Business ethics and culture of people in the south western of Vietnam

This paper featured business culture and ethics of the Southern Vietnamese. Grounded in philosophical and theoretical discourse, this paper aims to identify principles and guidelines for ethical conduct in the South-West of Vietnam, adopting a normative approach.

BUSINESS ETHICS AND CULTURE OF PEOPLE

IN THE SOUTH-WESTERN OF VIETNAM

Dang Hung Vu1

1 An Giang University, VNU - HCM

Information:

Received: 26/12/2018

Accepted: 13/05/2019

Published: 11/2019

Keywords:

culture, business ethics,

values, norms, the South-West

of Vietnam

ABSTRACT

This paper featured business culture and ethics of the Southern Vietnamese

Grounded in philosophical and theoretical discourse, this paper aims to identify principles and guidelines for ethical conduct in the South-West of Vietnam, adopting a normative approach People in the South-West of Vietnam have great values and norms in business, e.g concessive, creative and truthful in doing business, which enables them to go internationalization

However, they were found to be not disciplined and gullible while pursuing their business goals Business culture and ethics in the context of Vietnam need to be further investigated in terms of an empirical approach

1 INTRODUCTION

The South-West is one of seven cultural regions

of Vietnam This country has three large cultural

regions: The North, The Middle and The South,

which are composed of seven cultural sub-regions

(Tran Ngoc Them & Dinh Thi Dung, 2014) The

South region is divided into two cultural

sub-regions: The South-West and the South-East

areas The South-West area includes 13 provincial

units: Long An, Dong Thap, Tien Giang, Ben Tre,

An Giang, Vinh Long, Tra Vinh, Kien Giang, Hau

Giang, Soc Trang, Bac Lieu, Ca Mau and Can

Tho City The South-West area is 40,518 square

km, inhabited by more than 17 million people, or

20% of Vietnam’s population There are four

major ethnic groups in this sub region: Viet

(91,97%), Khmer (6,88%), Chinese (1,03%) and

Cham (0,09%) (Tran Ngoc Them & Dinh Thi

Dung, 2014, p 85) Viet people is the major

ethnic group in this area This South-West society

have been said to have a specific history and

special people, which have made significant contributions to the development of Vietnam (by Tran Ngoc Them et al., 2014) This paper aims to investigate business ethics of people in the South-West area of Vietnam

Business ethics refers to the business philosophy

of business societies, groups of people who share

a common set of values and norms in terms of business Values are assumptions that a society believes to be good, right and desirable Norms are social rules and guidelines for appropriate behaviours in particular situations Hill (2008) holds that values provide the context where norms are established and justified The term business ethics refers to values and norms in business situations

Culture, which is referred to as a system of values and norms, determines how people behave in terms of ethics (Sinclair, 1993) This paper investigates business ethics of people in the South-West society by studying a set of values

and norms that guides people how to do business

appropriately in this society This study aims to

examine ethical principles and problems arising in

business environment of the South-West society

There are two approaches to business ethics: the

empirical and the normative, which have

produced two powerful streams of business

research (Donaldson & Dunfee, 1994) Normative

approaches refer to what individuals must do,

while descriptive approaches refer to what

individuals do in ethical situations (Fukukawa,

2003) This paper was grounded in philosophical

and theoretical discourse, aiming at identifying

principles and guidelines for ethical conduct in the

South-West society Therefore, normative

approach is adopted in this study The term

normative is used in the philosophical sense

(Donaldson & Dunfee, 1994), which is concerned

about a prescriptive rather than descriptive term

In this vein, this paper provides guidance about

actions or policies instead of describing actions

and policies by businessmen Archive data from

works of cultural study were used

The next section of this paper presents principles

and guidelines for ethical conduct in the

South-West society The last section discusses

managerial recommendations for those who do

business in this region

2 BUSINESS ETHICS OF THE

SOUTH-WEST VIETNAMESE

This paper follows cultural dimensions presented

in the study of Tran Ngoc Them et al (2014)

Four cultural dimensions include perception &

organisational culture, behaviours towards natural

and social environment, and cultural traits Ethical

principles and guidelines will be presented in 4

themes

2.1 Perception and organisational culture

Viet people in the South-West believe in Yin and

Yang philosophy, so they prefer the balance in the

world’s principles, in their life and characteristics

As a result, too extreme behaviours are not

acceptable Win-win strategy is preferable in the

South-West society, compared with win-lose strategy In negotiation, a businessman in the South-West may fail in unessential objectives to win his major ones In turn, he expects his partners to make concessions In short, concession

is an ethnic norm in the South-West

The enormous natural resources in the South-West form generosity of people in the region Because of large population in small area of the

North, sào (equivalent to 360 m2) was used as a measure unit of land One sào in the Middle of Vietnam is equal to 497 m2 People in the

South-West used a long bamboo ruler, called cây tầm, to

measure their land This ruler is about 3 metres

long (one tầm) A land of 12x12 tầm (36x36 =

1,296 m2, rounded to 1,300 square metre, is one

công One unit of land in the South-West is 2.6

times larger than that of the Middle, and 3.6 times

of the North In business, a dozen (chục) of fruit could be 12, 14, 16, or even 18 in the South-West, depending on the kinds of fruit and business location These examples show that people in the South-West originally owned many favourable natural conditions, not only land but also weather, fishery, forestry and so on These favours enable people in the South-West to be more egregious than those in the Middle and the North In the event of this, people in the North are used to cheating their customers, but people in the South-West do not People in the South-South-West seems to

be truthful Business partners are expected to be sincere and faithful People in the South-West are happy to offer you extra things, very generous, but cheating is uncommon in this society People in the South-West are characterized by a

specific working style, called “tài tử” Literally, this terminology, tài tử, is a very well-known kind

of art performance in this region, which is typically performed by farmer-artists This kind of performance with folk music was recognized as UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of

Humanity By using this term, tài tử working style

means dilettantism and unconscientious work habits Specialization is not popular in the

workplace Characterized chiefly by the

replacement of hand tools with machines, robots

and automation, industrial age requires advanced

and disciplined workers However, labourers in

the South-West seem to be not disciplined This

habit stems from liberal disposition Because of

favourable natural conditions, people in the

South-West are not disciplined by lack of

commitment to their studying, learning and

working, although some of them are advanced and

intelligent

2.2 Behaviours towards natural environment

Rivers and water are two natural features of the

South-West, which causes specific features of

business culture and ethics The region is covered

with a river network running into the sea As a

result, transportation on water was developed very

early Agricultures, fishery, boat building industry

and commerce were also developed

Natural resources from rivers and sea were

plentiful, but were extensively exploited recently,

and as a result became exhausted Perception of

abundance of natural resources causes overuse of

the resources It seems that environmental

protection was not educated well in this society

Children were told much about the abundance of

natural resources Although governmental and

non-governmental organizations pay attention to

education about environmental protection, the

tragedy of the commons is found in this society

People and firms continue to cause deterioration

of the environment through depletion of resources

such as air, water and soil Values and norms in

terms of environmental protection might stem

from the perception of endless natural resources in

the past Efforts to study, to work and to protect

the natural environment are limited due to this

wrong perception

2.3 Behaviours towards social environment

People in the South-West are heartfelt and

sincere, which is clearly shown in business

culture Sellers prefer a fixed price, so bargain is

not necessary No matter you are new or regular

buyers, sellers in the South-West are very sincere

in business They are truthful They sell at the same prices for both local people and strange customers Sellers on other regions, e.g in the North, are ready to offer exorbitant prices to those who have Southern accent Overprice is not popular in the South-West

In social relations, people in the South-West are frank and forthright They are expressive when doing business They are black and white Business transactions could be cancelled once for all when ethical principles are betrayed They are realistic and of commercialism; actions are highly appreciated more than words Poetic expressions are not usual in the society Due to the love of reality and forthrightness, businessmen in the South-West prefer to express their goals, interests and viewpoints; but it seems that they are in some cases not very successful in negotiation because

of ineffective verbal communication

2.4 Cultural traits in business

Forthrightness makes people in the South-West be faithful, and gullible As earlier mentioned, businessmen are very faithful and sincere in business Making rough approximation of quantity is usual in business Traders measure the quantity of their commodity based on their common sense and the containers of commodity, known as lump-sum Both buyers and sellers are not choosy or concerned about details; they do not drive hard bargains Because they are faithful, and they believe in others, business deals are made quickly However, this trait causes a negative consequence, people in the South-West are not careful in business transactions They are gullible,

so get deceived by unfaithful partners They are sometimes careless

Because of forthrightness, people in the South-West are hot-tempered They quickly express their uneasy feelings without delay On one hand, they almost forget uncomfortable feelings after expressing them However, they do not care about social situations of the feelings, so they usually do

not postpone taking in these situations until a

good time to find a way around problems arising

in the situations They also do not concern about

hierarchy while showing the emotions Therefore,

on the other hand, expression of bad feelings not

in a right time might cause unexpected

consequences A full agreement with businessmen

in the South-West might not be reached due to

their bad temper

3 DISCUSSION

People in the South-Western have great values

and norm in business This enables them to go

internationalization However, they need more

motivation and knowledge about sustainable

development in international business

“Walk quickly, speak fast, and soon forget” are

of traits of people in the South-West (Tran Ngoc

Them et al., 2014) Among the first people in the

South-West, immigrants were the ones who wish

to break new grounds to the South There were

acculturation and economic exchanges among

immigrants of multi ethnic groups: Khmer,

Vietnamese from the North, Chinese, Indonesian,

and so on (Ly Tung Hieu, October 03, 2017)

People in the South-West are open, sincere, and

forthright in business They are also active and

creative in work They own good values for doing

business, since creativity is one of personality

traits to a successful 21st century business (Keller

& Richey, 2006)

Fertile natural resources in the South-West, on the

one hand, are good conditions for development;

on the other hand, these good conditions limit the

creativity of people in the South-West In

addition, it is essential to be concerned about

environmental programs, and business ethics

education It is to protect the natural environment

for clean air, nourishing food, and freshwater

National programs for environmental protection

and clean farming have been conducted, for

example the program “Along with farmers to

protect the environment” in 22 provinces of the South (Ngoc Ngoc, February 26, 2018; Trong An, April 4, 2017)

People in the South-West own good values for doing business because of their forthrightness They are fair and square They are happy to express their wish to business partners However, they are hot tempered, therefore in some case they rush to make decisions without careful consideration Lack of consideration and rushing might lead to failure in doing business They are truthful and gullible

Despite good traits, people in the South-West may lack some necessary traits for doing business Keller and Richey (2006) found that crucial traits for business success are passionate and compassionate heart, creative and disciplined mind and agile and collaborative performance This study did not provide enough empirical evidence for these traits of people in the South-West However, it could be seen that the people need a disciplined mind because of their liberal disposition

There is a need for further study on traits of people in the South-West and their business performance, providing theoretical framework and enough evidence A limitation of this study is the use of normative approach with archive data

Values and norms have changed, as “culture is

changing at warp speed” (Lord & Lord, 2010, p

1) Therefore, future studies applying empirical approach will be able to provide more reliable and the most updated evidence Future studies aim at comparing our understating about business culture and ethics in the past vs the present In addition, the theoretical framework of this study is not specific to a research context, e.g business negotiation, Corporate Social Responsibility (SCR) Further study on business culture in the South-West and in Vietnam is necessary in international business research

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