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Vietnamese early career academics' identity work: balancing tensions between East and West

Vietnamese early career academics' identity work: balancing tensions between East and West
Vietnamese early career academics' identity work: balancing tensions between East and West
Through a narrative analysis of 33 interviews with Vietnamese early career academics, we explore whether a Confucianist/collectivist academic context in Vietnam has a key influence on academics’ identity work, within the embrace of encroaching managerialist practices. We show how these academics from 11 universities negotiated identity alignment and identity tensions between such cultural orientation and managerialism. On the one hand, a Confucianist ethic underpinning higher education in Vietnam is likely to encourage academics to engage in managerialist practices, as it promotes harmony and loyalty to their respective university and its global, ‘excellence’ goals. On the other hand, a cultural underpinning of collegiality can create tension with the individualist nature of managerialist practices. Our recommendations for universities in a similar context are to adapt the more individualistic performative approaches borrowed from the West by crafting their own collegiate, soft managerialist hybrid practices.
0307-5079
Jones, David
01e78d44-2e35-4045-a156-f8aca4499cfb
Vu, Trang
f710d9f1-9bf1-4919-bc0e-144ec873f361
Bui, Hong T.M.
26d17e90-e724-44e2-b033-121c9f9ba4fd
Jones, David
01e78d44-2e35-4045-a156-f8aca4499cfb
Vu, Trang
f710d9f1-9bf1-4919-bc0e-144ec873f361
Bui, Hong T.M.
26d17e90-e724-44e2-b033-121c9f9ba4fd

Jones, David, Vu, Trang and Bui, Hong T.M. (2021) Vietnamese early career academics' identity work: balancing tensions between East and West. Studies in Higher Education. (doi:10.1080/03075079.2021.1876651).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Through a narrative analysis of 33 interviews with Vietnamese early career academics, we explore whether a Confucianist/collectivist academic context in Vietnam has a key influence on academics’ identity work, within the embrace of encroaching managerialist practices. We show how these academics from 11 universities negotiated identity alignment and identity tensions between such cultural orientation and managerialism. On the one hand, a Confucianist ethic underpinning higher education in Vietnam is likely to encourage academics to engage in managerialist practices, as it promotes harmony and loyalty to their respective university and its global, ‘excellence’ goals. On the other hand, a cultural underpinning of collegiality can create tension with the individualist nature of managerialist practices. Our recommendations for universities in a similar context are to adapt the more individualistic performative approaches borrowed from the West by crafting their own collegiate, soft managerialist hybrid practices.

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Accepted/In Press date: 27 January 2021
e-pub ahead of print date: 27 January 2021

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 454265
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/454265
ISSN: 0307-5079
PURE UUID: 1412c743-1417-4f05-ae55-2e356c2f01b5
ORCID for Trang Vu: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-7146-2814

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Date deposited: 04 Feb 2022 17:35
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 04:11

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Contributors

Author: David Jones
Author: Trang Vu ORCID iD
Author: Hong T.M. Bui

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