**1. Introduction**

Scientific research achievement is among the key criteria used to evaluate performance and university rankings on a global scale [1]. The future of universities is related to lecturers' achievements and progress in scientific activity [2]. Scientific work is among the most important activities of the faculty of any higher education institution [3]. Lecturers' scientific research output has received increasing attention from many countries, because many governments, including those in developing countries, have found that this is crucial in today's knowledge-based economy [4].

Due to the high importance placed on scientific research activities, several scholars have investigated the factors affecting lecturers' scientific research results [5–11]. Some studies considered this issue in the context of Vietnam [12–16]. However, studies focusing on governance factors that affect scientific research outputs of university lecturers are lacking. To date, the majority of studies in the literature have approached institutional factors [17–19] and individual factors [7,10], or a mix of both [7,9,11,20]. The main research methods applied are regression analysis [1,7,21], analysis of variance (ANOVA) [22,23], structural equation modeling (SEM) [10,19], analytic hierarchy process (AHP) [14,18], interviews [15,16], and Delphi [13]. Therefore, the impact of governance factors (not institutional factors or individual factors) on the scientific research results of lecturers remains under-investigated.

**Citation:** Truong, H.T.; Le, H.M.; Do, D.A.; Le, D.A.; Nguyen, H.T.; Nguyen, T.K. Impact of Governance Factors over Lecturers' Scientific Research Output: An Empirical Evidence. *Educ. Sci.* **2021**, *11*, 553. https://doi.org/10.3390/ educsci11090553

Academic Editors: Sandra Raquel Gonçalves Fernandes, Marta Abelha and Ana Teresa Ferreira-Oliveira

Received: 8 July 2021 Accepted: 10 September 2021 Published: 17 September 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

SEM, one of the most commonly applied techniques to analyze cause-and-effect relationship models, has also been widely applied in the context of economics and management studies [10]. There are two popular approaches to estimate linear structural models: Covariance-based (CB-SEM) and Partial least squares (PLS) SEM. In contrast to CB-SEM, PLS-SEM is commonly used to develop theories in exploratory research by focusing on explaining the variance in the dependent variables [24]. Meanwhile, according to [25], there is no theoretical basis to date that can be explicitly used to explain the cause-andeffect relationship, nor is there any common theoretical framework in previous studies on the factors influencing the research output of lecturers. Some studies have applied CB-SEM [10,19], but have not considered PLS-SEM.

This study aims to determine the impact of governance factors on the scientific research output of lecturers. In order to meet the research goals, the PLS-SEM method was used. Furthermore, the ANOVA and *t*-test approaches were also applied to investigate the differences in the scientific research output among lecturer groups stratified by demographics.

#### **2. Literature Review**

#### *2.1. Governance Factors*

To date, several studies have been conducted on the factors that impact the research output of the faculties within a higher education institution. Some studies focused on collaboration and networking factors. For instance, Ref. [5] showed that organizational factors such as job satisfaction and international collaboration had a positive effect on scientific research productivity among academic staff. The works by [26,27] concluded that the key factors that contribute to the success of publishing research in highly ranked American journals were collaboration with established overseas scholars, English language, and research ideas. The study by [14] demonstrated that the most important factors influencing faculties' research performance were collaboration with domestic and international peers, and receiving support from research assistants and supervisors. The study by [13] revealed that "networking-related factors" were a key determinant in the success of international publishing. However, these studies have not yet distinguished the collaboration factors from governance policies by higher education institutions (HEIs), or lecturers themselves.

Some studies examined the impact of university policies, work environment, and resource-related factors. For instance, Ref. [5] investigated IT funding and university policies; and [13] concluded that policy-related factors have a positive impact on scientific research productivity. The study by [7] examined institutional characteristics, including the number of undergraduate students enrolled, percentage of Ph.D. students enrolled, and funding allocated for research function, and revealed that they are significantly associated with faculty research productivity. The work by [12] revealed that work environment affected the adjusted research productivity of social scientists. However, these studies provide limited understanding on the specific policies (e.g., policies for lecturers) and resources, as well as the specific factors of work environment, that HEIs create to support research activities by lecturers.

Other studies investigated individual factors, particularly motivation factors. For instance, Ref. [7] showed that the research productivity of faculty varied by gender, institution, terminal degree, rank, discipline, and work experience. Notably, Ref. [11] examined the relationship between research productivity and the intrinsic and extrinsic motivators associated with conducting research. According to this study, there was a significant difference in research productivity between faculties associated with doctoral vs. non-doctoral degree granting programs. Receiving or having tenure was the most important reward, while securing a possible administrative position was the least important. There was a significant difference in the importance of these rewards between tenureduntenured and between male-female faculty members. A strong link was found between research productivity and the attainment of a tenure position and of a promotion, but the link between publications and salary increase was not strong. However, Ref. [7,11] have

several prominent limitations. It is difficult to draw a distinction between these two types of motivation. One factor that may be an extrinsic source of motivation for one person, can be considered an intrinsic source of motivation by another. Besides, Ref. [7,11] have not shown whether motivation originates from the governance policies of HEIs to enhance research achievement.

Some authors proposed a set of characteristics for a productive research organization. The work by [9] indicated that creative accomplishments are associated with small group size, organizational contexts with sufficient access to a complementary variety of technical skills, stable research sponsorship, timely access to extramural skills and resources, and facilitating leadership. However, these factors are features for organizations with great creative achievements in general, not necessarily every university where lecturers work. Ref. [20] recommended a synthetic model of individual, institutional, and leadership characteristics predicting individual and department research productivity, based on the combined results from multiple regressions. However, this model was examined at the individual and departmental level (i.e., not the university level), and combined governance factors with several individual or environmental factors.

To date, three approaches were applied to investigate the influential factors on the research performance of lecturers, namely, individual, institutional, and a mix of both. According to [28], institutional factors play an important role in developing a research culture to promote greater interaction and transfer of knowledge to society. Some factors that are related to university governance have been found in prior studies that considered institutional factors. However, it seems that there has been very little discussion about the impact of governance factors in particular (i.e., not institutional factors, in general). Therefore, it is worthwhile to empirically investigate the governance factors that influence the research output of lecturers, as well as the level of impact of those factors.

In Vietnam, only a few studies have attempted to address the factors associated with the research output of lecturers. The studies of [12–16] have been undertaken to investigate the factors influencing internationally-indexed publishing. Among these studies, Ref. [12] is one of the most notable, indicating that collaboration with international researchers resulted in higher productivity among social scholars in Vietnam. However, these studies were conducted with secondary data, and did not examine the governance factors as perceived by researchers in HEIs. The studies by [13–15] overcame the limitations of [12] by utilizing in-depth interviews, Delphi, and AHP respectively, however they only focused on internationally-indexed publishing by all types of academic organizations and academics staff, and not by HEIs and lecturers in particular.

It should also be noted that according to the literature review, the most commonly employed research methods for this topic were regression analysis, CB-SEM, ANOVA variance analysis, Delphi, interviews, case analyses, descriptive statistics, and AHP, whilst the PLS-SEM method has not been adopted. The methods of some prominent previous studies are listed in Table 1.


**Table 1.** Research methods on governance factors affecting scientific research output of lecturers.


**Table 1.** *Cont.*

#### *2.2. Scientific Research Outputs*

Regarding the evaluation and measurement of scientific research output, Ref. [39] indicated that research evaluation studies employ various instruments and indicators, depending on the particular aims of the study.

In terms of the quantity-based approach, researchers generally agree that scientific research output is measured by the total number of publications by the institution. According to [4], research output relates to creative ideas that, after being studied, are published in magazines, newspapers, patent applications, or academic journals. In addition, some researchers pointed out other indicators such as the amount of research funding [8], membership in a scientific association [40], and the financial budget allocated to research [4].

In terms of quality and the influence-based approach, Ref. [41] emphasized that scientific output must be presented by internationally-indexed publishing. The authors of [42] utilized H index to measure the research performance of scientists. The works by [7,43] argued that H index is a reliable indicator that is recognized worldwide to evaluate the scientific research performance of scientists.

The work by [38] defined the holistic approach in quantity, quality and influence. Table 2 shows a framework that identifies research output measurements and is recommended by [38].

So far, there has been a controversy on the influence-based approach. The authors of [44] mentioned that not all publications are indexed in research databases for citation, and it is difficult to assess the true value of a publication by H index. There are differences between industries and fields; the number of years of publication (first published is more likely to be cited) and the age of scientists significantly affects the citation index. Therefore, the H index, in some cases, is not accurate and fair when comparing the research productivity of scientists and organizations. According to [25], the approach based on the number of publications has been more widely used than that based on the qualitative measures to evaluate the research productivity of academics at most universities around the world. Hence, in this study, the quantity-based approach was adopted.


**Table 2.** Indicators of measuring scientific research output.

#### *2.3. Hypotheses*

Among the institutional and individual factors in prior studies there are some typical governance factors to be found, including the scientific research objectives of HEIs, leadership, policies for lecturers, support for scientific research activities, and resources for scientific research. Besides these, some studies also mentioned "decentralization" or related content among the institutional factors.

Regarding the scientific research objectives of HEIs, Ref. [6,38] showed that having a research agenda defined as the combination of strategic problem-solving frameworks to achieve research goals is the best technique to enhance research productivity and easily monitor the measurement of academic progress. Other studies also argued that in order to achieve worthy scientific research achievements a university's scientific research objectives need to be clear, feasible, and widely shared [22]. The university's statement of its core mission has a strong effect on its research output [43]. The findings above were developed and supported by [20], who suggested that universities should set clear, visible, shared goals to enhance their overall research performance. Therefore, the first hypothesis was proposed:
