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This paper explores how a country's constitutionally imposed democracy in an academic performance evaluation system was designed and practiced. Building upon agonistic democracy and deliberative democracy perspectives, a qualitative inductive case study in a Vietnamese public university involved 52 interviews, direct observations, and the analysis of archival documents. The findings revealed three dimensions of democracy in the university's performance evaluation system, namely, democratic context, democratic discourse, and democratic outcomes. The university enforced democracy in its performance evaluation system for academics in line with the country's constitutional obligation. In such an explicit democratic context, there happened democratic discourse (debating academics' performance in public forums) and implicit discourse (informal social interactions). The outcome of this democracy at the practice level resulted from temporary consensus supported by shared cultural values within the country's socio‐political context with an understanding that it will change as with any change in the macro or micro contexts. These findings contribute to the literature by providing insights into how individuals pursue democracy in an accounting tool legally built to promote democracy through their multiple voices and collective wisdom. Thus, democratizing accounting technologies and processes, such as an academic performance evaluation system, can effectively promote democracy in multi‐cultural workplaces across the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how an individual-level academic performance measurement system interacts with the collective self in a collectivist cultural context. The qualitative study of a Vietnamese public university involved 53 interviews, participant observations, and document analysis. The findings show that performance measurement systems in the university produced both an autonomous self and a collective self. They do so by measuring individual performance and suggesting that individuals are autonomously responsible and able to influence such performance. Thus, although a performance measurement system is typically imposed by others (which shows one's dependence on others and subjection to their power), the nature of the performance measurement system is such that it promotes individual actions and a sense of individual performance. Therefore, people feel they have control over "their" performance. However, while trying to control such performance, they depend more on others whose recognition appears to link with such performance measurement systems. Data Availability: Data are not available for confidentiality reasons. JEL Classifications: I2; M41; M48; P2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]