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This paper intends to analyze a social enterprise as a case example of fulfilling social missions and achieving financial profitability at the same time. This paper aims to illustrate a business partnership that helps to bridge the gap in business and employment opportunities between megacities and suburban areas and examine value-creating activities that generate healthy income stream for the business.

This paper follows a quantitative methodology in the form of case study. The data are collected through interviews, personal observation and document analysis; direct quotes from interviewees are used to describe the phenomenon. Value chain framework is adopted to analyze company activities and deduce key success factors as well as value creations of the company.

The case demonstrates that social enterprises can be self-sustained financially, which would help them to better fulfill their social missions. Financial profitability can be achieved through good management of production, marketing and sales activities. Besides, value creation achieved through activities in the value chain is not only for customers but also for suppliers – a beneficiary within the social impact created by the case company.

The case demonstrates the necessity of establishing strong alliance with suppliers and customers in ensuring business success, which implies that leaders need to equip themselves with good business skills. Entrepreneurship support should include educational and training assistance besides the usual legal and financial support.

The case provides an exemplary partnership model that helps social enterprises to achieve financial security and social mission at the same time. This model can be applied anywhere in the world to create benefits for vulnerable communities.

The case study contributes to the limited understanding of social entrepreneurship in Vietnam, and demonstrates a social innovation in business partnership that helps to diminish the inequality of income and employment opportunities between suburban areas and big cities.

The purpose of the study is to explore the interrelation between internal factors of learners and the external environment. The results of this study help to design a learning environment that improves students' self-efficacy and consequently self-regulated learning (SRL) behaviors of students.

The study adopts a quantitative approach to explore the relationship between learner's self-efficacy, self-regulation behavior and three factors in the online learning environment: course design, learning activities and relationship with instructors and peers. Participants of the study are 350 students in two universities in Vietnam.

The study finds that factors in the learning environment namely course design, learning activities and relationship within class significantly affect students' self-regulation. Moreover, results show that students' self-efficacy plays the mediating role in the relationship between learning environment and self-regulation.

Samples are taken by convenience sampling method, which may lead to sampling bias, and results may, to some extent, be misleading. The study was conducted in only two universities with limited student populations. A larger sample of students from other institutions may contribute to a better explanation of the relationships.

The study has a practical implication of contributing to the limited understanding of learners in an underdeveloped-research country context. The study also implies necessary changes to the long-standing, prevalent yet ineffective teaching and learning style.

The study calls for a renovation in the nation's traditional educational practices, having a social implication of creating a learning environment beneficial for learners.

This study is the first to investigate the impact of online learning environment and students' internal factors on their learning behaviors in Vietnam. The study is among the very few empirical research studies on the country's education generally and on self-regulation specifically, contributing to better understanding of learning experiences and the improvement of teaching.

The purpose of the research is to investigate whether corporate social responsibility awareness (pCSR), environmental concerns (EC) and consumer environmental knowledge (CK) will have an impact on sustainable purchase intention (SPI). Furthermore, this paper also contributes to surveying the mediating impact of consumer attitudes (CAs) between intention and the three factors mentioned above.

SmartPLS (version 4.0) structural equation modeling (SEM) and quantitative methods were used to analyze 457 responses from consumers. The survey sample consisted of individuals between the ages of 18 and 34, with a male-to-female ratio of 70 to 30. The study aims to examine and put into practice new directions for manufacturing firms in the fields of fashion, food and consumer products. At the same time, provide more convincing evidence about the use of these fields in the research.

The study showed a favorable link between pCSR, EC, CK and SPI through the proposed hypotheses. The research additionally showed that CAs mediate between the aforementioned variables.

The important and distinctive results of this study encourage both consumers and enterprises to make changes in their perceptions of society. Consumers should gradually change their daily lifestyle by consuming more sustainable products. As a result, this outcome will provide the impetus for manufacturing businesses to alter their operational procedures in order to support the shift from the production of products to more friendly processes, with the help of all levels of management within the business.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship among financial development (FD), economic growth, urbanization and human capital (HC) in Vietnam.

This study uses various wavelet tools, including wavelet coherence, wavelet correlation and scale-by-scale Granger causality test, to re-visit the lead–lag structure among economic growth, FD, urbanization and HC in Vietnam from 1980 to 2017.

The main findings indicate that economic growth and urbanization improve HC at the medium and low frequencies, whereas FD negatively affects HC from 1989 to 2017. Furthermore, the scale-by-scale Granger causality results confirm a uni-directional causality relationship between economic growth to HC at low and high frequencies. In contrast, a bi-directional causality relationship between urbanization and HC is found in the long run.

Policy implications have emerged based on the empirical results from this study. The Vietnamese Government should continue supporting economic integration, implementing investment promotion policies and focussing on foreign direct investment using green technologies.

The impact of FD on HC at different time scales has largely been ignored in Vietnam. This study substantially contributes to the existing literature regarding HC and FD. This analysis is one of the earliest attempts to examine the effects of economic indicators on HC in the time-frequency analysis.

Cambodian and Laotian students (CLS) are among the largest groups of international students in intra-ASEAN student mobility as well as in Vietnamese higher education institutions (HEIs). However, little has been researched on the factors influencing CLS’s decision to choose Vietnam as destination country. The purpose of this study is to investigate why CLS decide to go overseas and choose Vietnam as their host country among other opportunities as well as their perceptions of the decision.

Using qualitative methods and employing purposive sampling, data were collected by semi-structured interviews from CLS studying in a HEI in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The data were analysed against the push–pull framework to understand factors influencing the participants’ decision.

The findings show that CLS in the study were “pushed” by the perceived higher value of a foreign qualification and family encouragements. In terms of pull factors, they were attracted to choose Vietnam as the host country most observably due to scholarship opportunities. However other pull factors were also significant, especially the lack of certain skills in home countries and its congruence with Vietnam’s competitive strength in offering courses for those skills. In retrospect, the participants expressed a sense of optimism, though there was also certain reservation.

The small sample restrict the generalisability of the findings.

As an exploratory study, the findings can lay the ground for largerscale studies investigating CLS mobility in Vietnam and be employed for inbound student mobility policymaking reference for HEIs in Vietnam as well as in other developing countries.

This study investigates why Cambodian and Laotian international students decide to go to Vietnam, a developing country in the lesser-known part of international student mobility landscape. This is a topic that remains under-researched in the Asia-bound student mobility literature. Insights from the study can not only contribute to the scholarly gap but also offer implications for HEIs in Vietnam and other Asian countries.

Intellectual capital, corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are generally considered three essential pillars to enhance firms’ performance in the developed world. However, in developing countries such as Vietnam, these pillars have not received sufficient attention from practitioners. In addition, this study aims to investigate the interrelationship between these three essential pillars and their combined effects, in the Vietnamese context.

This study uses data collected from the annual reports of the largest listed banks in Vietnam from 2011 to 2018. Intellectual capital is measured using a modified value-added intellectual coefficient model. CG is proxied by board remuneration. This study measures CSR using the ratio between charitable contributions and profit before tax. In addition, this study uses the generalized method of moments to overcome several econometric problems exhibited in previous empirical studies.

Results indicate that CG and CSR have a positive impact on intellectual capital. Intellectual capital plays a moderating role in the relationship between CG and CSR. Moreover, CG and intellectual capital in the previous year significantly affect CG in the current year.

Based on the findings from this study, policy implications have emerged for bank executives and policymakers in formulating and implementing policy about the balance between intellectual capital accumulation, CG and CSR.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study conducted to examine the interrelationship between intellectual capital, CG and CSR and their combined effects in emerging countries such as Vietnam.

Recognition that not every climate adaptation policy is a good one has shifted attention to new tools and methods to measure the adequacy and effectiveness of adaptation policies. This study aims to propose and apply and applies an innovative adaptation policy assessment framework to identify the extent to which climate adaptation policies in Vietnam exhibit conditions that are likely to ensure a sufficient, credible and effective adaptation.

In total, 21 conditions, categorized under five normative principles and covering critical issue areas in adaptation domain, form the climate adaptation policy assessment framework. The principles were double-checked and tested in case studies through observations and analyses of policy documents to ensure that each condition should be distinct and not overlapping across principles. To see if the principles and attendant conditions were able to capture all relevant aspects of adaptation, the authors used structured expert judgment. In total, 39 policy documents pertaining to climate change adaptation were selected for qualitative document analysis. In-depth interviews with local officials and experts were conducted to address data gaps.

The study reveals major weaknesses constituting a reasonably worrisome picture of the adaptation policies in Vietnam since several critical conditions were underrepresented. These results shed new light on why some adaptation policies falter or are posing adverse impacts. The findings suggest that a sound policy assessment framework can provide evidence on what effective adaptation policy looks like and how it can be enabled. The framework for climate adaptation policy assessment in this study can be easily adjusted and used for different socio-environmental contexts in which new conditions for policy assessment might emerge.

The findings show underlying weaknesses constituting a reasonably worrisome picture of the adaptation regime in Vietnam. In the absence of mechanisms and measures for accountability and transparency in policy processes, adaptation in Vietnam appears more likely to be prone to maladaptation and corruption. While solving these problems will not be easy for Vietnam, the government needs to evaluate whether the short-term gains in sustaining the existing adaptation policies really make progress and serve its long-term climate-adaptive development goals.

Although interpretations of adaptation effectiveness may be very divergent in different normative views on adaptation outcomes, the authors argue that a common, agreed-upon effectiveness can be reached if it is clearly defined and measurable in adaptation policies. Thus, the climate adaptation policy assessment framework proposed in this study is critical for policymakers, practitioners, donors and stakeholders dealing with adaptation to better understand the weaknesses in policymaking processes, pinpoint priority areas of action and timely prevent or prepare for possible adverse impacts of policies.

The paper aims to investigate the difference in total factor productivity (TFP) among those firms with and without outsourcing in a developing country like Vietnam. Also, it explores the effect of outsourcing activities on total factor productivity with a specified concentration on the Vietnamese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The panel data set of SMEs used in this study was originated from biannual surveys conducted under the collaboration between educational organizations and government agencies: Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), Department of Economics – the University of Copenhagen, the Institution of Labor Studies and Social Affairs (ILSSA) in the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA). In this study, the model is developed based on the production function in accordance with the model of Girma and Görg (2004). The firms’ TFP is the difference between the actual and the predicted output as with the approach by Levinsohn and Petrin (2003).

This study finds out that firms with outsourcing have higher total factor productivity than those without outsourcing activities. In addition, the more firms spend on outsourcing, the higher total factor productivity they can gain. Outsourcing to SMEs in a developing country can significantly increase its TFP by means of either maintaining core competencies or searching external resources in conducting some internal activities.

Although outsourcing has been widely applied by large firms, the research studying its impact on productivity at firm level is limited. Especially, this study can shed light on the impact for the case of SMEs in a developing economy.

This study aims to investigate the determinants of public trust in e-government services (Te-GS) and participation in social media.

A quantitative cross-sectional field survey was used to collect primary data at the local government level in 11 cities, towns and districts in Tien Giang Province, Vietnam. The final data set of 529 respondents was analysed using SmartPLS4 to evaluate the measurement and structural models.

Perceived responsiveness, transparency and security have strong positive associations with Te-GS, whereas perceived accountability does not. Furthermore, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are positively associated with social media participation.

Although previous studies have examined citizen behaviour in the use of e-government services, the social media context has rarely been considered due to its novelty. This study adds to the knowledge of the antecedents of participation in e-government services in developing countries such as Vietnam. Furthermore, it provides a comprehensive framework for understanding participation intention that considers four elements of good governance theory and two elements of the technology acceptance model (TAM), thereby extending previous research on the effects of these variables on the adoption of e-government services.

Official development assistance (ODA) education projects have played a crucial role in improving education and training fields in developing countries, but are often facing several considerable challenges (e.g. long implementation time). Thus, this study aims to identify critical success factors (CSFs) in ODA education projects and investigate the influences of CSFs on ODA project performance measured by 11 nonprofit outcomes (NPOs).

A comprehensive literature review and expert interviews were conducted to compile a list of 35 potential success factors for ODA education projects. Using a survey questionnaire, 143 valid responses were collected from practitioners joining ODA projects in Vietnam. Various statistical methods (e.g. mean score method, Spearman rank correlation test, analysis of variance test, factor analysis and regression analysis) were used to analyze the collected data.

This research identified seven CSFs for ODA education projects in Vietnam: comprehensive project management competency (C1), clarity and compliance in project execution (C2), transparency and committed funding (C3), external context conditions (C4), well-controlled design and project management procedures (C5), preparations in equipment and complexity insight (C6) and punctual site delivery (C7). Furthermore, the results of regression analysis indicated that comprehensive project management competency (C1) and transparency and committed funding (C3) could significantly affect various NPOs.

This study offers significant insights for practitioners (e.g. project managers) to improve ODA projects’ performance and effectiveness in the education and training sector of a developing country context (like Vietnam).