget, increase their ability to provide high-quality educational services; even though this can affect the costs of learn, people's opportunities to choose and enroll in universities, students' ability to complete their studies, and their need for a high-quality higher education service and career opportunities (Tran, 2016).
Autonomy in higher education has been mentioned in a number of different studies (eg. Massen et al., 2017; Jo, 2016…), however due to differences in structure, nature as well as institutions, those studies are not really suitable for application in Vietnam. The typical characteristics of Vietnam (and some countries following the former socialist model) are: (1) Highly regarded universities in Vietnam are mostly public universities, therefore, the degree of autonomy is not much (at least in finance); (2) Vietnam is orienting universities to be
autonomous in order to meet market requirements and also reduce pressure on the state budget; (3) the enrolment method of Vietnamese universities as well as in some other countries in East Asia is based on entrance test scores. Thanks to this problem, public schools are attracting a big number of good students (with high entrance test scores or high-grade point average). But it is a fact that the rise of many private and financially autonomous universities indirectly competing with public universities causes pressure to reform.
It is precisely because of the status and importance of higher education autonomy in Vietnam, this study will first focus on the autonomy status of Vietnamese universities, clarify the main aspects of autonomy, point out the current issues of higher education autonomy and then, propose solutions. Therefore, the structure of the next sections of the article includes:
Section 2- Theoretical basis and literature review; Section 3- Methodology; Section 4- situation of autonomy in Vietnamese universities. The last one will offer implications to promote university autonomy.
2. Theoretical basis and literature review 2.1. Literature review
There are many previous studies on university autonomy. However, these works mainly refer to the theories and concepts of university autonomy, and the situations of universities in the US (Taira, 2014), China (Pan, 2016), Malaysia (Chan, 2017), or make the comparison between countries in Europe, Asia, UK-US (Johnson, 2003). However, in the study of Hauptman (2007), the author used the "Four models of growth", showing the higher education institutions’ the dependence in higher education autonomy in terms of finance on government. Then, Thomas et al. (2010) reported on university autonomy in 22 different European countries, analyzed the similarities and differences in university autonomy among these countries in the term of organizational autonomy, financial autonomy, academic autonomy and human resouces autonomy. In Vietnam, there are some studies on this topic such as Tran Van Nhung (2013), Banh Tien Long (2015), Tran Khanh Duc and Nguyen Manh Hung (2016), Tran Khanh Duc (2016). These studies have raised theoretical and empirical issues in the management of education and training. However, the content of university autonomy has not been paid much attention in the research scope of this topic. Research by Le Thi Kim Dung (2016) has made in-depth research on university autonomy. However, the issue of university autonomy has only been analyzed to a certain extent in the measures to improve the law on higher education in Vietnam. Therefore, in this study, inheriting the concepts and theoretical basis of the previous ones, the authors will analyse deeply Vietnam's higher education autonomy in the context of integration, based on the model of 4-factors in university autonomy.
2.2. Theoretical basis
Higher education is a process by which learners are trained, given chances to practice, and fostered with knowledge, skills, autonomy and responsibility. This process helps learners achieve the output goals of quality and competence according to the curriculum framework
and national university degree. Besides, it also creates conditions for learners to perfect themselves as well as contributes to the process of developing the society and country.
University autonomy is the right of a higher education institution to decide on its mission and operating program, the ways and means of carrying out that mission and operation program. In addition, these institutions have right to choose to be accountable to the public and the law for all its decisions and activities. This form of governance is suitable for organizations that do not belong to the administrative system (the system has superiors and subordinates; subordinates are appointed by superiors and must follow the decisions of their superiors).
For university autonomy, previous studies often divided into 4 major autonomy factors. In this study, the authors will use these 4 major autonomy aspects to build a research, analysis and evaluate model.
Organisational autonomy: means to decide on their own organizational structure and decision-making process (Serger et al, 2015; Liu, 2017). Organizational autonomy is mentioned a lot in (old) socialist countries and countries with economies in transition, where the Party organization (of the Communist Party) is higher than other organizations in terms of government. Organizational autonomy usually refers to the head; board of directors; training, scientific research, service and administrative units; for-profit/not-for-profit nature of school.
Financial autonomy: means to independently operate and allocate its own funds (Pruvot and Estermann, 2017; Pruvot and Estermann, 2018). For financial autonomy, there are usually 5 sub-factors: Duration of a public funding round, type of public funding;
Borrowing and maintaining a surplus; The operation of facilities; Tuition fees for domestic and foreign students, graduate students, and graduate students. Roness et al (2008), Liu (2017), Pruvot and Estermann (2018) argue that for universities in countries with economies in transition, the issue of financial autonomy will have to be conducted first. When financial autonomy is achieved, it will reduce dependence on state funding, thereby becoming autonomous in terms of operation, staff and academics.
Human resource autonomy: that is to decide on the recruitment and management of human resources in accordance with their own interests (Cristi, 2014; Enora, 2017). Human resources are the most important resource in universities. After being financially autonomous, the recruitment requirements for the teaching and research units (for lecturers) and the supporting units (for officers) are set even higher to achieve the common goal of the university. In addition to autonomy in terms of recruitment, the above studies also mentioned two other issues: autonomy in job placement and salary; self-promotion, dismissal. Liu (2017), Enora (2017) assesses that when a university is autonomous in terms of human resouces, that is, it is able to recruit many lecturers to meet the increasing requirements of society (increasing the image of the university in , increasing applicability to teaching problems for students).