Vincent Edwards - Managers and Management in Vietnam: 25 Years of Economic Renovation (Doi moi)

Vietnam has experienced a remarkable transformation in its economic and social spheres since the Vietnamese Communist Party launched its policy of economic reform or renovation in Vietnamese doi moi at its Sixth Party Congress in 1986. The Vietnamese economy is without doubt richer and more dynamic than it ever was in the years preceding doi moi , years and decades betokened by the war in Vietnam involving substantial US intervention, and before that the burden of struggle against French colonialism. War had been a feature of everyday life in Vietnam, from the outbreak of World War II in 1939, to the collapse of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) in 1975. However, unlike the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in 198990, Vietnam has not undergone a system-changing revolution, rather in 1986 a gradual process of economic transformation was initiated.

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam, to give it its official title, has an area of 331,210 km2, approximately one third greater than the United Kingdom, c. 50 per cent more than the Australian state of Victoria and slightly larger than the state of New Mexico in the USA. Vietnam stretches from north to south along the western shore of the East Sea (or South China Sea), with the area of the northern Red River basin joined to the southern Mekong Delta via a narrow coastal strip. Both the Red River basin and the Mekong Delta are intensively cultivated and densely populated. To the north, Vietnam shares a border with the Peoples Republic of China and to the west, with Laos and Cambodia. Vietnams population was estimated to be 90.5 million in 2011. The major urban centres are Hanoi, the capital (population: 2.7 million), Ho Chi Minh City (population: 6 million) and Haiphong (population: 1.9 million), the population of the urban centres deriving from the 2009 census.

Vietnam is of interest for both researchers and practitioners because of its population size, the way in which its economic system has evolved and its rise as a manufacturing base for overseas companies, particularly in garments and shoes. Vietnam has rejected the exclusive attachment to the Soviet model of economic management, but has not followed the path of the former command economies of the Former Soviet Union and CEE. Similar to China, it has developed a system sui generis (Warner et al. , 2005) that seeks to combine socialism and the market.

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Following the launch of the doi moi policy in 1986, the search for, and adoption of, new business and management ideas was in the beginning slow and discrete. Tom Peters and Robert H. Watermans In Search of Excellence , first published in 1982, appeared in a Vietnamese edition in 1992. The preface of this edition highlighted the need to study, think about and learn from the practice of other countries, stressing at the same time the continuing salience of MarxismLeninism, Ho Chi Minh thought, the perspectives and guiding principles of the Communist Party, and the countrys revolutionary reality.

Nowadays, a wide range of foreign publications on business and management is readily available either in Vietnamese or the original language. The Vietnamese versions generally do without a specific Vietnamese preface. Such texts include textbooks, summaries of management ideas and practices, how to guides, books on developing practical skills, management best sellers, and biographies of well-known managers.