The changes experienced by the managers in socialist and post-socialist state- owned enterprises can be likened to what Kuhn (1962) has termed a 'paradigm shift', a transition between two systems that are incommensurable. Yet, as Kuhn himself has pointed out, individuals do not easily give up on the way that they see the world. A new paradigm often only really takes root when the advocates of an earlier paradigm die off. This paper examines the paradig matic role played by the labour theory of value in accounting for the behaviour of state-owned enterprise managers in China and Vietnam. It examines specific managerial and institutional practices derivable from the theory and assesses the implications of a paradigm approach to the challenge of system reforms in both countries for institutional and structural contingency theories.
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