Organización curricular y procesos evaluativos

With regard to informal institutions, it is notable that informal institutions in Vietnam are also transforming with the economic development process, although at a slower speed

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(Meyer & Nguyen 2005). Vietnam serves as a unique context for informal institutional research, with some of its key characteristics including: (i) its rare combination of collectivist culture and the rise of individualism; (ii) the emergence of a new crony capitalism; and (iii) the perception of firms of bribery and corruption.

2.3.2.1 Collectivism culture in the rise of individualism

Like many other Asian countries, Vietnam’s culture is described as collectivist rather than individualistic. Vietnamese society is traditionally structured by the community, comprised of interconnected networks of personal relationships (Nguyen, DL 1994; Pham 2008). The personal relationships and collectivist culture seem to radiate strong influence on all social and economic activities, for links between individuals are strong. Personal ties are sustained by shared understanding, trust and credibility, which are generally considered as prerequisites for longer-term relationships (Nguyen, DL 1994; Pham 2008). The introduction of economic reform has, to some degree, impacted on the collective culture of Vietnam. The rise of private economic activities has transformed business relationships to a certain extent. As a result, the rich community culture has been challenged by the rise of individualism and the lack of an environment for that community culture to develop (Do & Phan 2002). Economic development over time has created a somewhat too hybridised environment for collectivist culture to develop healthily.

Firstly, the prolonged central planning economy and communist ideology gave an unnecessarily strong power to civil servants and public officials in allocating economic resources as well as in providing public services for firms. As a result, the power distance between civil servants and businesses has been huge, especially for businesses in the immature private sector (Nguyen, VT et al. 2016). This prolonged practice has gradually formed a mindset in the society that civil servants do not provide public services as part of their duties but have the ‘power’ to grant an advantage to firms. Therefore, until now, when the economy has undergone a transition toward being a market-oriented economy, the remains of the central planning ideology are still active. Civil servants and public officials are accorded certain levels of power, and thus can bring certain benefits for firms (De Jong, Tu & van Ees 2012). This mindset has fashioned the desire to establish personal ties with public servants to pursue personal benefits, which has thus diverged from the collectivist culture. The relationship between community members and civil servants

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may, therefore, reflects a combination of a fading community spirit and the rising individualism.

Secondly, the lack of separation between personal emotional relationships and business issues may have created confusion and degraded community development. In other words, while community culture appreciates trust and reciprocal support among members, the associated actions might be confusing: for example, a focal community member who voluntarily and sincerely radiates these values might be proclaimed as pursuing his personal business intention for self-benefit rather than for community interest. In such a situation, a genuine focal member might refrain from doing community work. In contrast, there exist other community members who intentionally take advantage of community development activities to establish their own relationships for personal benefit. Consequently, the traditional collectivism, where community success was prioritized over individual achievement, has been challenged. More importantly, while the rise of individualism has been pervasive, and the importance of personal networking and relationships in various aspects of doing business in Vietnam has been profound, this is often not publicly recognized (Nguyen, DH 2016).

2.3.2.2 The emergence of the new crony capitalism

During the transition process, the development of the Vietnamese economy has exposed various gaps, especially in the distribution of scarce economic resources. One problem of the early transitional economy was that the formal institutional framework had not been fully developed to reflect and regulate the newly-introduced economic ownership, such as for private enterprises. Hence, distribution of economic resources (such as land, finance, or other manufacturing facilities) has been described as being in favour of the state sector (Napier & Vuong 2013). This ineffective and unfair distribution system has given rise to enormous rent appropriation and capital accumulation opportunities.

Initially, rent appropriation was mostly captured by a specific group whose positions allowed them to control the rent appropriation apparatus, such as politicians, government officials, or civil servants. Gradually, it became clear that rents could be channelled, and commercial benefits be gained by networking and relationship building with those government officials (Fforde 2002). In other words, rent appropriation opportunities have been channelled to the cronies of the above-described group. This channelling has gradually degraded into the problem of ‘crony capitalism’, interest groups

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and corruption (Vuong 2014). However, the ‘crony capitalism’ phenomenon in Vietnam has not been explicitly recognized (admitted) or depicted with sufficient clarity.

2.3.2.3 Bribery and corruption

One of the notable aspects of the informal institutional context in emerging economies is the lack of transparent policies and inefficient monitoring systems, coupled with the existence of rent appropriation opportunities, as well as pervasive administrative red tape, and hence the existence of bribery and corruption. In a recent report of the World Bank on transparency, accountability and corruption in the public sector, the index for Vietnam maintained an average of 3 (1=low, 6= high) for the ten years from 2005 until 2015 (World Bank 2017). The index has thus not improved despite the announced efforts of the lead Communist Party to combat corruption and the implementation of anti-corruption measures by the Government.

In a recent report of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), in March 2017, approximately 66% of 10,000 surveyed enterprises revealed that they had to offer bribes or pay informal fees to public officials. The proportion of firms saying that they had to regularly pay such charges was 12%-15% higher than in the previous survey of 2008-2013. With regard to the amount of informal charges, surveyed firms said that, in the 2014-2016 period, they saw a level comparable to the 2006 baseline, and observed no signs of this lessening. Moreover, it was common for businesses to experience harassment while performing administrative procedures. This indicator significantly dropped from 65% in 2013-2014 to 58% in 2016, but remained higher than the finding in the previous survey (2006-2012) (Malesky 2017).

As reported by Nguyen, VT et al. (2016), bribery and corruption in Vietnam have been viewed by firms as being ‘part of the game’, and many firms have paid bribery so as to ‘feel inclusive’ and to avoid the administrative burden that they would otherwise encounter. However, this phenomenon has degraded the business environment, and can crowd out genuine entrepreneurship and limit its development.

2.4 Vietnamese SMEs in the trade reform era