TOURISM BUSINESS ACCULTURATION IN THE CONTEXT OF
INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION
Assoc. Prof. PhD. Nguyen Pham Hung1
PhD. Nguyen Thi Thuy Ngan2
1. INTRODUCTION
Vietnam is a culturally diverse country due to the process of
regional and world cultural acculturation over the past two thousand
years. With its position as the “crossroads” of cultural exchanges and
contacts between East - West and South - North, Vietnamese culture
has imported elements adapted to suit the country’s conditions.
Vietnamese culture is created from two sources, endogenous and
foreign. The process of cultural acculturation takes place across the
entire cultural life, including business culture.
Acculturation is absorbing new cultural quintessence from foreign
countries to develop domestic culture in a new context. In tourism
business culture, there are many acculturation processes. However, in
our opinion, there are 3 typical processes towards absorbing advanced
foreign business cultural values, including: Acculturation industrial
business culture; Acculturation of Western rationality business culture
and Acculturation of free market business culture.
1
Associate Professor. PhD. Nguyen Pham Hung - Senior lecturer, Department of
Tourism Studies, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Hanoi National
University.
2
PhD. Nguyen Thi Thuy Ngan - Vice Dean of the Faculty of Tourism, Ho Chi Minh
City University of Culture, VITEA chief of staff.
TRAINING AND USING CULTURAL TOURISM HUMAN RESOURCES... 75
2. ACCULTURATION INDUSTRIAL BUSINESS CULTURE
Uncle Ho said that: “Our country is an agricultural country, our
people are a nation of farmers”1. We are farmers with thousands
of years of agricultural culture and smallholder production. When
participating in the tourism industry, we must definitely change and
be equipped with industrial culture, only then can become a human
being of today’s industrial economy.
Vietnam is an agricultural country, the thinking of Vietnamese
people is agricultural thinking, the working style is agricultural style,
and more broadly, it is heavily influenced by agricultural culture, so
labor productivity is very low2. Meanwhile, tourism is an industry
that requires industrial culture with very high industrial thinking and
industrial cultural awareness. Awareness of the industrial age, industrial
habits, industrial manners, industrial discipline in tourism is very
important. Tourism business culture is an industrial culture, expressed
in organization, management, and business with scale, connectivity,
scientific accuracy, discipline, standards, efficiency, and productivity.
force. Competitiveness, attractiveness of goods... Therefore, tourism
business culture helps tourism workers come into contact with the
modern requirements of specific economic sectors.
In the past, Vietnam tourism was hardly developed, it was not an
economic industry, but only had forms of touristic activities, not for
economic purposes.3 Tourism began to appear in the early twentieth
century, under the influence of the tourism industry brought by the
French, serving a minority of high-income people. Despite having a
history of nearly a century, Vietnamese tourism is still in a state of low
capacity, because of the historical circumstances of a country that has
gone through fierce wars4, or gone through economic management
1
Tran Quoc Vuong (2013), In the realm. Haunting of the past, Writers’ Association
Publishing House, reprinted, H. 2013.
2
According to reports from specialized agencies, the labor productivity of Vietnamese
people is currently estimated to be 1/15 of Singapore’s and 1/30 of Japan’s.
3
Nguyen Pham Hung, “Tourism and Monarchy in Vietnam” (Tourism and Monarchy
in Vietnam, Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol. 1, No. 3, 2015).
4
Vietnam-France War 1945 - 1954, Vietnam-American War 1954 - 1975, Southwest
border war 1978, Northern border war 1979 - 1989...
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mechanisms centralized economic planning. Vietnam tourism was
formed and developed after peace and unification of the country, and
has truly become an important economic sector only since the 90s of
the twentieth century.
The process of acculturation in tourism business involves the
difference between tradition and modernity in business culture, when
traditional business culture becomes a hindrance to business, forcing
it to be changed to suitable. The tradition of business culture is the
resistance of the models, patterns, styles, knowledge of the agricultural
culture and the centrally planned economy.
The process of acculturation is moving to a market economy with
new, modern models, forms, styles, and knowledge, the long-term goal
is to fully develop the market economy.
The values of modern business culture in integration have become
the norm. There are still conflicting points with traditional business
culture, which need to be absorbed and transformed accordingly.
The most difference is difference between agricultural business
culture and industrial business culture. The characteristics of industrial
culture are expressed in planning, discipline, reason, professionalism,
and time consciousness. The process of changing business culture from
traditional to modern is reflected in the change from sentimentalism
to rationalism, from a relative sense to an absolute sense, from
arbitrariness to discipline, from village rules to state rules, from
community and crowd consciousness to individual consciousness,
from small fragmentation and isolation to the ability to connect, on
a large scale, from lack of planning to having a plan. Planning, from
agricultural time consciousness to industrial time consciousness1, from
the awareness of not attaching importance to business in the social
occupational stratification (scholars - farmers - workers - traders)
to promoting business (entrepreneurs)... At the same time, there is
1
The unit of time in agricultural culture is often measured in months or quarters, so
the pace of labor is often slow and stagnant; The unit of time in industrial culture
is often measured in hours, even much smaller in the fields of mechanization and
automation, so the labor pace is often fast and urgent.
TRAINING AND USING CULTURAL TOURISM HUMAN RESOURCES... 77
the process of absorbing scientific achievements. Learn advanced
technology, especially information technology and automation to
modernize tourism business.
The agricultural business culture, which is slow, stagnant, isolated,
and amateurish, is most clearly changed by the dynamic, interconnected,
and professional industrial business culture.
3. ACCULTURATION OF WESTERN RATIONALITY BUSINESS CULTURE
Tourism and tourism business culture were created by Westerners,
so they are unfamiliar to the East in general and Vietnam in particular.
The difference in East-West business culture creates the need to adapt
to Western tourism business culture as a necessity.
Since the 20th century, before the massive wave of Western intrusion,
researchers have not only talked a lot about cultural differences
between countries and peoples, but also emphasized the differences in
business culture between countries. East and West. There are concerns
about the East’s “inferiority” with the West in economic development.
But the rise of China, India and the Asian dragons raises the question.
Where is the limit of that East-West difference and can it be overcome?
Duy Tan lessons from the Meiji era in Japan1, from the Opening-Up
reform in China under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping2, or the strong
rise of the “Asian dragons” are direct lessons about the acculturation of
Western business culture. The difference in East-West business culture
1
Emperor Meiji (1852 - 1912) was the 122nd Emperor of Japan. He is considered the
king with the greatest contributions in Japanese history, having reformed the country
towards Western capitalism, implementing the policy of “learning from the West,
catching up with the West, surpassing the West”, and bringing Japan became a modern
country, escaping the risk of becoming a colony of Western imperialist countries while
colonialism was thriving. He implemented the Meiji reform following a capitalist
trend, promulgating the first Constitution in Japanese history (1889), creating
conditions for Japan to quickly become a world power (https://vi.wikipedia.org).
2
Deng Xiaoping (1904 - 1997), Chinese leader, after Mao Zedong died in 1976, he took
over the leadership, implementing a series of socialist market economic reforms
learned from the West. profound influence, the Chinese call him “the architect of
modern China” (https://vi.wikipedia.org).
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is a barrier but can be overcome and even open up new different
opportunities.
This is also the process of mobilizing a vibrant business culture
in Vietnam since the early twentieth century, typically adapting the
business culture of France, then the Soviet Union, China and the
United States, and now multilateralization in acculturation, based on
the common denominator of Western business culture.
We begin to talk about the differences with Western business
culture and the changing requirements accordingly. We emphasize
the negative characteristics of Eastern and Vietnamese smallholder
business culture, which is heavily influenced by emotional and
sentimental elements that have hindered the current business culture.
One of the typical manifestations of small-farmer sentimental business
culture is “arbitrary culture” without plan (arbitrary, improvised, freely,
play it by ear...). That will gradually be replaced by one of the typical
manifestations of industrial rational business culture: “right culture”
(right time, right place, right regulations, right plan, right weight, right
product, right type, right style, right person, right job...), along with
that, scale and connection are emphasized.
More broadly, people also talk about the need for a paradigmatic,
systematic transformation from totalitarianism, sentimentalism,
unity, crowd, collective, herd, groupism...to subjectivism separate,
rational, individual, self-responsible,... Transform the culture of social
governance and business administration from humanism and virtue to
rule of law, technocracy, and democracy.
Many changes have occurred in the acculturation of Western
business culture, but the transition from the sentimentalism of
agricultural culture to the Western rationalism of industrial culture
is considered an important factor that has changed fundamentally
change the quality of business culture, including tourism business
culture in today’s integration period.
