Preface
The reaction of people living in SE Asia to the financial crisis of 1997 – 1998 was first one of shock and bewilderment.
Then, for many, it was panic. Each day, for months, stock market numbers and currency values become unbelievably worse. As crises go, the next response was naturally one of blame and criticism. SE Asian financial systems were said to lack transparency and the foundations of a modern financial system.
While there followed a host of conferences and papers giving economic explanations of SE Asia’s predicament, from a business perspective, the theories didn’t fly. They neglected to explain how transnational companies were seemingly immune from the crisis.
They did not explain why it was that SE Asian businesses,
with their relatively closed business systems, could cause a financial
crisis of world proportions. And they didn’t explain how globalisation
played a role in SE Asia’s economic rise and fall.
My frustration with the lack of insightful explanation of SE Asia’s business
growth and decline was fuelled by the lack of a dedicated textbook on
SE Asian business from which to teach. While there was an absence of course
material directly on SE Asian business dynamics, international business
texts presented a paradigm of industrial era growth and business expansion
that did not have much application and meaning to an Asian audience.
A meeting with a Chinese delegation at the Sheraton Hotel in Brunei in
1998 was, however, to set me on a course to explore the dynamics of SE
Asian business.
As I listened to the delegates it became clear to me that they were speaking and responding out of a different process of reasoning than a Western capitalist model. I came away from the meeting with the belief that a sociological explanation of SE Asian history and growth was needed in order to make sense of the region’s business interactions: an explanation of SE Asian development that appreciated the context in which people live and conduct their business.
Only then could I seek to understand what the financial
crisis had meant to the people of SE Asia. But an explanation of the context
of SE Asian growth is not to be a story restricted to the influences of
the past but also one about the unfolding events and influences of globalisation.
The next three years of travel and research across SE Asia brought me
many significant interactions with people in the midst of their work and
commerce, and at times in the midst of their uncertainty of change. These
interactions shaped the form of this book.
The work of George Herbert Mead provided a foundation for an explanation
of the processes of social change and the impact of critical events. But
the writings of Peter Drucker and Alvin Toffler, two men who have influenced
me since my time at Claremont Graduate University, were also significant.
Their writings inspired me to consider the impact of
globalisation upon SE Asian societies as more than a consequence of technology
and information transfer but as a radical shift in ideology. SE Asian
businesses, like businesses everywhere, are seeing their ideologies evolve
to embrace a new and global logic, or way of thinking. Consequently, the
financial crisis is to be understood as one event, although severe, in
the journey of globalisation for SE Asia. Indeed, the impact of globalisation
is to have board and profound consequences affecting the very nature of
business management practice.
The purpose of this book is to discuss the impact of globalisation for
SE Asia by first considering the context in which change is taking place
and then the consequences of an emerging new ideology for SE Asian business
systems. The book has been written to offer a different perspective on
SE Asian business dynamics and the influence of past events and present
opportunities.
For business professionals this book offers an explanation
of the dynamics of globalisation and how it is going to affect their business.
While the discussion is pertinent to businesses operating in SE Asia,
it also has relevance to businesses everywhere as the impact of globalisation
has no bounds.
At the same time I would suggest that the study of international business
and SE Asian business management requires a global approach because SE
Asian business is currently experiencing radical shifts in business management
practice brought on by external global forces.
Accordingly, this book provides a great resource for the theoretical background to business growth in SE Asia as well as presenting some provocative ideas about business management and the emergence of a global logic.