Digital Transformation in a Vietnamese Public University: Beyond Software Acquisition

Digital transformation in higher education is often reduced to the acquisition of software, digital platforms, and hardware. This study examines how technology, organizational conditions, environmental pressures, and internal resources are associated with institutional digital transformation in a Vietnamese public university. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted among employees of Hanoi University of Natural Resources and Environment with direct operational experience of institutional digital systems. Of 300 questionnaires distributed, 269 were returned and 250 valid responses were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 26.0. The 28-item instrument covered five constructs, and the analysis included reliability testing, exploratory factor analysis, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression. All four factor groups were positively associated with digital transformation. Internal resources had the strongest standardized coefficient (β = 0.389), followed by organization (β = 0.272), technology (β = 0.140), and environment (β = 0.138); the model explained 38.7% of the variance after adjustment. The findings indicate that software is an enabling foundation but is insufficient on its own. Sustainable institutional transformation also depends on data quality, infrastructure, financing, specialized personnel, digital skills, leadership, coordination, and maintenance. The study contributes by distinguishing organizational governance capacity from internal resource capacity within an integrated TOE-RBV perspective.