MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY NGUYEN NGOC THANH BINH THE EFFECT OF INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL ON COST OF DEBT: THE MODERATING ROLE OF BANKRUPTCY RISK, OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE - THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE IN VIETNAM MASTER’S THESIS Ho Chi Minh City - 2024 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY NGUYEN NGOC THANH BINH THE EFFECT OF INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL ON COST OF DEBT: THE MODERATING ROLE OF BANKRUPTCY RISK, OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE - THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE IN VIETNAM Major: Accounting Orientation: Research Code: 8340301 MASTER'S THESIS SUPERVISOR: DR. HOANG VIET HUY Ho Chi Minh City - 2024 DECLARATION I declare that the master's thesis titled ’’The effect of Intellectual Capital on Cost of Debt: The moderating role of bankruptcy risks, ownership structure - The empirical evidence in Vietnam” has been conducted by myself. The data and research results are original, collected and analyzed honestly, as well as have not been published in any other research. This master's thesis is conducted under the supervision of Dr.
Hoang Viet Huy. Ho Chi Minh City, October 8th, 2024 Author Nguyen Ngoc Thanh Binh TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS LIST OF TABLES LIST OF FIGURES ABSTRACT CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Research objectives and research questions. Research object and research scope.5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT 2.
Cost of Debt. Resource-based view (RBV). Knowledge-based view (KBV). Vietnamese previous research.
Foreign previous research. The relationship between IC and COD. The moderating role of bankruptcy risk on the relationship between IC and COD. The moderating role of ownership structure on the relationship between IC and COD.
DATA AND METHODOLOGY 3. RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 4. Regression results and Discussion. The effect of IC on COD.
The moderating role of bankruptcy risks in the relationship between IC and COD. The moderating role of ownership structure in the relationship between IC and COD. Summary of findings. Limitations and future research orientation.43 REFERENCES APPENDIX LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Number Abbreviations Definition 1 IC Intellectual Capital 2 COD Cost of Debt 3 HC Human Capital 4 RC Relational Capital 5 SC Structural Capital 6 VA Value added 7 VAIC Value-added Intellectual Capital 8 ICE Intellectual Capital Efficiency 9 HCE Human Capital Efficiency 10 SCE Structural Capital Efficiency 11 CEE Capital Employed Efficiency 12 HOSE Ho Chi Minh City Slock Exchange 13 HNX Ha Noi Stock Exchange 14 CH Cash Holdings 15 DIV Dividends 16 GROWTH Sales Growth 17 LEV Leverage 18 MTBE Market-to-book Ratio 19 ROA Return on Assets 20 SIZE Firm Size 21 TAN Asset Tangibility 22 ZSCORE Altman Z-Score 23 EBIT Earnings Before Interest and Tax 24 FOWNP Foreign Ownership Percentage 25 SOWNP State Ownership Percentage 26 VND Vietnam Dong LIST OF TABLES Table 3.
Variables and expected signs with sources. Variables descriptive statistics. Variables correlation analysis. Regression result of the effect of IC and its components on COD.
Regression result of the moderating role of ZSCORE on the correlation between IC and COD. Regression result of the moderating role of FOWNP and SOWNP on the coiTelation between IC and COD. 41 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2. 21 ABSTRACT Intellectual Capital (IC) has been referred to as an emerging force to improve corporate competitive advantages in recent years.
Given the benefits brought about by IC development, this research aims al exploring whether IC is a driver of firms' cost of debt (COD). To the author's knowledge, there has been no previous article researching in the effect of IC on COD with the moderation role of bankruptcy risks and ownership structure in the Vietnamese market. This research uses quantitative methods on a dataset containing 561 Vietnamese listed firms on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange and Ha Noi Stock Exchange during the period from 2008 to 2022. The regression results show a negative association between IC and COD, indicating that a higher IC leads to a lower COD in Vietnamese listed firms.
This result shows that higher IC can be a source of competitive advantages and risk reduction, leading to higher credibility and decreasing COD as a result. Besides, state ownership positively moderates the relationship between IC and COD. The main managerial implications are that investing in IC is crucial to reduce COD. Keywords: Intellectual Capital, Cost of Debt, Bankruptcy risks, Ownership structure.
Problem statement ‘‘Knowledge plays an important role in every society. Knowledge society, knowledge economy, knowledge assets, knowledge management and knowledge based development - all these concepts have gained ground in the academic field as well as in public discussions” (Kăpylã et al. Being characterized by a rapid pace of change, technological advancement, and globalization, the knowledge-based economy has observed the shift from the old tangible economy to the new intangible one, or “specific and specialized" knowledge one (Drucker, 1993; Bataineh et al. To remain competitive and survive in a world of knowledge and constant development, organizational change is a must (Drucker, 1999; Shah & Shah, 2010).
Sustainable competitive edges can be created correctly if enterprises that own important intangible assets understand how these resources can provide, so the management of intangible assets, specifically the management of knowledge assets, is essential in an organization’s sustainable competitive advantage in this economy (Torres et al. They can only be achieved if organizations have a long-term commitment to learning and investing in people and their intellectual potential (Trajkovic, 2018). Previous literature has pointed out that the combination of all its intellectual resources, both inside and outside the organization, can be viewed as the intellectual capital (IC) of an organization (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Youndt et aL, 2004; Subramaniam & Youndt, 2005; Meng & Yin, 2019). IC also consists of intangible assets that can be converted into tangible and intangible value (Lentjusenkova & Lapina, 2016).
Consequently, some organizations tend to move their interests towards IC. Nowadays, IC is appealing to many institutions and researchers. However, the Vietnamese business environment has not witnessed a wave of IC research due to the lack of Vietnamese managers' awareness of the important role of IC in their management process (Trinh & Nguyen, 2023). 2 Although the research topic about IC and its relationship with firm performance and other factors has been investigated for many years, the correlation between IC and cost of debt (COD) seems not to be discovered much yet.
The majority of IC research in Vietnam and worldwide examines its impact on firm performance, either generally or within specific industries. “Of the 777 papers included in the systematic literature review, 189 deal with the relationship between IC and performance" (Pedro et al. Insufficient access to capital presents a significant obstacle to the development of Vietnamese enterprises (Nham & Thanh, 2018). While financial constraints are a factor, the effectiveness of a firm’s management in identifying, securing, and utilizing resources significantly impacts its overall access to those resources (Bruhn et al.
These leads to the difficulty in investing in IC due to limit in accessing to capital and awareness of Vietnamese managers about IC. Moreover, COD reflects the “pricing” of the creditors towards each borrower (Vu et al. In other words, a firm’s COD is mostly determined by its evaluation of default risk and the loss that creditors sustain if a company defaults (Valta, 2012). COD is viewed as the signal of credit security by the creditors, so it can be inferred that the lower COD, the belter the signal of firms’ credit status.
Managers may underrate IC due to the lack of awareness, but they fully understand the importance of reducing COD so that they can cut down firms' expenses and raise funds more easily because when COD increases more than a certain amount, the rate of credit also increases (Derrien et al. As a related topic of IC, IC reports have been proven to have a positive relationship with credit decisions due to the presence of firms’ competitiveness and well-impressed management teams (Guimón, 2005). Risk appetite is one of the risk management tools that limit the risks that firms arc ready to get (Kumar, 2021). Implementing effective risk management, which leads to lower risks, provides competitive advantages that result in lenders offering lower COD (Rahmawati el al.
Therefore, this study focuses on clarifying the impact of IC on COD of listed companies on the stock exchange in Vietnam from 2008 to 2022. 3 It is important to deepen some aspects that may moderate the relationship between IC and COD, as to whether this correlation exists the moderating role of some external factors. Firstly, from the firm-level perspective, the research chooses to examine the moderating effect of bankruptcy risk through Altman’s Z-Score. The Altman Z-Score is the most famous measure of bankruptcy risk, a key indicator of firm difficulties (Dichev, 1998; Bryan et al.
The moderating effect of bankruptcy risks on the relationship between IC and COD is taken into account to see whether the impact of IC differs among firms with different degrees of bankruptcy possibility. The ownership structure - whether state-owned or foreign-owned - plays a moderating role in the relationship between IC and COD. Literature suggests that state-owned enterprises benefit from lower financing costs (Sanchez-Ballesta & Garcia-Meca, 2011), and a higher percentage of foreign ownership correlates with a reduced COD (Tran, 2021). Therefore, this research examines the ownership structure (specifically state ownership and foreign ownership percentage) to understand its moderating effect.
Research objectives and research questions - Research objectives: The research provides empirical evidence on the impact of IC on the COD of companies listed on the slock exchanges (Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange and Hanoi Stock Exchange, in details) in Vietnam from 2008 to 2022. Besides, it aims to clarify whether there is an existence of moderating role of bankruptcy risk and ownership structure in the correlation between IC and COD. - Research questions: The study focuses on solving the following research questions: (1) Does IC impact the COD of Vietnamese listed companies? 4 (2) Does bankruptcy risk moderate the relationship between ĨC and COD among Vietnamese listed companies? (3) Does ownership structure (state ownership and foreign ownership) alter the relationship between IC and COD in Vietnamese listed companies? 1. Research object and research scope - Research object: The impact of IC on COD in a corporate context.
- Research scope: + Research scope in terms of space: Vietnamese listed firms (excluding financial firms and insurance institutions) on Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HOSE) and Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) which are in operation. + Research scope in terms of time: from 2008 to 2022. Research methods The research uses quantitative methods with secondary data to test all the research models (Descriptive statistics, Fixed effect model with cluster). The author uses STATA 15.0 software for this research.
Research contribution - Theoretical contribution: First research focusing on the impact of IC on COD and the moderating effect of state ownership on this correlation of Vietnamese listed companies from 2008 to 2022. - Practical contribution: By researching the impact of IC on COD under the moderating role of bankruptcy risks and ownership structure, this research contributes to practice as follows: + Enhanced Financial Decision-Making: By understanding how IC influences COD, firms can make more informed decisions regarding investments in HC. This 5 research result shows that IC, especially HC, can be effective even when firms are under financial constraints or unfavorable business environments. All of them can lead to optimized financing strategies and reduced borrowing costs.
+ Creditor Confidence: Demonstrating a clear understanding of how IC affects financing costs can boost creditor trust. Creditors are likely to favour firms that have higher IC capacity, perceiving them as lower-risk investments. + Benchmarking and Best Practices: The research provides benchmarks and best practices for firms looking to optimize their IC and financing strategies. Firms can learn from successful examples and apply similar approaches to achieve better financial outcomes.
Thesis structure The structure of this thesis is as follows: Chapter 1: Introduction This chapter establishes the context and purpose of the research.