The paper aims to investigate whether foreign direct investment (FDI) has positive effect on the labour productivity in Vietnam. Labour productivity is the elemental determinant of a country's development level in long-term. In recent years, although increasing consistently, labour productivity of Vietnam remains low in comparison to other South East Asian countries. To identify the direction of effect and the level of effect of FDI and human capital on the labour productivity of Vietnam, Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was used to examine the effect of FDI and human capital on labour productivity in Vietnam from 1986 to 2014. The results of bounds test confirm the existence of cointegration among the variables. Further, the Toda and Yamamoto Granger causality test affirms that there is unidirectional causality running from foreign direct investment and human capital index to labour productivity. The empirical results provide strong statistical evidence that foreign direct investment and human capital has a positive impact on labour productivity in Vietnam in long-term. These findings imply that workers are expected to further improve their knowledge, skills and that policy-maker should establish concrete plans to increase human capital. Results from this study provide suggestion necessary for Vietnam to achieve sustainable development.

This paper analyzes agglomeration effects on innovation behavior by small and medium manufacturing enterprises in Vietnam. We use a novel data set of 1,520 small and medium enterprises from 2011 to 2015. We focus on the spatial concentration of economic activities that influence firms’ innovation outcomes. Moreover, we outline firms' and owners' characteristics as we examine the role of entrepreneurs and other covariates such as firm size, age, and the number of establishments in fostering their firm's innovation. Empirical results show the following: agglomeration contributes to the firms' innovation. Firms were less likely to innovate when they become larger in size, but microfirms were less innovative than others. Firms were found to be more innovative if they produce more than one product and operate in different cities or provinces. In contrast to the strong effects of agglomeration on firm innovation, firm‐level characteristics, especially that of owners, exhibit a weaker or insignificant role.

Purpose Internationalization is viewed as an important strategy in the context of a country in transition from central planning to market orientation. Efforts to internationalize universities are being carried out at both national and institutional levels. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been no study to investigate how individual institutions approach internationalization and what they gain from that process. This paper aims to investigate the enhancement of teachers’ and students’ knowledge and skills using internationalization in Vietnam universities as a strategy. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews with leaders from 12 universities were conducted to investigate their perceptions, strategies and perceived outcomes of the internationalization process of their universities. Data analysis involved coding the transcripts of interviews into themes. Findings Results show that current approaches to internationalized activities in Vietnamese universities are ad hoc in nature, while resources and language incompetence of staff and students are limited. In line with other previous studies, limited resources and lack of English competence among educators and students were found to be the key obstacles and challenges for internationalized activities. The authors also note an issue that apparently has not been raised elsewhere in the relevant research literature, which is the challenge for the sustainability of knowledge production via research and publications. Originality/value Findings from this study not only contribute to Vietnamese universities but also to other developing institutions which do not have strong international exchange programs or have not experienced strong benefits from international exchange programs.

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.