Abstract. We find that in the open and closed ladder systems with vacuum induced coherence, the relative phase between the probe and driving fields has an important manipulation role on the absorption property, while the incoherent pumping has a considerable effect on the phase-dependent absorption property. In the both systems, by adjusting the incoherent pumping the switching from absorption to gain and from lasing with inversion to lasing without inversion (LWI) can be realized and the largest LWI gain can be gotten. However, when the incoherent pumping is absent, for any value of the relative phase, LWI still can't be obtained in the closed system but can in the open system; moreover, in the open system, for suitable values of the relative phase, LWI gain gotten when the incoherent pumping is absent is obviously larger than that obtained when the incoherent pumping presents.