Dr Vien Chu

Hi,

My name is Vien Chu. Thank you for reading my biography.

I am passionate about sustainable development, and my research centres around this in a variety of ways. Calling on my early life in Vietnam, I saw people working hard but still living in poverty. Later in life, through eight years’ experience with private sector companies in various managerial positions (e.g. accounting manager, financial controller, financial and general manager), I saw businesses established and failed for various reasons. The experience has impacted my views and research interests towards sustainability development for small businesses and people with disadvantages. I completed two research studies: Masters in 2012 and PhD in 2015 at QUT, investigating approaches to sustainable development of micro businesses in Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, and developing a framework for strengthening the accountability of not-for-profit organisations (NPOs).

Moving on from the Master and Doctor research, my current research projects include:

Tax non-compliance of small businesses owned by individuals with social and financial disadvantages.

This project aims to gain an understanding of the tax non-compliance behaviours of small and microbusinesses owned by people with social and financial disadvantages. More specifically, we are exploring factors impacting the behaviour of these business owners toward tax obligations and identifying approaches that will help to improve their tax compliance and ultimately the success of their businesses.

Social media: how NPOs use it to engage with users and discharge their accountability.

In this project, we investigate how NPOs use Facebook to communicate and engage with their users before and after COVID-19, and factors impacting NPOs’ use of social media.

Reporting and disclosure quality: how NPOs value and report their assets.

Unlike assets owned by for-profit companies, assets for not-for-profit organisations can be complicated as they can be administered and controlled assets. In this project, we investigate whether and how NPOs value and report those assets, and their impact on NPO reporting quality.

Supervision in Honours, Master and Doctor of Philosophy

My supervision interests are in the areas of:

• Tax compliance of individuals and small business owners with social and economic disadvantages.
• Reporting and valuation of assets within the third sector
• NPO reporting and disclosure: what users need, how users’ needs differ from what NPOs report/disclose.
• Approaches and issues with auditing NPOs.
• Small business development: sustainability and failure impacts.

Background

I have been teaching Auditing and Assurance (and other accounting courses) at Newcastle Business School – The University of Newcastle (UoN) since February 2019. Before joining UoN, I was a lecturer in accounting at Charles Sturt University (CSU) and Queensland University of Technology (QUT). As an Associate Fellow of The Higher Education Academy since 2014, my teaching philosophy values students’ independence in their learning (considering the teacher as, effectively, a facilitator) and highlights the importance of well-organised teaching materials with real cases or stories for real world active learning.

Prior to joining academia, I worked for eight years as an accountant, an accounting manager, a financial and general manager for international private sector companies (e.g. Decathlon) in Vietnam. The experience equipped me with significant practical implications of accounting and management.

I’ve published several papers and a book chapter in the areas of third sector accountability and social enterprises. The paper titled: Social enterprise versus social entrepreneurship: An examination of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ in pursuing social change. (International Small Business Journal, 31(7), 764–784) was one of the top fifty most downloaded articles from the International Small Business Journal in the 12 months from June 2014 to July 2015.

I was rewarded with a grant of $7,400 by AFAANZ in 2022 and several UoN internal grants of $12,710.