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This chapter provides information on the development of Vietnamese education under the influence of global forces based on the analysis of relevant education research and policies using Wolhuter’s frameworks. In the process of coming up with ways to develop education in the face of different influences of globalization, besides having reactions with patterns commonly found in countries around the world, Vietnam also has responses that reflect its own political, sociocultural and economic characteristics. The state still plays a controlling role in education at all levels and many culture-related features that have existed throughout the country’s history have hardly changed, namely aspects related to teachers, learners and teaching and learning methods. To sustain its education in the globalized era, Vietnam must make more efforts in various aspects such as the link between education and employment, the logic of education objectives, the feasibility and appropriateness of curricula, quality of education, especially of higher education and equality in education for underprivileged groups.

Drawing on ethnographic field research on female sex workers and male clients in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s global sex industry, this paper complicates our understanding of human trafficking in two ways. First, introducing the term perverse humanitarianism, the paper extends work on carceral feminism by offering concrete examples of interagency commitments between NGOs and the police. Second, my ethnography reveals that women framed their relationships with male clients as mutually beneficial because the men provided them with alternate pathways to economic mobility outside of sex work. Drawing on the same tropes of victimhood employed by the NGOs, sex workers elicited sympathy from male clients that they leveraged into gifts of money. Using men’s charitable gifts, many women became small entrepreneurs who opened local businesses and empowered other sex workers far beyond what NGOs were able to provide.

Unsustainable logging and illegal logging for domestic and international trade and trafficking continue to lead to deforestation. It is crucial that Sustainable Development Goal 15 ‘Sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, halt biodiversity loss’ is achieved to maintain the livelihoods of people and protect the planet. This is the case in Vietnam as well, where many people, including indigenous groups, rely on the forest for their survival. Drawing on semistructured interviews in Vietnam and a literature review, we investigate how the abuse of forest policies leads to human insecurity. From this, we propose solutions to (1) end unsustainable harvesting and illegal logging (SDG 15.7), (2) integrate the value of forests (culturally and economically) into national and local planning, the development process and poverty elimination strategies (SDG 15.9) and (3) improve the use of forest protection funding provided by international donors.

Microfinance plays a crucial role to reduce the poverty in developing countries. For that reason, the effectiveness of microfinance institutions (MFIs) is widely investigated in the literature. This study examines the levels of efficiency of MFIs in Vietnam and their determinants. The research, then, evaluates the relationship between MFIs’ efficiency and poverty reduction. Data are mainly taken from the MIX market website and other empirical researches. Regarding the methodology, two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to estimate MFIs’ efficiency scores in Vietnam and their determinants, while meta-analysis and statistic descriptions are employed to examine the relationship between MFIs’ efficiency and poverty reduction. The findings show that technical efficiency (TE) of MFIs in Vietnam is considerably high with the average TE score and efficiency of scale being 85.5% and 94.7%, respectively. Size, age, outreach, and market target of MFIs are found not to be determinants of efficiency, while capital structure is. Also, many researches confirm the impact of MFIs’ efficiency to poverty reduction. However, the relationship is different between countries because of particular characteristics and operational mechanisms.

Vietnam is an emerging economy in the South East Asia region. Its Generation Z is gradually taking the lead in the country. But rather than breaking away from the previous generations, this generation also shows a strong preference towards local values and solid commitment to social issues. Thus, traditional culture elements are increasingly integrated in every aspect of Generation Z’s life, such as advertising and fashion. Instead of hanging out at coffee places, they go for bubble tea. They still appreciate the traditional values but integrate them within a modern context. Brands chase after these young people by adapting their values into their products and services. In the work place, the Vietnamese Generation Z is less confident. They are partially lost in career development with poor career counselling in the education system. They desire new experience and new learning opportunities. Generation Z, who were born beginning in 1995, emerges in Vietnam as a fresh and promising force.

Estimation of (in)efficiency became a popular practice that witnessed applications in virtually any sector of the economy over the last few decades. Many different models were deployed for such endeavors, with Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) models dominating the econometric literature. Among the most popular variants of SFA are Aigner, Lovell, and Schmidt (1977), which launched the literature, and Kumbhakar, Ghosh, and McGuckin (1991), which pioneered the branch taking account of the (in)efficiency term via the so-called environmental variables or determinants of inefficiency. Focusing on these two prominent approaches in SFA, the goal of this chapter is to try to understand the production inefficiency of public hospitals in Queensland. While doing so, a recognized yet often overlooked phenomenon emerges where possible dramatic differences (and consequently very different policy implications) can be derived from different models, even within one paradigm of SFA models. This emphasizes the importance of exploring many alternative models, and scrutinizing their assumptions, before drawing policy implications, especially when such implications may substantially affect people’s lives, as is the case in the hospital sector.

This chapter describes how public sector reform (PSR) became important following the ‘Doi Moi’ (renovation) programme in 1986. Restructuring of state-owned sector was regarded as crucial for ensuring the quality of economic growth, and the Vietnamese government (www.chinhphu.vn/portal/page/portal/English) put considerable effort in PSR. The 8th Party Congress (1996) emphasized the urgent need for a more transparent, capable and modern public sector, including efforts to improve law-making process and capacity, reducing burdensome bureaucracy, fighting corruption, increasing leadership by senior officials and improving public service delivery. The government specifies the national PSR Master programme, and the Ministry of Home Affairs coordinates its implementation among ministries, central agencies and provincial governments. Local political leaders (party leaders) determine reforms based on guidelines of the party and government. The author writes that in spite of ambitious public service reform programmes and some positive achievements, the quality of public sector remains poor. The professional capacity of civil service is low, pay is low, corruption is high and processes and structures seem ill-fitted for the market economy. Reform scope is too broad, the capacity of public agencies and civil servants is limited and existing monitoring, evaluation and reporting systems are weak. In some successes, leaders use appointment and promotion to encourage lower level to implement reforms and training to increase understanding. They believe that Vietnamese leadership has become less proactive and vigorous in practicing or embracing bold reform experiments.

Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0) has caused revolutionary changes in various industries of South Asia, including financial services. Financial inclusion has been recognized as an important driver of economic growth. The combination of financial inclusion and the industrial revolution offers exceptional opportunities for business. The present chapter delves into the significance of financial inclusion within the framework of IR 4.0 in Asia and its potential to stimulate growth, innovation, and societal influence. It includes the discourse regarding challenges and opportunities for business in a new era of financial inclusion and the industrial revolution. Based on a thorough discussion, we give practical insights and best practices for businesses aiming to maximize the opportunities offered by financial inclusion in the era of IR 4.0. This chapter provides an in-depth understanding of Asia’s expanding financial inclusion landscape and empowers companies with the information and tools needed to prosper in this dynamic market.

Consumer behavior has evolved because of technological development. Nowadays, consumers carry out the different stages of the decision-making process by combining multiple devices which has been defined as multi, cross and omnichannel behavior. These behaviors have attracted the attention of academics and become a hot topic in literature. As a result, vast amounts of studies on the subject need to be revised and clarified. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to synthetize the primary academic literature that analyzes multi, cross and omnichannel behavior from the consumer point of view. To do that, first, the main concepts (multi, cross and omnichannel) and their differences are clarified. Second, the major findings of channel mix literature regarding the topics, channel scope and theories are exposed and described. Third, the opportunities and future lines of research are presented. This chapter contributes to the literature by clarifying the conceptualization of multi, cross and omnichannel behaviors; offering a complete picture of the main topics, channel approaches and theories addressed in channel mix literature; and presenting future research opportunities and open research questions in a channel mix context that could serve as a starting point to build further research.

Claims and disputes are often unavoidable in the construction industry due to its unique and complex characteristics involving the massive investment of capital, lengthy project duration, and multiple project stakeholders. This chapter intends to identify the critical construction claims attributes, compare the perceptions of major stakeholders on different claim attributes, and investigate the contrast of the top five claim attributes between this study and previous ones. The literature review resulted in 48 claim attributes responsible for the construction project schedule delays. These attributes were then presented to Vietnam construction industry (VCI) practitioners in the form of a questionnaire survey. Data analysis was done based on the collected 113 qualified samples. Relative importance index (RII) was applied to determine the ranking of claim attributes. The results were that the top five causes of claims, that is, payment delays, mistakes by contractor during construction stage, delays in work progress by the contractor, financial failure of the contractor, and frequently changing requirements by the owner, lead to the schedule delays in VCI. These findings can assist the local industry practitioners and foreign companies seeking a share in the VCI market in understanding the causes of construction claims comprehensively and formulating the countermeasures to minimise their impacts and hence reduce the unnecessary losses and raise the likelihood of success as well as maintain sustainable relationships among stakeholders.