Internationalization of multinational companies in the globalized context is a popular topic in the academic world and it is also a strong concern of CEO/managers. However, this topic has not been well discussed in the academic community in Vietnam that can be contextualized in the typical transition economy. This paper is designed to explore critical success factors (CSF) of internationalization of large Vietnamese companies that have contributed major revenue from the international market. Through interviews with CEO/managers of successful companies geared toward world markets, the CSFs of internationalization have been identified and categorized into groups in which each CSF has interaction with each other, and together have combined impacts on the success of internationalization. The research results provide a conceptual framework to analyze factors affecting internationalization of large Vietnamese companies. Thank to this conceptual framework, further exploratory and/or confirmatory research can be developed to locate more success factors of internationalization. In addition, some particularly critical factors of internationalization success of Vietnamese companies are found to be useful to both CEO/ managers and policymakers. CEO/managers can benefit from the research results by concentrate their limited efforts/resources in managing these CSFs, and policymaker may design CSF-based policies to boost the internationalization of domestic companies.

A construction project is a designed product made up of labors, materials, and installations in the project positioned on the ground and may include the underground and ground section, and the section in water or on the water surface. It is a civil, industrial, transport, agricultural and rural development, infrastructure, or some other. A key phase in the life cycle of these construction projects is the implementation when building products are made directly with workers, equipment, materials, and managers. If there is a lack of management experience, information, and problem-solving solutions to tackle the risks faced by contractors, especially foreign ones, will fail in controlling the project’s cost. This study was conducted with investigations, discussions, and evaluation of the factors that lead to cost overruns in the construction projects of international contractors in Vietnam. The principal component analysis (PCA) showed that those factors that influence cost overruns these construction projects fall into five general groups, including factors related to (i) the owners, (ii) the foreign contractors, (iii) the subcontractors and suppliers, (iv) state management, and (v) the project itself. Besides, the study proposes solutions to limit cost overruns in construction projects and improve the profitability of international contractors in Vietnam.

The effect of research and development (R&D) expenditure on firm output is an interesting topic, but hardly explored in developing countries due to the unavailability of data. This study investigates this topic in the context of Vietnam by utilizing a novel dataset of 343 firms listed on the Vietnam Stock Exchange in the 2010-2018 period. The effect of R&D expenditure is examined under the production function framework. In order to obtain the robustness of the quantitative results, we estimate the production function with two coherent techniques including the OLS and 2-SLS. An instrumental variable regression technique is adopted to avoid the endogeneity problem between R&D expenditure and other variables. In our empirical analysis, we find that R&D expenditure has a positive and significant impact on output growth. The finding is robust in both OLS and 2-SLS frameworks. Besides, the output elasticity to R&D expenditure of our result is much higher than the estimated elasticity of other countries. The results imply that a 1% increase in R&D expenditure in Vietnam will help to expand the output more than a 1% increase in R&D investment in other countries. The findings from our paper provide important implications for firm managers, investors, and policymakers in Vietnam.

The study aims to contribute to the improvement of project management in Vietnam. It focuses on developing new critical success factors (CSFs) which can be used to assess the success of project management in the country. This is a promising issue considering the rapid changes occurring within the business environment. The reason is because CSFs carry great consequences on project management issues, particularly in the context of Vietnam, which is currently experiencing many big scale projects involving both local and foreign investors. Two applications are utilised. One is to adapt the business model of Belassi and Tukel (1996) to observe the transitional and emerging economy of Vietnam. The other is to examine the data collected from a survey to examine the new CSFs which can then be used to assess the success of its projects and project management in Vietnam. The research results showed some remarkable differences between CSFs of Vietnam and foreign countries in both number of success factors and its impact levels which should be paid attention by foreign project managers/owners when doing investment and project management in Vietnam. The outcome generated can be useful to project owners/managers as well as policy makers in Vietnam’s business environment.