This study aims at sustainably developing rural tourism in An Giang Province, an agricultural province located in the South of Vietnam, by identifying the determinants of the satisfaction and revisit intention of tourists based on both qualitative and quantitative approaches. From exploratory interviews with experts and comprehensive group discussions, we developed a questionnaire for an official survey of 507 tourists at different tour-sites in An Giang Province. It is found that: (1) there are seven key factors affecting the satisfaction of the tourists, including: spirituality, tourism safety and security, people, food and beverage, natural environment, service prices and tourism infrastructure; and (2) revisit intention of tourists is affected by six factors, including: satisfaction, spirituality, tourism safety and security, people, food and beverage and service prices. Among them, spirituality is a new factor to be thoughtfully considered due to its significant influence on both the tourist satisfaction and revisit intention. From these findings, we proposed some managerial implications for the sustainable development of rural tourism in An Giang Province by enhancing the satisfaction and revisit intention of the tourists after they visit the province.

Failure modes and effects analysis ( $FMEA$ ) substantially facilitates the efforts of industrial manufacturers in prioritizing failures that require corrective actions to continuously improve product quality. However, the conventional approach fails to provide satisfactory explanation of the aggregate effects of a failure from different perspectives such as technical severity, economic severity, and production capacity in some practical applications. To fulfill the existing gap in the $FMEA$ literature, this paper proposes an extension by considering associated quality cost and the capability of failure detection system as additional determinants to signify the priority level for each failure mode. The quality cost and capacity are considered as key factors for sustainable survival and development of an industrial manufacturer in the fierce competition market these days. The performance of the extended scheme was tested in an empirical case at a non-woven fabrics manufacturer. Analytical results indicate that the proposed approach outperforms the traditional one and remarkably reduces the percentage of defective fabrics from about 2.41% before the trial period to 1.13%,thus significantly reducing wastes and increasing operation efficiency, thereby providing valuable advantages to improve organizational competition power for their sustainable growth.

This study aims at identifying the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the competitiveness of tourist enterprises in an emerging tourism region – Mekong Delta in Vietnam with an empirical case of Ben Tre Province. Combining qualitative and quantitative research methods, we conducted a survey of 250 respondents including directors, deputy directors, managing and running tourism businesses. Through statistical tests of scale reliability, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling, we found that there are five perspectives of CSR significantly affecting the enterprise competitiveness, including (1) human-oriented CSR, (2) social activity–oriented CSR, (3) partner-oriented CSR, (4) environment-oriented CSR and (5) product and service quality–oriented CSR. Especially, this study identified the important roles of three new elements discovered through our expert interviews and group discussions, including ‘connection between business culture development strategy and the local and native cultures’, ‘tourism products/services promoting local special features’ and ‘tourism products/services promoting green environment’. From these findings, we proposed some managerial implications for policymakers to have proper policies in promoting CSR among tourist enterprises and improving their competitiveness.

The current trend of international integration urges every business organizations to continuously improve their competitive advantage for their survival and sustainable growth. And Kaizen has been a preferable approach in practice. Due to the special role of SMEs in the Vietnam economy, improving their competitiveness is critical. Thus, this study is aimed at identifying determinants of the successful Kaizen implementation and sustainable performance so that SMEs can have proper actions and prioritize their operations within their available resources. Through a formal survey of 213 participants from 62 SMEs which have been successful in implementing Kaizen and appropriate statistical analyses, seven important determinants have been identified, namely, (1) supports from senior management; (2) training; (3) environment; (4) assessment; (5) motivation; (6) mindset; and (7) engagement of all members in the organization. Among them, “mindset” is newly proposed in this study through a qualitative research and found as crucial component in the model. The finding obviously fulfills the existing literature. Moreover, the first letters of the identified factors are orderly congregated as “STEAM‐ME” which is a novel model for the successful Kaizen implementation and the sustainable performance of SMEs in Vietnam. “STEAM‐ME” implies that organizations need to have a new airflow as “steam” to make all of its members refreshed and brimful of energy to gain significant success in implementing Kaizen, and improve their business performance as well as competitive advantage for their sustainable development. Notably, the novel model can efficiently demonstrate organic relationships among its components which all have positive and significant impacts on the successful Kaizen implementation and sustainable performance of SMEs in Vietnam.