Corporate culture in Industry 4.0: key element for success

Gian Tu Trung addressing the conference

At the Forum on Corporate Culture in Industry 4.0 held on October 3 by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), Deloitte Vietnam, and Hanoi Association for Women Entrepreneurs (HNEW), Gian Tu Trung, principal of the Pacific-Asian Center for Entrepreneurship (PACE) College and director of IRED Institute of Education, confirmed that the people earning the most money in Vietnam and over the world rely largely on the values of culture and ethics.

Unless a corporation develops its cultural foundations, its earning will remain limited and unsustainable. Indeed, due to the pressure of competition, many companies have forgotten to develop or maintain a corporate culture.

Gian Tu Trung outlined four reasons for this failure, including a lack of awareness of culture and its role in the sustainable development of corporations; a lack of vision of corporate culture; a lack of measures and solutions to develop a corporate culture in the new era; and a lack of persistence in the process of cultural development.

“Your competitors could copy everything, such as strategies, products, process or recipes. But they cannot copy the culture of your company. This is the most important and most sustainable competitive advantage of a corporation,” emphasised Trung.

The panel discussion at the conference

Affirming the important role of corporate culture, Ha Thu Thanh, chairwoman of Deloitte Vietnam, said that Industry 4.0 will bring take opportunities to almost all firms, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

“SMEs could accelerate and catch up to the trend of Industry 4.0 if they realise that corporate culture is a core value to improve their competitiveness and grow sustainably in the 4.0 era,” confirmed Thanh.

Meanwhile, Vu Tien Loc, chairman of the VCCI, said that a firm has to pay attention to its culture in addition to improve technology in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. “Industry 4.0 is a large wheel that makes the business grow stronger or knock them out of the loop or crush them altogether. Developing a good corporate culture will create harmony and co-operation between people and robots, and seize opportunities of Industry 4.0,” added Loc.

Industry 4.0 has been taking place across the world with great spill-over effects and significant impacts on sectors and business activities. Along with the trend of deep and wide international integration, Industry 4.0 has created many opportunities and challenges, such as improving competitiveness and management capacity and upgrading technical level.

Especially, businesses have to concentrate on corporate governance, a crucial element of which is corporate culture, to ensure their sustainable development.