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Some say 'China today-Vietnam tomorrow'. A new book Managers and Management in Vietnam by a UKbased academic and a Vietnamese-based one to some degree confirms this point and examines how management there has evolved since the country opened itself up to market forces with the 'Renovation' (doi moi) policy in 1986, as China did with its 'Open Door' eight years earlier. Professors Vincent Edwards and Anh Phan attempt to cover 25 years or so of this economic renovation to the present in an overview of management based on extensive interviews carried out in Vietnam workplaces. It also attempts to deal with the subject from an indigenous perspective rather than a Western one, which is all to the good. The book is divided into a wide range of chapters, namely, introduction, philosophical foundations, the evolution and structure of the Vietnamese economy, company context, evolution of Vietnamese management, sense and sensibility, development and self-development, characterising Vietnamese managers and management and finally whither Vietnamese management. There are also three appendices, one on statistical data, another on interview-profiles and a last one on a dateline for Vietnam' reforms. Like its giant neighbour, Vietnam was once a command-economy, run on Marxist Leninist lines, with a top-down management structure, inspired by Soviet example. The large state enterprises were run by 'economic cadres', who were appointed by the party-state Organisational Department. For a long time, they were relatively 'red' rather than 'expert'. For many years, Vietnam was divided into two jurisdictions after the 1954 Peace Accords and the North was run on statesocialist lines and the South on a capitalist basis; eventually with reunification in 1976, the whole country became a planned economy.

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