1st Edition

Managers and Management in Vietnam 25 Years of Economic Renovation (Doi moi)

By Vincent Edwards, Anh Phan Copyright 2013
    172 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    152 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book presents a comprehensive overview of managers and management in Vietnam, based on extensive original research, including interviews with a large number of managers in Vietnam. It shows how management in Vietnam is best understood from the perspective of Vietnamese managers themselves, rather than in terms of Western or Asian models of management. It discusses the range of enterprises in the Vietnamese economy, which, until 1986, was dominated by large state-owned enterprises and Soviet-style central economic planning, and where there is now a much greater variety, with a mix of privatised state-owned enterprises, foreign-owned companies, joint ventures and a very large number of relatively small private companies, all operating in a social market economy where Party ideology emphasises a balance between economic growth and workers’ rights. The book demonstrates how the tensions arising from this economic landscape are reflected in the views and actions of managers as they balance economic and social goals in their work, and how their activities are constrained further by the enduring influence of local culture which is not always amenable to imported ideas and methods. As many managers have worked in different kinds of companies, the book also reveals a great deal about management in different contexts and also about how companies have changed as the reform process has evolved.

    1. Introduction  2. Philosophical Foundations  3. The Evolution and Structure of the Vietnamese Economy  4. Company Contexts  5. The Evolution of Vietnamese Management  6. Sense and Sensibility  7. Development and Self-development: Organizational Insights (1)  8. Development and Self-development: Organizational Insights (2)  9. Development and Self-development: East and West  10. Characterizing Vietnamese Managers and Management  11. Whither Vietnamese management?

    Biography

    Vincent Edwards is Emeritus Professor of International Management at Buckinghamshire New University, and Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Anh Phan is Associate Dean of the School of Business Administration, International University, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City

    ‘Always thoughtful and at times inspirational this is a uniquely integrated account of managers and management in Vietnam.’ - Peter Lawrence, Emeritus Professor, Loughborough University

    'We all need to know more about the new economic reforms in Vietnam and their implications for global business. This clearly written book is one of the best on Vietnamese management at hand. It will surely fill a gap in the market.' - Malcolm Warner, Professor and Fellow Emeritus, Wolfson College and Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Coauthor of New Human Resource Management Models in China and India, London: Routledge, 2012.

    'This is a comprehensive book on the nature and substance of Vietnamese management. It provides a philosophical foundation of Vietnamese management, including Confucianism, Marxism-Leninism, capitalism and nationalism as well as portraying the role of different managers and their development among different ownership systems under the economic transformation. This is a valuable book for an audience who wants to have a better understanding of transitional economy in general and management practices in a socialist market economy in particular.' - Professor Ying Zhu, Director of the Centre for Asian Business, the University of South Australia

    'This is a concise, well-written book, which is both scholarly and readable. It has a substantive bibliography and a short index. It should serve both as a short text and a work of reference... Since there is very limited amount of literature available on Vietnamese management compared with what one can find on the Chinese case, one can only welcome this new work as a helpful contribution to the literature and to understanding this new variation of management in a transitional economy.' - Malcolm Warner Judge Business School University of Cambridge; Human Systems Management 32 (2013).