The Asia Pacific Journal of Arts and Cultural Management is available at: www.ojs.unisa.edu.au/index.php/ARTMJ and is produced by the School of Management:

This paper addresses the question of how the changed environment from a subsidised and centrally planned economy to a socialist-oriented market economy has shaped the management of theatre companies in Vietnam, particularly concerning theatre ownership models. It aims to capture the correlation and interaction between the ambiguity, the experimental essence of the transitional context through the adjustment and adaptation of theatre companies ’ ownership models. The research tracked the lives of different theatre companies over time and examined how theatre ownership models have evolved, adapted and changed throughout the transition period from the mid-1980s to the present. A perspective offered by systems thinking about the organisation-environment relationship is employed in the research, ‘the webs of connections ’ (Wheatley 2006), allowing the dynamics of change to be understood