Crafted Culture: Governmental Sculpting of Modern Singapore and Effects
on Business Environments
Usha C. V. Haley, School of Management, New Jersey Institute of Technology & Managing Business in Asia Program, The Australian National University and Linda Low, Department of Business Policy, National University of Singapore
| The Singaporean government has enjoyed an astounding record of success based on its ability to attract MNCs and corresponding capital. Government-led development has involved crafting a culture that will adapt to MNCs' needs and to fast-changing global environments in a restructured economy. The socially re-engineered Singaporean culture appears hierarchical, disciplined, authoritarian and a showcase for technocratic management. Yet, further crafting of the Singaporean culture along the top-down, technocratic model seems to result in a diminishing ability to produce creative, innovative and productive workers for the knowledge economy and the MNCs that dominate it. In the first section, we sketch the ideological bases for Singapore's crafted culture. Next, we explore Singapore's distinctive characteristics as well as governmental policies that have molded this culture. In the ensuing section, we highlight specific governmental policies that are designing Singapore for the restructured, globalizing and fast-changing knowledge economy; we also discuss the competing model offered by Taiwan in this regard. Finally, we succinctly propose some implications for civic society and cultural change in Singapore. | Nike, Greek Goddess of Victory or Cruelty?
Women's Stories of Asian Factory Life
David M. Boje, Management Department, New Mexico State University | Beneath the glory of the goddess of victory, Asian women are struggling against the oppression of Nike's labor practices. While Nike portrays itself as the virtuous ambassador of Western economic development, Asian women are working for poverty wages in toxic and too often quite abusive labor camp conditions. In this paper, I use seven components of deconstruction to unravel how Nike storytelling practices keep alternative perspectives at the margin, notably the daily reality of Asian women workers. Nike constructs stories of Asian women, depicting them as gaining technological sophistication and work discipline in healthy, dignified, and safe working conditions, while receiving a living wage that allows for discretionary savings. Yet, there is a propaganda gap between Nike's storylines and alternative plots, interpretations, and silenced voices. If this gap can be analyzed, then perhaps the breach between Nike's talk and walk in Asia can be narrowed.
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Electricity Industry Reform: A Case Analysis in Australia
Lindsay Nelson, School of Management, University of Tasmania and Peter J. Dowling, Dean of the Faculty of Commerce and Law, University of Tasmania | Deregulation in the electricity supply industry (ESI) is taking place globally and this paper analyses a case of reform in Australia. The focus is on change management rather than the technical aspects of power generation, transmission and retail supply. Change theory has moved on from static models to dynamic models of strategic choice and it is against this background that the case is viewed. A contextualist approach is employed in which the substance, context and politics of change are used to analyse unfolding events. Management implications of the case are discussed.
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Informational Network Industrialization and Japanese Business Management
Sam K. Steffensen, ISICS, University of Tokyo | Linking informational network and organizational change theories with the multi-faceted transformations taking place in global competition, in particular the economic recession in the Asia-Pacific and information technological progress, the paper focuses on two major issues: 1) The task facing Japanese companies in accommodating themselves to new trends pushed ahead primarily by changes emerging in the info-communications industries. It is demonstrated that major challenges are facing Japanese-style organization and management practices along with the advent of informational network industrialization. Essentially, Japanese business networks are forced to transform their organizational structure in conjunction with open networking and management practices.
2) The impact of the economic slump in Asia on the strategies and management of Japanese production networks in the region. It is argued that impending domestic restructuring will extend in much the same way to the Asian production networks, while integrating these into new types of international production complexes.
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Transforming the Tax Collector: Reengineering the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore
Siew Kien Sia, Strategy and Information Systems, Nanyang Technological University, and Boon Siong Neo, Dean of the Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University | This paper provides a comprehensive account of how the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) successfully managed organizational transformation to achieve significantly increased customer satisfaction, enhanced organizational agility, and dramatic reduction in tax arrears. The case study reaffirms that the soft issues are the hard issues in reengineering. Indeed, the recognition by IRAS that people resource issues are at the heart of change is the major factor for its success. In addition to tackling people issues, the transformation experience of IRAS also reveals the need to integrate the traditional change models more tightly in managing large-scale change. The inability of IRAS in anticipating all major consequences of their change actions suggests an improvisational model of change management. Organizations embarking on large-scale transformation should consciously build their internal capabilities to tackle emergent changes (e.g., establishing the information systems for change, nurturing people resources, and providing slack resources). |
International Strategies of Corporate Culture Change: Emulation, Consumption and Hybridity
R.I Westwood, Graduate School of Business, University of Sydney, and P.S. Kirkbride, Director of the Change House | The symbolic representation of corporate culture within the context of a Hong Kong Chinese company is described in the broader context of strategic responses to the international intersection of organization and management systems. This symbolic representation incorporates and indexes aspects of a Western culturally constituted world that is largely alien to one important stakeholder group, namely, the Chinese organization membership. Such a disjuncture engenders an inhibition to an effective reading of the corporate culture message so weakening the effect of the intended change. The paper discusses three interlocking themes. Firstly, the issue of the emulation of the corporate culture notion, as conceived and formulated in the U.S., in other cultural settings. Secondly, a consideration of a multi-stakeholder perspective on corporate culture in which it is considered as a strategic move with respect to externalities rather than the internal system. Thirdly, the intersection of management systems results in mutual inter-penetrations thus engendering responses of appropriation, adaptation and hybridity rather than merely imposition or assimilation. Such interactive aspects of international business and the associated responses are in need of greater attention. |
Click on authors' names for short biographies and on the article title name, (where linked and made available) for the full text article. Abstracts from the first special issue of the Journal of Organizational Change Management entitled Strategic Dimensions of Organizational Change and Restructuring in the Asia Pacific: Issue 1, Strategies for Foreign Investors are available.
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