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.

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.

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.

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 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