Multi-faceted insights of entrepreneurship facing a fast-growing economy: A literature review

Abstract

This study explores entrepreneurship research in Vietnam, a lower-middle-income country in Southeast Asia that has witnessed rapid economic growth since the 1990s but has nonetheless been absent in the relevant Western-centric literature. Using an exclusively developed software, the study presents a structured dataset on entrepreneurship research in Vietnam from 2008 to 2018, highlighting: low research output, low creativity level, inattention to entrepreneurship theories, and instead, a focus on practical business matters. The scholarship remains limited due to the detachment between the academic and entrepreneur communities. More important are the findings that Vietnamese research on entrepreneurship, still in its infancy, diverges significantly from those in developed and emerging economies in terms of their content and methods. These studies are contextualized to a large extent to reflect the concerns of a developing economy still burdened by the high financial and nonfinancial costs.

A bibliometric review on development economics research in Vietnam from 2008 to 2020

“…This open database quantifies and records data on research in the social science and humanities from 2008 onward. Such efforts have to be fruitful with foundational works in 2017 and early 2018 (Ho et al 2017a , b ; Vuong et al 2018 ), a data article in 2018 (Vuong et al 2018 ), in-depth analysis of entrepreneurship research (Vuong et al 2020b , d ), and investigations of international publishing in Vietnam from various perspectives (Vuong et al 2020a , c , e ).…”

“…The study found that researchers at universities had higher productivity than researchers based at research institutions. In other publications, a dataset of 111 articles in the entrepreneurship research was extracted from the SSHPA for a thorough investigation of the discipline (Vuong et al 2020b , d ). Vuong et al ( 2020b ) suggested a focus on the management side of entrepreneurship, the topics of innovation and creativity or culture are still unexplored territory.…”

“…Vuong et al ( 2020b ) suggested a focus on the management side of entrepreneurship, the topics of innovation and creativity or culture are still unexplored territory. In addition, Vietnamese entrepreneurship researchers still focus on practical issues rather than entrepreneurship theories (Vuong et al 2020d ). The most recent works suggested that more Vietnamese authors have been taking the leading role, and there is a shift from international collaboration to domestic collaboration (Vuong et al 2020e ).…”

The rise of research on development economics in Vietnam: Analyses and implications for the public and policymakers from SSHPA 2008-2020 dataset

“…Vuong et al (2020d) suggested a focus on the management side of entrepreneurship, the topics of innovation and creativity or culture is still unexplored territory. Vuong et al (2020f) founded that Vietnamese entrepreneurship researchers still focus on practical issues rather than entrepreneurship theories. The most recent works suggested that more Vietnamese authors have been taking the leading role, and there is a shift from international collaboration to domestic collaboration .…”

Exploring the most influential papers in Vietnam's entrepreneurship in the past ten years

“…The results are presented in Table 1. [15] Explaining micro entrepreneurship in rural Vietnam-a multilevel analysis 2018 20 [16] Entrepreneurship and creativity in transition turmoil: the case of Vietnam 2013 14 [17] Previous studies suggested there are not many papers on Vietnam's entrepreneurship [18,19]. However, the fields have started to attract more attention because of the stable development of Vietnam [20].…”