To explore women leadership in the collectivist culture: the business context of Vietnam master of business administration

Abstract

Nowsday, women leadership has been researching by many scholars all around the world, especially Western countries when gender equality is increasingly recognized and the rights of women are more and more focused by the Government and the society. Moreover, in the age of global development, when people have a lot of opportutinities to approach innovations, women have more and more opportunities to develop their careers instead of doing family chores as before. However, seems to be very little research related to Asian women, especially for countries with the collectivist culture with the longstanding root of Confucian and people are influenced by the values of Confucianism, which greatly affect the status of women in society. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore women leadership in the collectivist culture with the business context of Vietnam. This exploratory qualitative study was carried out in two phases, including indeep semi-structure interviews with 10 participants from multiple stakeholders and thematic analysis for new findings. After analyzing the collected data, this study indicated that Vietnamese female leaders are appropriate for transformational leadership style when working in higher positions in enterprises, especially privately owned enterprises and foreign-invested enterprises. Furthermore, female leaders with open-mindedness and modern mindset will be more suitable for transformational leadership style.