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This paper aims to identify what productivity means in the public sector, how it is measured and how it should be measured and improved, according to municipal authorities in managerial positions.

The approach is both theoretical and empirical. The first part is a literature review of research concerning public sector productivity. The second part presents findings of empirical research that is based on interviews and workshops with municipal authorities representing: special healthcare services; basic healthcare and social services, and educational services. The research was carried out in the Päijät‐Häme region, Finland.

According to the results, there is a certain mismatch between perceptions concerning productivity and the potential that lies in this concept as a functional tool in the public sector's development efforts. Public sector productivity cannot be developed and discussed without taking into consideration the issue of effectiveness.

Deeper common understanding concerning productivity and effectiveness and their measurement are likely to facilitate municipal decision making and service processes in individual workplaces as well as within and among different spheres of authority – and thus facilitate mutual learning.

This paper contributes to development and application of productivity and effectiveness thinking in the public sector. It is linked to service excellence, performance measurement and management systems, creativity in process delivery and deployment of improvement techniques in the public sector. It is of interest both to researchers and practitioners.

Vietnam’s 11th National Party Congress prioritised integration, modernisation and industrialisation as the new key orientations for Vietnam. It outlined Vietnam’s integration with the world, not only economically, but also in terms of the social, cultural, educational, scientific and technological areas that can support social and economic development and sustainability. Vocational education has been recognised as pivotal to the nation’s sustainable workforce development and transformational changes. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how foreign approaches and practices have been filtered and appropriated to bring about sustainable development and transformational changes for Vietnamese vocational education.

The paper is derived from a study that involves documentary analysis, observation and semi-structured interviews with vocational learners and staff across three different vocational education and training (VET) sites in Vietnam. The overall study includes three vocational education providers and 22 participants altogether, but this paper involves observation and semi-structured interviews with eight participants, including one leader, two teachers and five students. It focusses on a Germany-funded vocational college in the northern central area of Vietnam that came under the management of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, and the local province where the college located.

The findings of the study show a critical need to develop a new “Vietnamese VET pedagogy” that filters international influences and flexibly and creatively combines them with the existing local pedagogy. To meet the local and global demands and bring transnational changes for Vietnamese vocational education, new VET pedagogies need to align with both Vietnamese historical and political situations, especially the emergent demands of the open market socialist economy and to capitalise on international influences – Confucian, French, Soviet and Western. Such a balance will ensure Vietnam makes use of both international forces and local strengths for sustainable development and transformational changes rather than passive dependence on foreign practices.

The research provides valuable insights into the appropriation of foreign practices and principles in Vietnamese vocational education. However, it focusses only on three vocational education sites in central Vietnam. Further studies with larger scale of participants and across a variety of vocational education settings including public and private institutions, community centres and family workshops will offer broader findings related to this important topic.

The study suggests practical implications for institutions to deal with the challenges associated with the adaptation of international forces into the vocational education context in Vietnam. It outlines the transformational changes in pedagogical practices related to the increased requirement to move from the traditional didactic teaching to more self-directed learning, to meet the requirements of a modern vocational education system.

This study provides unique insights into the practices and challenges of filtering foreign VET practices and principles to bring about transformational changes in Vietnamese vocational education. It, therefore, responds to the paucity of literature in this area. In addition, it examines internationalisation in Vietnamese VET, an under-researched area in the field of internationalisation of education as most of the literature in this field concentrates on the higher education sector.

Governments in Southeast Asia have introduced and enforced harsh legal measures to stem the spread of COVID-19. These measures are disproportionate to the crisis and disregard fundamental human rights. Against this backdrop, public trust in government among Southeast Asians nevertheless remains relatively high – paradoxically, people living in authoritarian regimes tend to trust their governments more compared to people living in democratic regimes. The chapter examines the impacts that anti-COVID-19 legal measures have left on the protection of human rights and the seemingly paradoxical divorce between public trust and the diminished respect for fundamental human rights. Based on this examination, this chapter also proposes elements that any global treaty for future pandemic response must include in order to ensure the protection of human rights.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the development of Viet Nam’s approach to higher education quality assurance during the past dozen years since its establishment, focusing on the achievements and challenges.

This is a desktop analysis study. The paper analyses the policies and practices related to the development of Viet Nam’s higher education accreditation system by reviewing associated literature.

The research has found out that there are several achievements, including: the development of the accreditation framework; establishment of accrediting agencies; completion of almost universities’ self-assessment reports; implementation of external assessment exercise at some institutions, a few of which were awarded accreditation certificates. However, there remain a number of challenges related to the independence of the accrediting agencies, human resources, accreditation standards and criteria, institutions’ awareness about accreditation and the pace of accreditation implementation.

The primary limitation of this study is the research methodology which merely relies on document analysis. It would be more credible if the findings could be triangulated with data taken from other sources such as interviews with key stakeholders.

On the basis of the analysis of achievements and challenges at both macro and micro levels, discussion and recommendations are made for future policy-making and management in the field of higher education accreditation.

Purpose: To explore emotional support, daily housework assistance, and economic support for older adults provided by the Vietnamese family within the context of the impacts of socio-economic, demographic, and other factors.

Methodology: (1) The researchers used data from censuses taken from 1989 to 2019; national surveys of Internal Migration, Labor and Employment and other topics; and recent large sample sociological surveys (2) adapted a modified Diamond Care Model (Ochiai, 2009) to analyze effects of the characteristics of older adults; and of the country’s laws, policies, and socio-economic changes, on the families’ caregiving activities supporting the older adults.

Findings: The family is still the most important institution providing care for older adults in Viet Nam. Most older people live with their children and see this as an age-old security solution despite differences related to lifestyles and interests. However, when the average number of working-age people per older person decreases, as older adults live longer, household sizes are smaller, and there is increased large migration, the demand for non-family caregiving for older adults will increase. Since social services to help meet this demand are limited, the traditional family support system for the elderly in Viet Nam will face many challenges as families try to assure the quality of care needed in the very near future.

Value: This chapter shows systematically a relationship between elderly care in the Vietnamese family and socio-economic, demographic, and associated factors based on comprehensive data sources. The results can help us think about how to create an appropriate future model for taking care of older adults in Viet Nam that combines the efforts of families and the support of comprehensive social policies by the community.

This study seeks to capture the lived experiences of five refugees making the transition from Viet Nam to Sweden. It seeks to focus on the problems of integration in Swedish society.

The research took a narrative approach by asking questions about the ways in which refugees make sense of the multiple and sometimes dramatic changes that exile involves. The interpretation procedure was performed in three recurring phases: naïve reading, thematic structural analysis and comprehensive understanding.

In the structural analyses, three sub‐themes were abstracted: in the hands of authorities/forced to leave home; regarded as uneducated and untrained; and lack of balance. These sub‐themes show a situation that could be interpreted by the concept of sense of coherence (SOC). The comprehensive understanding shows that the prerequisites for a stable SOC are unsatisfactory.

The study reported here implies that there is a need for changes in integration policy. In an integrated society, individuals should be met with a policy that aims to empower and takes into consideration the lived experiences and different components that work together to create an SOC.

The contribution from this research is the combination of qualitative data, the theory about SOC, and the description of the edifice of SOC. This combination helps to understand and explain the essence of the respondents' lived experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the way in which a popular ritual became one of Vietnam’s most important festivals, elevated as a celebration of national heroism and charts its gradual transformation in modern society.

This research focuses on the combination of a fertility rite and narratives of St Gióng based on nationalism or heroism created a special festival reflecting many traditional cultural characteristics of Vietnam and the Việt people and the transformation of St Gióng from a mythological to a national symbol of heroism in anti-invader history was recorded in texts.

The paper casts light on the mythologization and historicization of St Gióng in Vietnam’s particular historical context by decoding the Gióng symbol as a core element of the folktales and myths about St Gióng to understand the formation and development of St Gióng in the cultural history of Vietnam.

The paper is not exploring the Gióng symbol within a larger cultural context of nationalism and ethnosymbolic approach in a comparison of national symbolism and heroism.

The paper includes implications for advised scholars to conduct further exploration of the symbol and myth of not only St Gióng in Vietnam but also Kubera in India and Vaisravana in China to connect Kubera, Vaisravana and St Gióng under the connection of literal myth and heroic symbol.

The paper shows how processes of historicizing myth and mythologizing history are important features of Vietnamese socio-historical research.

The paper shows how a fertility rite became a historical festival and the figure of St Gióng became a symbol of patriotic heroism.

Drought and salinity intrusion aggravated by climate change threaten agricultural livelihoods in Viet Nan's Mekong Delta. In response, authorities have built water management infrastructure for irrigation and salinity protection. This study assessed the impact of one such project, the Ba Lai dam in Ben Tre province, on the livelihoods of aquaculture farmers.

This study uses the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework to assess the impact of the Ba Lai dam on the livelihood capitals of 18 farming households in four communes, located both upstream and downstream of the dam.

The authors find that, apart from some positive effects, the dam has also brought negative environmental consequences, such as increased water pollution. The authors also find that farmers have responded to the changes by adapting their livelihood practices.

The samples were relatively small, encompassing four communes in Ben Tre province. On the other hand, this case study is instructive to the many ongoing infrastructure projects in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta.

The project have caused an increase in water-related social conflict.

The case of the Ba Lai dam provides a cautionary example for infrastructure-based water management plans, both in Viet Nam and more broadly. The study suggests the need to strengthen community participation and prioritize impacts of farmers' capital assets when constructing water management infrastructure for climate change adaptation.

This paper aims to explore how research and development (R&D) scientists and engineers can contribute to sustainability initiatives in their organisations.

This paper uses a critical case study methodology, focussed on a large Vietnamese company in which business leaders sought to engage R&D scientists and engineers in sustainability initiatives focussed on eco-innovation and eco-efficiency. Bourdieu’s theoretical lens of habitus, capitals and field facilitates a relational analysis of the findings.

While R&D scientists and engineers adapted well to early changes aligned with eco-innovation, they struggled to engage with sustainability initiatives in the case firm. This study explains adaptions and constraints as scientists and engineers’ professional habitus and capitals, and their broader organisational field.

This paper provides insight into how organisations might integrate professional acculturation and appropriate facilitators to promote the additional contribution of scientists and engineers to sustainability initiatives in the context of an organisation.

Although eco-innovation and eco-efficiency are only potential dimensions of comprehensive organisational sustainability reform, this research provides insight into how engaging scientists and engineers with a broader social sustainability agenda might be advanced.

The study addresses calls for empirical insights into ways that scientists and engineers can commit to organisational sustainability practices based on the configurations of habitus, capital and organisational field.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of macroeconomic indicators (the interest rate and the industrial production) on Vietnamese stock prices. The paper examines how US macroeconomic indicators affect Vietnamese stock prices.

The authors use monthly time series data covering the period from January 2001 to April 2008. The methodology introduced by Nasseh and Strauss and Canova and de Nicolo to investigate the linkage between stock prices and macroeconomic indicators.

This paper provides the first empirical evidence that there are statistically significant associations among the domestic production sector, money markets, and stock prices in Viet Nam. Another novel finding is that the US macroeconomic fundamentals significantly affect Vietnamese stock prices. Finally, the results show that the influence of the US real sector is stronger than that of the money market.

Since prior research has focused on developed economies, the authors strongly believe that this paper provides a novel contribution to the existing literature as the authors are the first to examine this issue in Viet Nam.