Leadership, performance and socialist reforms: how did reform leadership emerge and create change?

Audacious economic reforms in socialist China and Vietnam have successfully defied worries and woes from the Western pundits of economic reforms. Unlike their negative appraisals, the grand scale reforms in the two countries have transformed their ailing economies to one of the most miraculous of all economic growths and developments in modern human history. This collection raises a rarely asked question of ‘which leadership style was pivotal in garnering the miracle at the firm level?’ Six pieces of research are collected under the similar topic that bears the question of leadership and innovation in China and Vietnam either as a single case study or as a comparative analysis of the two countries and with other East Asian economies (e.g., South Korea, Japan). The analysis presented in this collection finds that emotional, traditional, philosophical, and cultural leadership styles are necessary in tandem with transformative, strategic and design leadership to offset the pangs of radical reforms.