Firm size, R&D and exports linked to sustainable energy management in Vietnam

Vietnamese firms are more likely to adopt sustainable energy management practices when they are larger, invest in research and development, hold international quality certifications and export their products, according to a study of 899 firms published in Discover Sustainability. The research, by Selim Jürgen Ergun and M. Fernanda Rivas, draws on the 2023 World Bank Enterprise Survey and examines which firm-level factors are associated with the uptake of practices that Vietnam’s rapid industrial growth and weak environmental performance have made increasingly urgent.

The authors frame sustainable energy management adoption as a strategic decision shaped by resources, knowledge and institutional constraints, combining a capability-based perspective with Upper Echelons Theory, which links managerial characteristics to organisational choices. To test this framing, they applied two complementary analytical approaches: a logit regression model and a random forest algorithm. The logit model identified significant positive associations between adoption and firm size, R&D investment, international quality certification and export orientation, suggesting that both internal capabilities and external market pressures travel together with more sustainable energy practices.

One of the study’s more striking results concerns managers themselves. Managerial experience showed a negative nonlinear association with sustainable energy management adoption, a pattern the authors interpret as consistent with strategic persistence, in which longer-tenured or more experienced managers may be less inclined to depart from established routines. Because this is an observational, cross-sectional analysis of survey data, the association does not establish that experience causes resistance to adoption, but it does suggest that managerial mechanisms matter alongside resources and pressures.

The random forest analysis added exploratory and predictive insights that the regression could not. It highlighted the importance of variables such as manufacturing sector affiliation and foreign ownership, which the logit model did not capture as statistically significant. The authors note that such conditional relationships point to distinct firm profiles: the combination of characteristics that accompanies adoption may differ across sectors and ownership types, even when individual variables fall short of significance in a parametric model. Taken together, the two methods indicate that sustainable energy management adoption is associated with internal capabilities, external pressures, managerial mechanisms and the specific configuration of the firm.

For policy, the findings suggest that interventions aimed at fostering more sustainable firms may benefit from being tailored to sector- and firm-specific contexts rather than applied uniformly. The authors caution that their evidence is limited to Vietnam and to the factors captured in the enterprise survey, so the associations should be read as descriptive of that emerging-economy setting rather than as universal rules. Even so, the study contributes to capability-based explanations of firm-level sustainability transitions by showing, in a large national sample, how resources, certifications, export orientation and managerial experience line up with the decision to manage energy sustainably.

Subject of Research: Firm-level factors associated with sustainable energy management adoption in Vietnam

Article Title: The role of internal capabilities and external pressures in sustainable energy management adoption in Vietnamese firms

Article References: Ergun, S. J., & Rivas, M. F. (2026). The role of internal capabilities and external pressures in sustainable energy management adoption in Vietnamese firms. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04647-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04647-y

Keywords: sustainable energy management, Vietnam, World Bank Enterprise Survey, logit regression, random forest, firm size, R&D investment, managerial experience, Upper Echelons Theory, capability-based perspective, foreign ownership, manufacturing sector