The study examines the role of local governance in the relationship between private investment and economic growth at provincial level in Vietnam. The study data consists of 63 Vietnamese provinces in the period of 2005-2013. Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) is a proxy for local governance. Estimated by two-step System Generalized Methods of Moments, the study shows interesting results. First, local governance and private investment have significant effects on economic growth. Second, the growth effect of private investment is strengthened when interacted with the high level of PCI. Third, interacting PCI sub-indices with private investment, the results show that some aspects of PCI are still barriers to the growth effect of private investment, namely entry cost, time cost, informal charges, and policy biases. Our findings suggest that local governments should make local governance better to improve the growth effect of private investment.

This paper aims to provide a new risk measure for portfolio management in Vietnam by incorporating investor’s risk aversion into current risk measures such as value at risk (VaR) and expected shortfall (ES). This measure shares several desirable characteristics with the coherent risk measures, as illustrated in Artzner et al. (1997). In Vietnam, our study makes the first attempt to utilize distortion theory, instead of utility theory, to facilitate the adoption of risk aversion level in the popular risk measures. We find that spectral risk measure is more flexible and effective to different groups of risk-adverse investors, compared to the more monotonic and conventional VaR and ES measures

This paper aims at conceptualizing a framework of human resource management practices (HRMPs) that will work effectively in Vietnam. qualitative research is applied, based on a survey of 388 companies located in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. HRMPs in Vietnam can be measured using seven criteria. Apart from the four traditional HRM functions, which are recruitment selection, training development, performance appraisal and compensation, HRMPs in the Vietnamese context involve three additional criteria: leading change and motivation, both based on traditional soft practices, and talent management, which is based on contemporary hard practice. The validity and reliability of the HRMPs has been confirmed. It was found that the role of HRMPs explains 43 per cent of the variation in a firm’s business performance. The findings imply that HRMPs in Vietnam, despite lagging behind global trends, are on track to catch up with them. The trend of adopting HRMPs in Vietnam continues with the emergence of traditional HRM soft practices and contemporary HRM hard practices. The typical framework of most common HRMPs in Vietnam implies that there is a need to design appropriate training programs for both HR professionals and line managers.

Based on the competitive advantage theory and resource-based theory of the firm, this paper examines the impact of innovation capacity on innovation performance of the tourism industry. Innovation capability is defined as the firm's ability to reconfigure and develop their resources and organizational capabilities to innovate. Innovation capability is measured by four components: sensing capability (SC), combination capability (CC), networking capability (NC), and learning capability (LC). Innovation performance is achievement or success of innovation made by a firm in accordance with the target, described by the three components: internal performance (IP), commercial performance (CP), and social performance (SP). The results of Multiple Regression Analysis (MRA) applied to a sample of 242 directors and CEOs of travel agents in a list of Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Association (HTA) and Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism show that three (SC, CC, NC) among four components (SC, CC, NC, LC) of innovation capabilities have effects on innovation performance. However, the application of fuzzy set theory in the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis indicates that learning capability does not have any impact on firms’ innovation performance. A combination of learning capability and networking capability, nevertheless, creates sufficient conditions for innovation performance.

This study investigates the impacts of various organizational ethical climates (egoism, principle, benevolence) on individual performance of bank employees. The research is conducted on the sample consisting of employees working in the commercial banks with less than 50% of state capital in Vietnam. The total of 364 valid complete questionnaires are input into SPSS database for processing. The research model and hypotheses are tested using the technique of Structural Equation Modeling. The research results show that different perceptions on organization ethical environment would lead to different individual performance. When the employee perceives his/her ethical environment as Eegoism, productivity, quality, and work efficiency would be significantly higher than those of the environments of benevolence. No impact, however, is identified of principle ethical environment on employees’ performance.

Water governance takes a vital role in sustainable development in the developing world. Population growth, economic development and technological improvement have raised the water demand but water supply is becoming unstable due to natural changes. Water scarcity leads to not only environmental pressures but also social tensions due to the fact that water resources are distributed unevenly across countries, regions, and social groups. In this paper, we firstly review water governance around the world and then investigate the water governance issues in Vietnam, especially in the Mekong Delta. International practices including tools, models and challenges of water governance would be valuable lessons for water policies in Vietnam.

This research focuses on the determinants of Vietnam’s outward FDI by studying simultaneously the influence of two pull factors and push factors. In addition, the work examines the differences in assessing the impact of two factors groups on investment decisions by market entry method. The authors conduct qualitative research interviewing six experts as the managers have an important role in the decision to invest directly abroad for their business and quantitative research by multiple regression methods studying samples consisting of 248 enterprises. Push factors group from Vietnam includes competitive pressure of Vietnam market, monetary policy, interest rates of Vietnam, regulations and procedures for licensing investment abroad of Vietnam, incentive policy, and investment incentives to overseas. Pull factors group from host country includes culture–geography, macroeconomics and market, infrastructure, regulations and policies related to investment. Through two groups of factors, the authors withdraw into four groups that impact the Vietnam’s FDI abroad including: (i) culture–geography, (ii) infrastructure; (iii) the macro-economic and market; and (iv) regulations and policies related to investment. The results indicate that two groups of factors, both pull factors and push factors, have impact on Vietnam’s FDI abroad.

Inequality between men and women in the labor market is one of the issues that is of great interest in labor economics. The sticky floor effect occurs when the gender wage gap widens at the lower tail of the wage distribution. The glass ceiling effect in wage exists if the gender wage gap at the top of the wage distribution is wider than other positions. This study uses the dataset of VHLSS2014 and adopts quantile regression to investigate the existence of glass ceiling and sticky floor in the Vietnam’s labor market. The overall results obtained of the entire sample show that there is sticky floor effect but no glass ceiling in the Vietnam’s labor market. However, the results are different when it comes to each labor group. In terms of urban and rural areas, the sticky floor exists, but the glass ceiling does not in both areas. In terms of state and private sectors, while the glass ceiling exists in state sector, the stick floor is only present in the private sector.

Public capital spending positively contributes to economic growth and development in many countries worldwide. However, questions concerning the importance of inflation in the public investment–growth relationship are of great interest. This study examines the role of inflation in the public investment–growth relationship in Vietnam using the two-step GMM Arellano-Bond estimators for a balanced panel data of 52 provinces during the period of 2005–2014. More interesting are the empirical findings. First, inflation significantly increases the volume of public capital spending. Second, public investment and inflation enhance economic growth, but their interaction term impedes it. Third, private investment, government recurrent expenditure, and trade openness are the significant determinants of growth. These findings suggest some important policy implications related to public capital spending and inflation in developing countries, specifically the Vietnam government.

Supply chain management (SCM) has been proven to improve the competitive advantage, and increase the effectiveness of operation in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) (Chin et al., 2012). This study investigates the measurement of SCM practice in Vietnam with the sample of 148 SMEs in Danang. The research findings exhibit the humble degree of SCM practices within these firms. These activities are in the primary form of SCM practice as supplier’s quality management, customer interaction, and customer satisfaction measurement. The findings also indicate the limitations in practicing SCM in Danang SMEs, and propose implications in policy adjustment to promote SCM practices and advance the competitive advantages of SMEs.

This paper examines the relation among corporate governance practices, pyramid ownership structure, and firm value by using a sample of Vietnamese listed firms. Using a sample of 103 non-financial firms listed on HOSE for the period from 2012 to 2014, and employing two-stage least square regression (2SLS) to deal with potential endogeneity, we find that some indicators, commonly adopted as a key components of corporate governance, such as size or independence of board of directors, are imperfect proxies for corporate governance practices. Our results indicate that it is better to employ a corporate governance index (CGI), including 117 criteria developed by Connelly, Limpaphayom, and Nagarajan (2012) since it allows for more comprehensive estimation of corporate governance. More interestingly, our results show that the pyramid ownership plays an important role in the effect of corporate governance on firm value. The results are consistent regardless of whether companies have high or low family ownership.

The success of exports in Vietnam has become a driving force for economic growth since the reform in 1986. The paper uses data from 2010 to 2014 to estimate the gravity model for Vietnam’s exports with the random effect estimation. The empirical results show that the bilateral trade of Vietnam is positively associated with the country’s GDP and importing countries’ GDP. Furthermore, it has a negative relationship with distance from Vietnam to trading partners. These results are akin to those of the previous studies of the gravity model. Particularly, foreign direct investment, border effects and exchange rate play a significant role in promoting exports of Vietnam. Besides, the deepened integration into the region and world market also has significant impacts on expanding exports of Vietnam. Therefore, these factors have contributed to explaining the success in exports of Vietnam over the past few years.