Post-industrialization and social inclusion: Elite access to high-performing entrepreneurship in Vietnam

Abstract

This article examines how high-performing digital entrepreneurship enables wealth generation or perpetuates inequalities. We integrate and extend entrepreneurship and sociology of (transnational) education scholarship to investigate how socio-economic background affects the likelihood of entrepreneurs building high-growth, digital businesses. Specifically, we address whether Vietnam’s transition from industrialization (1986) to post-industrialization (since 2009) broadens entrepreneurial opportunities or concentrates them among the country’s (upper) middle class. Our findings reveal digital entrepreneurs are five times more likely to have tertiary education from costly destinations like the United States, United Kingdom, or Australia, and three times more likely to have worked in English-speaking countries, than the entrepreneurs who built physically oriented businesses during the industrialization era. These findings suggest that the advance of Vietnam’s digital economy reinforces socio-economic divides, as digital entrepreneurship opportunities increasingly depend on access to (upper) middle-class backgrounds that can afford elite transnational education.