This paper sets out to examine the firm-level incentives to adopt ?international good governance practices? developed for market economies in the context of a relationship-based society using hand-collected data for Vietnamese firms that went public in the period 2006-2011. We find that private as well as state-owned listed firms with foreign ownership have corporate governance practices more similar to the ?market-oriented? corporate governance practices, in terms of the use of more independent boards. Moreover, private Vietnamese firms with foreign ownership appoint a Big 4 Auditor on external governance mechanism. State-owned firms with foreign ownership probably better connected in the Vietnamese society, so that directors are not used to guarantee access to firm?s resources. Besides, firms with performance weaker in comparison to their industry peers are also found to have more board independence. This finding is consistent with the literature on organizational legitimacy. The results of this study allow us to state that a country level decision to adopt ?International good governance practices? is not sufficient to instigate firms to adopt those practices. Only firms which are exposed to market-oriented relations will adopt ?international good governance mechanisms? since these governance practices enhance their legitimacy towards these non-local parties. Weaker performance also instigates Vietnamese firms to adopt Western so-called good governance principles. The data reveal that policy makers and regulators of traditionally ?non-market oriented economies?, need to take into account that in order to stimulate the adoption of market-oriented governance mechanisms, a cultural change is needed as well, in that the traditional reliance on relational contracts substitutes for the  reliance on market contracts.