‘Created’ enclaves for enterprise: an empirical study of Singapore's industrial parks in Indonesia,Vietnam and China

The dynamics of globalization have prompted governments to re-examine accustomed policies, and search for alternative strategies, in order to re-position their economies for the future. This paper explores the spatial context of state involvement in the new economics of competition, with the focus on Singapore's much publicized, and controversial, orchestration of its state enterprise network to encapsulate economic space for Singapore-based firms to expand into the Asian region. This strategic initiative is promulgated on the exportability of Singapore's ‘state credibility’, systemic and operational efficiencies, and technological competencies, to locations where these attributes are less certain. A logit model is applied to questionnaire surveys culled from Singapore's industrial-township projects in Indonesia, Vietnam and China and the findings are presented. The authors conclude that the strategic advantage created for the firms within these privileged investment enclaves, although remarkable, is often at risk from the administrative complexities, and socio-political milieux, of the host environments.     

Why avoiding ‘Japanification’ could be a massive task

• ? 'Japanification risk’ is back on the agenda in the context of a slowing world economy. Japan's struggle to drag its economy out of an entrenched deflationary cycle offers a cautionary tale for other economies such as the eurozone, demonstrating the enormity of the policy effort needed.
• ? Low inflation and low growth in Japan are linked to demographic and monetary factors, against which Japan has intensified policy efforts since 2011–12. Japan can claim some success in boosting workforce participation but productivity growth has stalled while monetary policy efforts have delivered limited gains.
• ? The eurozone has avoided some of the early policy errors made by Japan and taken a number of steps to tackle ‘Japanification’ risks. But productivity growth has flagged even more than Japan's in the 1990s, and parts of the eurozone still risk sliding into deflation if the global downturn worsens.
• ? The eurozone's policy options to fight ‘Japanification', particularly at the individual country level, are more limited than was the case in Japan. Further ‘heavy lifting’ by the ECB would be required – implying downside risks for the euro and bond yields staying low, if not compressing further.

     

Strategies for Internationalizing the Business Curriculum in the Asia Pacific

SUMMARY

With the rapid economic growth of the East Asian countries, there has been an increasing interest in the education and skill development strategies used in the region. One of the critical features of Singapore's human resource development strategy is the emphasis on regionalization and internationalization of the academic curriculum. The trend of this internationalization may be attributable to three major factors: Singapore government's regionalization policy, distance learning programs offered by foreign universities, and the overseas assignment of Singaporean managers as expatriates. This paper presents an overview of the internationalization of the business curriculum at the graduate and undergraduate level in Singapore, particularly at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU). The Nanyang Business School, although a young institution, is rapidly moving towards the internationalization process in various areas. At present its student body is drawn from more than 20 countries. About a third of its business faculty come from about 19 countries. At the undergraduate level, students are encouraged to study foreign languages, and required to take the international business course irrespective of their functional specialization. In addition, most functional areas of specialization offer at least one international course as an elective choice. Some of the students also complete their required professional attachment abroad. At the graduate level, the unique feature of it's MBA program is the compulsory International Business Study Mission. The newly introduced MBA specialization in International Business adds another dimension. The school is now focusing on extensive research efforts in the area of regional-ization and globalization of business through its several research centers. The paper also identifies a few concerns such as the rapid changes in the pedagogy due to the overall systemic changes in the curriculum from the traditional British education model and the availability of suitable case studies.     

Who Speaks,and in What Voice? The Challenge of Engaging ‘The Public’ in Health Policy Decision-Making

Abstract

Despite widespread calls for greater public involvement in governance, especially in relation to health policy, significant challenges remain in identifying any such legitimate ‘public’ voice. This research investigates this problem through a case study. It examines how actors experienced and interpreted a government-commissioned citizen’s jury on health spending prioritization in relation to the work of the local health care consumers’ organization. The analysis highlights an unproductive tension around this encounter, and points to more complementary ways in which such top–down and bottom–up efforts might be coordinated. It, therefore, contributes significantly to efforts to strengthen the public voice in contemporary health governance.     

The Carbon Neutral Public Sector

Abstract

This paper argues for research into the effectiveness of government strategies for a ‘carbon neutral public sector’. We review initiatives in three OECD countries: New Zealand, Australia and the UK. In all jurisdictions, government agencies have consistently stressed ‘leading by example’ as a rationale for adoption. ‘Direct mandate’ by the Prime Minister (NZ); ‘organic development’ from wider central government sustainability initiatives (UK); and a more ‘laissez faire’ approach by Australian Federal and State Governments, were identified as the general pathways leading to implementation. Our assessment indicates: a lack of understanding of the implementation process for carbon neutrality; a need to identify and critically examine the ‘offset threshold’ at which mitigation efforts cease and offsetting is adopted; an absence of any evaluation of the ‘leading by example’ rationale; a lack of inter-country comparisons; a gap in understanding the relationship with economic and social aspects of sustainability; and a need to evaluate the utility of core government departments as the focus of carbon accounting. We urge colleagues to consider research in this area with a view to contributing to the interdisciplinary solutions which we believe are required.     

Meanings of measurement

Abstract

In public domains, performances – also in ambiguous fields like policing – are controlled, by making them transparent, by comparing them, and by linking them to targets. Although this ‘numerical capture' of complex phenomena has been heavily criticized, management by measurement is blossoming and in specific cases, measurements like crime monitoring have played a role in reducing crime. The question, however, is whether such improvements are caused by distinctive measurement methods, or by ‘something else'. This paper will analyze how one particular measurement method, the so-called Rotterdam ‘Safety Index', contributed to safety policies. It will show how this dubious instrument is made meaningful; how, indeed, ‘something else' is at work. Political and administrative key players made certain moves in order to ‘link', ‘store', and ‘advocate' the Safety Index. These acts, moreover, occurred amidst distinctive socio-political conditions. Because of ‘acts in context', the Index became a workable tool, producing tangible effects.     

Standard setting in Sweden

ABSTRACT

Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is being adopted by European regulators as a data standard for the exchange of business information. This paper examines the approach of XBRL International (XII) to the meta-data standard's development and diffusion. We theorise the development of XBRL using concepts drawn from a model of successful open source projects. Comparison of the open source model to XBRL enables us to identify a number of interesting similarities and differences. In common with open source projects, the benefits and progress of XBRL have been overstated and ‘hyped’ by enthusiastic participants. While XBRL is an open data standard in terms of access to the equivalent of its ‘source code’ we find that the governance structure of the XBRL consortium is significantly different to a model open source approach. The barrier to participation that is created by requiring paid membership and a focus on transacting business at physical conferences and meetings is identified as particularly critical. Decisions about the technical structure of XBRL, the regulator-led pattern of adoption and the organisation of XII are discussed. Finally areas for future research are identified.     

Arm's length funding for civil society

Abstract

Support for the development of civil society became a major aim in the transition economies in Eastern Europe after the political changes of 1989. However, the need for government funding and the aspirations for independence have remained somewhat contradictory until the recent emergence of the ‘arm's length’ methods of supporting civil society organizations. This article reports on recent experiences of using these methods in Hungary.     

Thank you to Reviewers 2013

Abstract

Drawing on Parkin's [Marxism and class theory: A bourgeois critique. London: Tavistock Publications] concept of dual closure, this paper examines the attempt to secure the regulation of the accountancy profession in post-unification Italy. The state's establishment of a class of ‘expert accountants’ in 1865 represented an imperfect closure of the profession. In consequence, a chain of closure attempts ensued. These ventures involved shifting constructions of dominant and subordinate occupational groups and the deployment of diverse strategies to achieve usurpationary and exclusionary forms of closure. The study reveals that the achievement of state regulation of the profession in 1906 reflected the successful pursuit of usurpationary closure by a subordinated group within the accountancy field. However, it also points to the failure of the profession's efforts to make incursions into the jurisdictions of higher status occupations, especially lawyers, who wielded considerable sociopolitical power in newly unified Italy. Consistent with the findings of previous studies, the paper confirms the complexity and uncertain outcomes of closure projects in the accountancy profession.     

Renaissance Revisited: Singapore as a ‘Global City for the Arts’

Singapore is renowned as a global business and financial centre, an international hub of air and sea transport, and Asia's leading convention city. In the new millennium, the government has envisioned a new role for the city‐state as a ‘Renaissance City’ and ‘Global City for the Arts’. This vision is premised on Singapore becoming an investment base for leading arts, cultural and entertainment enterprises in the region, the theatre hub of Southeast Asia, and an entertainment destination for tourists. This article examines the challenges and accomplishments in Singapore's quest to be a Renaissance City. Drawing on literature on ‘global cities’ and concepts relating to ‘globalization’ and ‘localization’, it argues that the key challenge facing Singapore is how best to ‘go global’ and ‘stay local’ at the same time. Developing a Renaissance City entails a balancing act between globalizing local sensibilities on the one hand, while localizing global best‐practices on the other. This global‐local nexus can be approached in three ways: (1) by striking a balance between the economic and humanistic objectives of the arts; (2) by importing world‐class arts talents and exporting home‐grown skills; and (3) by globalizing local peculiarities in line with best practices from around the world. The need to balance global standards with local interests is not easily achieved, however, making Singapore's ‘Global City for the Arts’ vision one of its most ambitious goals to date. Singapour est célèbre en tant que centre mondial de la finance et des affaires, pivot du transport aéro‐maritime international, site de premier plan pour les salons en Asie. Avec le millénaire naissant, le gouvernement a envisagé une nouvelle fonction pour la cité‐État, celle de ‘Ville de la Renaissance’ et ‘Ville mondiale des Arts‘. Préalablement, Singapour doit devenir non seulement une base d'investissement pour les grands projets artistiques, culturels et de divertissement dans cette partie du monde, mais aussi le nud théâtral de l'Asie du Sud‐Est et une destination touristique de loisirs. L'article étudie les défis et réalisations qui jalonnent cette entreprise. Exploitant les documents traitant des ‘villes mondiales’ et des concepts liés à la ‘mondialisation’ et à la ‘localisation‘, il démontre que le grand problème auquel Singapour se heurte est de concilier simultanément les deux démarches ‘agir mondial‘ et ‘rester local‘. Développer une Ville de la Renaissance implique un équilibrage entre la mondialisation de sensibilités locales d'un côté, et la localisation des meilleures méthodes internationales de l'autre. On peut aborder ce lien mondial‐local de trois manières différentes: trouver un juste milieu entre les objectifs économiques et humanistes des arts; importer des talents artistiques de dimension mondiale et exporter les compétences nationales; mondialiser les particularités locales cohérentes avec les meilleures méthodes internationales existantes. Atteindre l'équilibre nécessaire entre normes mondiales et intérêts locaux est loin d'être aisé, ce qui fait de la vision de Singapour en ‘Ville mondiale des Arts‘ l'un des buts nationaux les plus ambitieux à ce jour.     

Developing a brand from within: Involving employees and volunteers when developing a new brand position

In February 1996 Barnardo's invited six of the UK's leading advertising agencies to pitch for the provision of full and above the line communications and marketing services. Banner McBride was included as part of a joint WPP communications and marketing team (including Ogilvy & Mather) selected to support Barnardo's efforts to reposition and communicate the Barnardo's brand. As the WPP team said at the beginning, Barnardo's were ‘a well-known brand that was not known well’. The challenge was to increase the organisation's saliency, but at the same time build on years of heritage and ensure that employees and volunteers were included from the beginning. This paper describes how the brand building exercise was tackled and how internal communications were developed by the provision of different media.     

ADAM SMITH AND THE ROLE OF THE METAPHOR OF AN INVISIBLE HAND

Daniel Klein and Brandon Lucas's ‘In a Word or Two, Placed in the Middle: The Invisible Hand in Smith's Tomes’, following a vague hint by Peter Minowitz (2004) , offers original physical evidence that Smith ‘deliberately placed the phrase “led by an invisible hand”– at the physical centre of both his masterworks’. Further, it suggests that the invisible‐hand paragraphs are a response to Rousseau (1755 ); and that in ‘numerous and rich ways’, centrality holds ‘special and positive significance in Smith's thought’. This paper acknowledges the physical centrality of the invisible‐hand metaphor, but questions whether centrality alone gives weight to wider claims that the ‘invisible hand’ was Smith's ‘central idea’. It draws upon Smith's Rhetoric Lectures (1763), and argues that the invisible‐hand paragraphs in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations identify the actual objects of the invisible‐hand metaphor. This paper insists that Adam Smith is the most reliable source for revealing what he meant. In contrast, most modern attributions of special meaning to Adam Smith's use of the metaphor ignore Smith's teaching on the use of metaphors and, instead, make numerous, and often mutually exclusive, claims that Smith had a ‘doctrine’ of ‘an invisible‐hand’.     

Writing on the Wall: Street Art in Graffiti‐free Singapore

The legalization of graffiti in many cities has impacted urban landscapes and the way artists and the public view graffiti, street art and the city as well. This article considers the genesis, process and consequences of legal walls programmes firstly by introducing and differentiating the key terms ‘graffiti’, ‘street art’ and ‘legal walls’, then by examining an empirical case, that of Singapore. Renowned as a graffiti‐averse and litter‐free city, Singapore's recent about‐turn in legalizing illicit art forms illustrates changing government perspectives on creativity and legality in the country. Why the government has effected this change, how artists and members of the public have responded to it and the resultant art forms are critically explored. The conclusion reflects on four key lessons from Singapore for cities in general.     

Learning from past mistakes? recent reforms in Italian industrial relations

Since the early 1990s, major reform efforts aimed at reducing industrial conflict, rationalising public sector labour relations, restructuring collective bargaining arrangements, and re-establishing tripartite ‘con-certation’ have transformed Italian industrial relations. This article argues that because these new reforms have been accompanied by significant shifts in both Italy's political system and the unions’ own organisation, they stand a better chance of succeeding than previous reform projects.     

ARTHUR SELDON: GREAT EDITOR, THINKER AND RADICAL ECONOMIST

Arthur Seldon, the founder editor of Economic Affairs and first Editorial Director of the IEA, died in October 2005, a few weeks before the 25th anniversary issue went to press. Many tributes have been paid to Arthur Seldon in obituaries in The Economist and the major national newspapers. In this special section of Economic Affairs we reproduce four of the speeches given at his memorial service on 15 January 2006. Respectively, they illustrate the fond affection for Arthur Seldon felt by Ralph Harris, the founder General Director of the IEA; Stuart Waterhouse, a fellow LSE student; Martin Anderson, who worked with Arthur Seldon editing Economic Affairs; and Geoffrey Howe, former Chancellor of the Exchequer. Three members of Arthur Seldon's family also spoke at the memorial service. Their talks concentrated on Arthur Seldon's family life, but the following more general thoughts particularly resonated with all present. His adopted son, Michael Perrott, commented that he was ‘a lion amongst thinkers, timeless and uncompromising’. Peter Seldon spoke of his father as ‘a visionary’ and ‘a genius’; he concluded, ‘we are all unique but the word could have been invented for Arthur’. Peter's brother Anthony Seldon commented that ‘he [Arthur] lives on in all of us’. – Philip Booth     

Agglomeration,Agriculture, and the Perspective of the Periphery

Abstract

This paper aims at pulling everything related to ‘agriculture’ or the ‘periphery’ a little more into the focus of research. We try to achieve this through surveying the existing theoretical and empirical literature in the field of NEG (New Economic Geography) in order to elaborate its linkages to immobile factors such as land, land-intensive productive activities, agriculture, rural areas, and the periphery. The main features of the broad variety of NEG models are reviewed with a special focus on the theme of agglomeration, which turns out to be vital for rural areas. All of these contributions are then commented on, with the aim of suggesting and discussing some future lines of research in the field.

Agglomération, agriculture, et la perspective de la périphérie

RÉSUMÉ La présente communication s'efforce de placer davantage tout ce qui concerne ‘l'agriculture’ ou la ‘périphérie’ sous l'optique de la recherche. Pour ceci, nous nous efforçons d'examiner de près les ouvrages théoriques et empiriques existants dans le domaine du NEG (New Economic Geography), afin d'en examiner les rapports avec des facteurs immuables comme la terre, les activités de production à utilisation intensive de la terre, l'agriculture, les zones rurales, et la périphérie. On se penche sur les principales caractéristiques du grand nombre de modèles NEG, en mettant tout particulièrement l'accent sur le thème de l'agglomération, qui s'avère jouer un rôle d'importance primordiale pour les zones rurales. On présente ensuite des commentaires sur toutes ces contributions dans le but de proposer certaines filières de recherche futures dans ce domaine, et d'en discuter.

Aglomeración, agricultura y la perspectiva de la periferia

RÉSUMÉ Este trabajo tiene como objetivo poner todo lo relacionado con la ‘agricultura’ o la ‘periferia’ un poco más en el foco de investigación. Intentamos hacerlo a través de una inspección de la bibliografía teórica y empírica existente en el campo NEG (New Economic Geography), con objeto de elaborar sus vínculos con factores inmóviles, tales como el terreno, actividades productivas que requieren terreno, agricultura, áreas rurales y la periferia. Las principales características de la amplia variedad de modelos NEG se revisan con un enfoque especial en el tema de la aglomeración, que resulta tener una importancia vital para las áreas rurales. Seguidamente, todas estas contribuciones se comentan con el propósito de sugerir y discutir líneas futuras de investigación en el campo.

     

The political economy of ‘ordered competition’ in European telecoms

This article discusses the current efforts of policymakers to spur development of telecommunications infrastructure. It argues that the policy of ‘ordered competition’, widely implemented in this sector, has formed a highly beneficial environment for major players, who have the ability to influence the regulatory machine. The system protects the status quo, impedes the efficiency of the market process and allows unnecessary public subsidy of the industry's development. The main alternative to this regulatory regime is structural reform of the industry and the formation of a genuinely competitive marketplace which could function without ex ante regulation.     

Social Accounting Research as If The World Matters

Abstract

This essay is intended as a self-reflective, auto-critique of the ‘social accounting community’. The essay is directed at the academic community of accountants concerned with social accounting. This `community' is predominantly concerned with English language accounting journals and is preoccupied with the social and environmental practices of the larger private sector organisations. The essay is motivated by a concern over our responsibilities as academics in a world in crisis and a concern that social accounting is losing its energy and revolutionary zeal. This community's social accounting endeavours have taken place in almost complete ignorance of the activities and developments in non accounting communities and, in particular, developments in the public and third sectors. The essay reaches out to the public and third sector work and literature as an illustration of one of the ways in which ‘our’ social accounting can try to prevent itself from becoming moribund.     

Agencies and non-departmental public bodies

Abstract

The emergence of Britain's ‘Next Steps’ agencies has spawned a new movement in theorizing about administrative organizations, and the practical example and the seeming theoretical excitement have influenced reformers in many other countries. But there is an older tradition of scholarship about administrative organizations that understands that many other sorts of deviant or ‘irregular’ public bodies have been in use for centuries in Britain and elsewhere. Moreover the executive agency model gets diluted as it travels away from Britain, and it then becomes more like some of those other forms. Some contributions to agencification theory are more accommodating than others about this. It is the contention of this article that many such resemblances do exist, and that all students of administrative organization would benefit if more effort could be devoted to searching for common ground between the executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies generally.