Wealth sharing for success in Vietnam: fishing for the net gain

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to posit that orthodox analysis of government–business and business–business organizations in Vietnam involves subtle constituency and “beneath-the-surface” relationships, largely ignored in reviews of the post-Fixed graphiceconomy, but are nevertheless worthy of inspection. Design/methodology/approach - – Following a review of the theoretical terrain regarding Vietnamese political-business-economy, the authors provide an alternative view showing how the business sector has developed net(work)s of cooperative mechanisms to work with the Vietnamese Government and its bureaucrats. Findings - – While a delicate interplay of politics can be identified in the net(work) relationships, such constituency politics do not seek to challenge the existing authority of the state or the ruling elite. Rather, the small-scale constituency politics are constructed to operate within the dominant polity and work with corporatist strategies to secure personal and group gain. The strategies used are unique in that they exhibit sympathy with socialism, yet succeed in exploiting the pro-entrepreneur characteristics ofFixed graphic. Originality/value - – This paper supports the analysis that the dominant political culture in Vietnam is, and will continue to be, dominated by the Communist Party of Vietnam machine. However, the authors have shed light on the “below-the-surface” political activity that exists and persists throughout the business–business and government–business relationships in Vietnam and present evidence of the pluralist behaviors in these relationships that have hitherto been bypassed in orthodox state-qua-state analysis of Vietnamese polity. Taken as a whole, the existence and persistence of the net(work)s encourages a conclusion that the polity of Vietnam is a more complex process than previously thought.