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One Commune One Product (OCOP) program, a rural economic development program in Vietnam, aims to empower local communities for sustainable social and economic welfare development, protect the environment and preserve tradition. This study aims to employ this program associated with tourism to support small family businesses in rural areas cost-effectively.

This study used the geographic location mapping method to design tourist routes that connect tourism resources with OCOP producers. A stakeholder approach was employed to identify suggested practical works that need to be implemented while developing this tourism initiative.

Four rural districts of Bac Giang Province, a northern province in Vietnam known as the place of various indigenous people live and traditional craft villages. Many cultural and historical tourist sites have been chosen as sample areas for this study. By using Google map, based on the Bac Giang Tourist Map and a list of recognized OCOP products in Bac Giang Province, main tourist sites (16 locations) and small family businesses (known as cooperatives and households) that have OCOP products (17 places) in the four districts have been identified. Four notable tourist routes have been formed to propose four thematic tours (two 1-day tours and two 2 days-1 night homestay tours). Suggestions for related stakeholders to ensure the sustainability of this initiative are provided.

This study is supposed to be a model of promoting small family businesses through OCOP programs and tourism activities in a sustainable way in Vietnam. The outcome of this study is in line with the stakeholder theory emphasizing the systematic connection of various stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, local communities, government agencies and others towards complex business sustainability. The results of the study cannot conclude the small family businesses in Vietnam because it adopts geographic location mapping alone. Moreover, this study focused on OCOP programs only. Future research can use other methods of primary data collection, especially from tourists' perspectives. Data triangulation can be done to explore and verify the tourist routes that have been formed according to the four thematic tours proposed. Future research could also compare hotels managed by family businesses with non-family businesses.

This study is supposed to be a model of promoting small family businesses through OCOP programs and tourism activities in a sustainable way in Vietnam.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact level of six factors that condition participation in value chain of lychee growers in the Luc Ngan District of Bac Giang Province in Vietnam. This contributes to the literature on value chain development through the exploration of the case of an agriculturally based primary industry in the global south. Specifically, it analyzes the impacts of several factors on the participation of lychee fruit farmers in the attributed value chain of Bac Giang Province in the north of Vietnam to identify salient points of policy intervention.

Data for this study were collected from a survey of 270 lychee farmers in three districts of Bac Giang Province. Six factors, including the trust level of the participants, partner capacity, geographical distance between participants, collaborative culture, participation strategy and existence of specific government policies, were analyzed through a Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) test, Cronbach’s alpha and the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) method to evaluate the reliability of the factors and suitability of the model. A regression analysis was then used to evaluate the impact level of each element on the collaboration of farmers in the chain.

The results show that each of the six factors has significant impacts on farmer participation and the resulting chain thickness. Although the findings of this study are drawn from the case of lychee farmers in the north of Vietnam, they are argued to be transferable to other countries with rapidly growing middle-income economies.

The research conclusions are based on only the opinions of surveyed lychee growers in Luc Ngan District, Bac Giang Province. Similarly, this paper only explores six factors influencing participation in the value chain. Additional factors, including age, have not been used in this study and are suggested avenues for future research.

The paper suggests that policy makers on the local and regional levels in Vietnam reassess their focus and center these six factors as precursory conditions to improving local and regional economic development. Implications for other peripheral regions with agricultural production across the global south are also posited.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the developmental stages of lesson study for learning community (LSLC) and to clarify the measures necessary for promoting the progress of LSLC, targeting consultants working on educational development projects for developing countries.

The paper is organised as a conceptual paper. First, LSLC is positioned in the context of literature on school reform, then an explanation of the LSLC framework and the LSLC developmental stages is offered.

LSLC is a systemic school reform activity based on lesson study. However, unlike lesson study models in international literature, the entire school is involved from the very beginning and observation and joint reflection are focused upon across subject boundaries. There are five stages in LSLC development, from confusion at the initial stage to sustainment.

Using LSLC, teachers learn how to respond to children and how to enhance the quality of students’ learning through mutual observation and reflection. Because of the tendency for teachers to focus on teaching methods and techniques, consultants first have to allow teachers to pay more attention to children. As they become able to describe children and their learning in lessons, it becomes important to let them discuss enhancing the quality of learning.

LSLC is a very new approach to school reform and lesson study. Thus, despite the existing literature on LSLC cases in developing countries, few theoretical explanations have been undertaken. This paper targets professional consultants in developing countries and aims to provide a detailed explanation from a conceptual perspective.

The demand for clean vegetables has rapidly increased, many farmers gradually turn to vegetable cultivation to increase income; therefore, agricultural cooperative mobilized farmers group to facilitate them access to technical training and enhance compliance with the Vietnamese Good Agricultural Practices (VietGAP) standards. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impacts of the participation on farmer’s income as well as the major factors that affect the participation in cooperatives by the vegetable farmers in Vietnam.

The study used primary data collected from vegetable farmers in Vietnam. This study utilized propensity score matching to avoid initial selection bias. The differences between participants and nonparticipants will be adjusted by matching each membership individual to a nonmember based on similar observable characteristics by summarizing the conditional probability of a member given pretreatment characteristics.

This study demonstrates that participation in cooperatives is significantly affected by ethnicity, age of household head, labor involving vegetable production and extension service access. The results of this study also confirm that agricultural cooperatives have positive effects on member farmers to enhance income and that participants – on average – have a higher income than nonparticipants.

The method cannot rule out the possibility of selection bias due to unobserved differences between participants and even an appropriate comparison group.

This study contributes to an improved understanding about impacts of cooperatives on farmers’ income in developing and emerging economies. Moreover, research also upgrades knowledge regarding the effectiveness of agricultural cooperatives in Vietnam, as well as guides policymakers in supporting the cooperatives in expanding the market and other necessary changes.

This study aims to estimate the pass-through rate of the increases in the excise tax and TCF tax on tobacco in Vietnam. This study seeks to shed light on how the tax burden is split between consumers and producers and inform policy discussions in the country. Using panel micro-level data collected from three waves of a nationwide retailer's survey, this study provides an evidence-based pass-through estimation for tobacco tax in Vietnam and contributes to the understanding of tax policy on smoking and smoking-related issues.

Following increases in the excise tax and TCF tax on tobacco in 2019, the differential effect of the tax hike on the “treatment group” (domestic cigarettes) versus the “control group” (illicit cigarettes) using a difference-in-difference (DID) analysis has been studied. The study utilized unique longitudinal retailers’ data on cigarettes prices in Vietnam from 2018 to 2019 to estimate the tax pass-through rate for some of the most popular factory-made cigarette brands.

This study found evidence of an over-shifting of cigarette taxes on smokers. Specifically, it discovered that the tax increase is absorbed more by low-priced brand smokers compared to premium brand users due to (1) the limited increase in prices under a pure ad valorem system and (2) the way the Vietnamese currency is denominated. Additionally, there is evidence of cushioning to mitigate price shock on consumers as the real prices increase gradually over the period of one year after the tax change.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to collect and analyze a unique panel micro-level data from three waves of a nationwide retailers’ survey, which captures the changes in marketing and pricing strategies of the tobacco industry in Vietnam before and after an increase in excise tax in 2019. The results of this study could be used as a reference for future policymakers in considering increasing taxes on tobacco.

In every decade, there tends to be a major economic crisis affecting the entire world. Recent decades have seen the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s and the global financial crisis in the 2000s. Also, natural disasters and pandemics frequently impact the socioeconomic conditions of the people. The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) is one such crisis. In such situations, the socially disadvantaged are usually the worst hit, marginalizing the disadvantaged even further. Zygmunt Bauman describes this as “collateral damage.” In schooling, as well, such collateral damage is observed across countries. The aim of this chapter is to investigate responses by one secondary school leader in Bangkok, Thailand, to COVID-19 in order to minimize the collateral damage to the students. For this aim, self-study was employed as a research method. In the midst of great confusion, a caring mind and heart for students in difficulty was at the heart of strategies that encouraged them to remain constant with respect to the world of learning.

In many Asian countries, education systems are competitive based on high-stakes examinations. Additionally, due to the traditional one-way teaching styles, classroom practices can be highly authoritarian. The issue in such education systems is the alienation of students. They do not learn about themselves; rather, they work toward and/or get distracted by securing their positions according to the standards set by other people and institutions. Many students are thus disengaged from learning and share one common reason for their disengagement: their sense of loss about the meaning of learning is unheeded and they have no opportunity to voice their opinions. Consequently, various sentiments are prevalent, even extremely negative ones, almost equivalent to mutual hostilities. This chapter conceptually discusses the importance of listening in school reform, with special reference to the cases initiated by Manabu Sato and his fellow school leaders, such as Toshiaki Ose and Masaaki Sato. Their approach is known as school as a learning community (SLC) or lesson study for learning community (LSLC); the latter is used herein. LSLC is now widely practiced in various countries in Asia, including China, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. LSLC aims to overcome the negative sentiments described above and establish communal relationships for mutual learning and well-being. To achieve this, teachers in the schools running LSLC always start listening to each other. This chapter discusses how listening transforms hostilities into trust.