Top Corporate Leaders in Vietnam's Transitional Economy: Origins and Career Pathways

Literature on the corporate elite in transitional economies has focused on the elite's political backgrounds. However, the evolution of the corporate sector amidst decades of transition in these economies suggests that research needs to go beyond origins to focus on career pathways. Adopting a career history analysis, this study constitutes the first systematic attempt to empirically analyze career pathways of top corporate leaders in Vietnam, where, the literature has argued, capitalists emerged from within the state sector. The analysis of an originally constructed database of top leaders of the 100 largest listed firms reveals, firstly, that state‐origin leaders persist alongside newly emerging private‐origin leaders and, secondly, that leaders following different career pathways exhibit different attributes, which influence the leaders' capacity to rise and stay in power. These findings demonstrate how a focus on career pathways would shed new light on the emerging patterns and drivers of social stratification in transitional economies.