Reducing bureaucracy and encouraging a proactive attitude throughout the workplace

Website: Email : Tel : 0918.775.368
CENTRE FRANCO-VIETNAMIEN DE FORMATION À LA GETION
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GROUP ASSIGNMENT
ON ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
Topic: Reducing bureaucracy and encouraging a proactive
attitude throughout the workplace
Instructor : Richard WARNEMINDE
Done by : CFVG MBA 16A1, Group 2
Bui Thi Diem Huong
Do Thi Thu Thuy
Le Phong Tuan
Mai Huu Luat
Website: Email : Tel : 0918.775.368
Hanoi, December 2007
Website: Email : Tel : 0918.775.368
CONTENT
Page
PREFACE.................................................................................................
Part I - Why bureaucracy and non-proactive are widespread in
Vietnam (especially in state owned enterprises)
1.1. Real situation of bureaucracy and non-proactive in Vietnam
1.2. Why bureaucracy and non-proactive are widespread in Vietnam
(especially in state owned enterprises)
Part II - Solution to reducing bureaucracy and making people more
proactive in Vietnamese organizations
2.1. Why do we have to change
2.2. The difficulties and challenges we face
2.3. Overcome perception challenges
2.4. Moving people up the continuum of behaviors and change the

organization culture.
CONCLUSION.......................................................................................
REFERENCE..........................................................................................
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Group Assignment on Organizational Behavior - CFVG 16A1/Group 2
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Website: Email : Tel : 0918.775.368
PREFACE
In recent years, Vietnam’s economy has quickly developed and integrated
successfully into global business.
In November 2006, Vietnam officially became a member of World Trade
Organization (WTO). This may lead to significantly positive changes to this
country, but it may also make many challenges. For example: unemployment, take
over, competition, dependency or to lag far behind other countries.
For those reasons, each domestic entity is required to rapidly innovate
organizational structure and method of operation in order to adapt to more severely
competitive business environment and moreover extend scope of activities
worldwide. It aims to reduce bad impact and catch good opportunities originated
from globalization.
However, after 2 decades of innovation, many organizations in Vietnam on all
fields are managed and ruined under bureaucracy, especially state-owned

enterprises.
Therefore there is an issue which should be discussed that specify causes and
propose solutions in order to come to wipe old vestige and create new structures
and institutions. This aims to build an dynamic business environment and help each
person to promote the whole ability, to contribute to socio-economic development
in a new era.
So, senior members of the Vietnamese government and top business leaders also
have repeatedly publicly stated that Vietnamese organizations must improve
significantly to compete internationally. This has now become urgent because of
Vietnam's becoming a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Experts
state that there are two areas in particular which must be addressed:
• Bureaucracy must be dramatically reduced.
Group Assignment on Organizational Behavior - CFVG 16A1/Group 2
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Website: Email : Tel : 0918.775.368
• Individuals must be more pro-active. They must show initiative, make
decisions and implement them
PART I :Why bureaucracy and non-proactive are
widespread in Vietnam (especially in state owned
ENTERPRISES)
1.1. Real situation of bureaucracy and non-proactive in Vietnam
The bureaucracy and non-proactive in Vietnam reflects clearly in state owned
enterprises (most in structure and people) where:
• The input and output of state owned companies in Vietnam are set from top
down, each state owned enterprise is a party who performs a specific function
assigned by the state. Vertical structure is still widely applied.
• Power distance is still strong as most junior employees think that seniors have a
lot of experience about work and they know all the things so there is no way or
chance to change. Ascription is overwhelming, people are evaluated by their
working years not on actual results.

1.2. Why bureaucracy and non-proactive are widespread in Vietnam
(especially in state owned enterprises)
Through many studies, there are a lot of reasons but some of them are
overwhelming: (structure, context, environment, commitment, perception, attitude)
• Most of state owned enterprises are structured with functional orientation
(vertical designs): each individual has his/her own job and only focus of that. The
word “complete” means that he/she completes one part, that individual is not
taught or trained to be responsible for the whole job.
Group Assignment on Organizational Behavior - CFVG 16A1/Group 2
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Website: Email : Tel : 0918.775.368
• Their perception is affected mostly by their colleagues that the managers,
supervisors are always correct and right because they have plentiful of experience
of the job.
• Individual only concentrates on the job assigned and not concerns about
customer’s satisfaction, final result of the team work.
• Definition of team work is to group in a team but work individually, in another
words, it can be said “individualism in collectivism”, individual wants feedback
about their own performance as a member of a team first and then for the whole
team.
• Culture of information sharing is weak in Vietnam especially in state owned
enterprises where the person who has information is the one who has advantage. So
if they have information, experience or valuable lessons, they keep for their own.
Information is considered as tangible asset and if someone else know, that means
you lose.
• Speaking up capacity of employees is quite little, people have ideas, however,
they look at the example of precedents (that a lot of people with idea speaking up
are sacked or rejected). State owned enterprises which depend mostly on state
budget are not usually willing to take risks from new idea reality.
• The ideas which are carried out in reality are the ones that come from the top of

the companies (board of managers) who stayed far from the real situation.
Group Assignment on Organizational Behavior - CFVG 16A1/Group 2
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Website: Email : Tel : 0918.775.368
PART II - SOLUTIONS TO REDUCING BUREAUCRACY AND MAKING
PEOPLE BECOME MORE PROACTIVE IN VIETNAMESE
ORGANIZATION
2.1. Why do we have to change
Why we need to change our organization, to reduce bureaucracy and to encourage
employees especially managers to be more proactive?
Vietnamese students have done very well in international competitions and brought
home a lot of prizes and medals but the competitiveness of Vietnamese State
Owned Enterprises (SOEs) is decreasing, SOEs are loosing in international market
and even in domestic one, the growth rate is rather low compared to the private and
foreign sector although they get a lot of subsidies and privileges from the
government. The cause of the problem here is not the ability of the people but the
way our organization do business, the old culture of the organization, the
bureaucratic style.
Vietnam joined WTO in late 2006 and the competition is being more and more
fierce, a number of foreign companies in every fields are coming to VN to do
business. If we want to compete we have to reorganize our structure and to change
our working style if we do not change and do not change immediately we can not
survive. Like a legendary CEO once said: “in order to survive tomorrow we have
to learn to kill ourselves today”.
2.2. The difficulties and challenges we face
The need for Vietnamese SOEs to change is obvious and urgent but why people do
not want to change and only a little progress has been made so far. We should
study and understand the causes in order to have the right solutions to the process.
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