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This paper investigates whether and how the financial services offered by an e-commerce platform can help budget-constrained small- and medium-sized suppliers improve their corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance.

The authors examine a supply chain in which a budget-constrained supplier engages in CSR, produces a finished product and sells it on the marketplace of an e-commerce platform. This platform offers financial services to the supplier, choosing among three types of financing models: target rate of return, credit limit and CSR-linked financing. Using a Stackelberg game approach, the authors can drive the equilibrium decisions under each financing model.

The results reveal that all three financing models help improve the supplier's CSR investment as long as consumer sensitivity toward CSR exists. Moreover, the last one leads to the highest profitability of the overall supply chain and each member.

The findings shed light on the role of platform financing and how to design the most appropriate financing model to improve CSR for supply chain managers.

The purpose of this paper is to study the behaviour of a food supply chain possessing two originalities, i.e. a singular structure (40‐day upstream push and 24‐hour downstream pull) and one that suffers from simultaneous fluctuations in raw material supply capacities (due to epizooty) and customer demand (due to customer anxieties and fears) caused by a sanitary crisis.

A simulation model based on the system dynamics principles of Forrester is developed and applied to the French chicken meat supply chain suffering an Avian Influenza crisis.

This model first enables one us to study the regulation mechanisms of the chain that will improve understanding of the supply chain behaviour under environmental perturbations. A what‐if analysis is then implemented to examine the supply chain stability and the influence of flexibility adjustment times, inventory coverage time, slaughtered chicken buffer size and smoothing policies on the supply chain performance in different crisis fluctuation rate scenarios in order to propose necessary logistic policy enhancements.

This work will improve one's knowledge about the buffer inventory problem and the global stability of this multi‐echelon push‐pull supply chain.

The model can be used as a decision system support which aims to minimise the additional costs due to stock level increases as demand decreases as well as exceptional external purchasing sparked by the lack of available products when there is a sudden hike in demand. The research can help decision‐makers of fresh food push‐pull supply chains when they are facing such crises by using both cybernetic representation and computer simulation.

This study deals with a specific food supply chain within the context of a sanitary crisis. A system dynamics model is presented for studying the behaviour of the entire food supply chain threatened by high uncertainties in the supply capacity as well as in customer demand.

During a crisis situation, a poultry supply chain is faced with high variations on fresh chicken meat demand and has therefore to simultaneously manage excessive shelf-life stocks (in case of falling demand) and external purchases due to inventory shortages. In this case, the production plan is often established according to non-accurate sale forecasts which require ongoing adjustment. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

By using system dynamics, the paper developed a model of the French poultry supply chain during a given avian influenza crisis period. The authors compared exponential smoothing forecasting method to a word-of-mouth diffusion model which makes sense in a sanitary crisis context.

An interesting result shows a complex relationship between the sanitary risk (which increases according to the slaughtered chicken's volume and storage time) and the additional external purchases (in case of low production generated by an insufficient forecasting launched 40 days before customer orders).

Additional costs which vary over time are required for further assumptions testing.

The paper proposes to use a forecasting model which is not currently used by the professionals during a sanitary crisis period. This model is able to simulate an internal dissemination of a call for boycott of meat products (cf. negative word-of-mouth spread).

The problem is how to maintain a less risky but significant buffer size to respond to a supply chain coping with both changes in customers’ demand and instability in production capacity.

This chapter clarifies the “dark tourism” in Vietnam; a case study of Hoa Lo Prison Relic. Development orientation of “dark tourism” in Vietnam contributes to healing the wounds of war. The author mainly uses a system approach, method of analysis and synthesis, and method of comparison. “Dark tourism” in Vietnam has not really developed as a specific type of tourism like ecotourism or meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE) tourism. At Hoa Lo Prison historical site, “dark tourism” has been effectively exploited: (1) in the first 6 months of 2023, Hoa Lo Prison welcomes nearly 295 thousand visitors, charging fees of 7 billion VND, the situation of “sold out” takes place regularly; (2) many unique tourism products, one of the successful and widespread tourism products must be mentioned the “night tour” experience; (3) many creative forms of sightseeing with automatic explanation system so that visitors can experience 35 historical stories in their own way; and (4) always create the best conditions for visitors’ sightseeing experience. To promote dark tourism in Vietnam, it is necessary to execute some schemes: (i) enhance the sense of responsibility for peaceful tourism in the operation of monuments; (ii) stakeholders coordinate the organization of the tour program and tourist routes with appropriate contents and forms for each target group, especially foreign tourists; (iii) there is cooperation between national and international experts in organizing the “dark tourism” program aimed at peace, preventing the risk of war and conflict, and overcoming the consequences of war; and (iv) application of scientific and technological achievements in “dark tourism” activities.

“The world needs science, science needs women” is the message given by UNESCO in the program for the development of women in science” (UNESCO, 2017). In Vietnam, women’s participation and achievements in scientific research is considered a great and important resource for industrialization and modernization. Even so, are there gender differences in scientific achievement in the social science research institutes in Vietnam? What factors influence the scientific achievement of female social researchers? The answers will be based on data from a 2017 survey with a sample of 756 researchers, of which 77.6% were female. The survey was conducted by the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, a leading, ministry-level national center for the social sciences in Vietnam. This chapter analyzed the scientific achievements of researchers through their position as principal investigators of research projects and their publications, and factors that may impact this. Bivariate and multivariate analyses of factors that may affect the scientific achievement of researchers found that gender differences in academic achievement in the social sciences in Vietnam was still prevalent. Female researchers’ scientific achievements were lower than those of their male counterparts. The contribution to science of Vietnamese female researchers was limited by many different factors; the most important were the academic rank of the researchers and gender stereotype that considered housework the responsibility of women.

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 examine the levels of integrated reporting disclosure alignment in annual reports by listed firms in Vietnam and the factors influencing these disclosure levels.

Drawing on a sample of 200 listed firms in Vietnam in 2017, the authors constructed a disclosure index based on the content of the International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC) Framework. Using this index, the study measures the extent to which Vietnamese listed firms’ annual reports include the content elements required by the integrated reporting (IR) Framework. The study performs ordinary least square regression to investigate the influencing factors.

The study documents that, on average, Vietnamese listed firms disclose about 43% of the information required by the IIRC Framework. The disclosure levels are positively associated with manufacturing firms, board independence, foreign ownership, government ownership, audit quality and firm size.

Integrated reports have been widely adopted in many countries, but it is still a new issue in Vietnam. This is the first paper providing some insights into the inclusion of the content elements required by the IR Framework by listed firms in Vietnam. It also contributes to the disclosure literature by providing empirical evidence on the factors influencing these disclosure levels. Deriving from the findings, the authors offer recommendations for policymakers on the issue of regulating and implementing IR in Vietnam.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of innovation on the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam.

The paper uses data from the surveys on SMEs in Vietnam conducted by the Development Economics Research Group at the University of Copenhagen, the United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research, Central Institute for Economic Management and Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs, and applies least squared regressions and 2SLS regressions to examine the effect of innovation on the performance of SMEs.

The authors find that SMEs with innovation tend to perform better than SMEs without innovation. The authors further show that the positive effect of innovation on firm performance mainly comes from the effect of improvement of existing products, an important type of innovation in SMEs. This result is persistent when the authors use propensity matching score and 2SLS regression with instrumental variable approaches. Overall, the results show the important role of innovation in enhancing the firm performance of SMEs, which sheds light on the literature on the controversial relation between innovation and SMEs performance in the world.

The major limitation of the paper is the lack of data. Although the database used in the paper is widely used to analyze SMEs in Vietnam, it covers about 2,500 firms in only nine provinces/cities in Vietnam.

Policymakers should enact relevant policies to support SMEs with innovation activities, thereby increasing firm performance and their competitiveness. For instance, encouragement policies or financial incentives (tax reduction or subsidies) for innovative firms should be implemented and/or fostered.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the effect of different types of innovation on the performance of SMEs in Vietnam.

One Commune One Product (OCOP) program, a rural economic development program in Vietnam, aims to empower local communities for sustainable social and economic welfare development, protect the environment and preserve tradition. This study aims to employ this program associated with tourism to support small family businesses in rural areas cost-effectively.

This study used the geographic location mapping method to design tourist routes that connect tourism resources with OCOP producers. A stakeholder approach was employed to identify suggested practical works that need to be implemented while developing this tourism initiative.

Four rural districts of Bac Giang Province, a northern province in Vietnam known as the place of various indigenous people live and traditional craft villages. Many cultural and historical tourist sites have been chosen as sample areas for this study. By using Google map, based on the Bac Giang Tourist Map and a list of recognized OCOP products in Bac Giang Province, main tourist sites (16 locations) and small family businesses (known as cooperatives and households) that have OCOP products (17 places) in the four districts have been identified. Four notable tourist routes have been formed to propose four thematic tours (two 1-day tours and two 2 days-1 night homestay tours). Suggestions for related stakeholders to ensure the sustainability of this initiative are provided.

This study is supposed to be a model of promoting small family businesses through OCOP programs and tourism activities in a sustainable way in Vietnam. The outcome of this study is in line with the stakeholder theory emphasizing the systematic connection of various stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, local communities, government agencies and others towards complex business sustainability. The results of the study cannot conclude the small family businesses in Vietnam because it adopts geographic location mapping alone. Moreover, this study focused on OCOP programs only. Future research can use other methods of primary data collection, especially from tourists' perspectives. Data triangulation can be done to explore and verify the tourist routes that have been formed according to the four thematic tours proposed. Future research could also compare hotels managed by family businesses with non-family businesses.

This study is supposed to be a model of promoting small family businesses through OCOP programs and tourism activities in a sustainable way in Vietnam.