Globally recognized standard certificates are commonly adopted to improve firms’ market access and outcomes. Most studies focus on those certificates’ effects on direct export and firms’ different performance outcomes. Very few studies look at the impact on firms’ global value chain participation through subcontracting work for multinationals and labour productivity. Based on three-year panel data on Vietnamese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this paper finds that internationally recognized standard certificate adoption improves local firms’ possibility of participating in the global value chain and enhances their labour productivity. The estimations consider the potential endogeneity problem of globally recognized standard certificate adoption by applying endogenous switching models. The paper also provides some policy implications.