Management For Sustainable And Inclusive Development In A Transforming Asia

This book identifies the ongoing management issues and compatible management systems for sustainable and inclusive development in a transforming Asia. In the dynamic process of economic development in Asia, many positive and also negative issues have arisen. Since the latter half of the 1990s, the network economy based on digital technologies began to be established and technological and cross-border transfer of managerial knowledge became easier. This change in technological and market structure now requires companies to meet another dimension of competition. In this new paradigm, many Asian companies are struggling with turbulent new managerial and organizational issues together with economic and social problems that concentrate at the bottom of the pyramid. This book elucidates these issues, keeping sustainability and inclusiveness in mind. The book is highly recommended not only for academicians but also business people who seek an in-depth and up-to-date overview of dynamically changing business and industrial structures in Asia focusing on sustainability and inclusion issues.

This book focuses on digital innovation and sustainability in the Asian region in the context of business and management. Managers and policy makers rely on digital technologies to face the region’s sustainability challenges and solve sustainability problems. From business perspective, sustainability is defined as the adoption of business strategies, activities, and operations that meet the needs of the firm and its stakeholder today while protecting, sustaining, and enhancing the human and natural resources that will be needed in the future. Digital innovation refers to the application of digital technologies to existing business problems as well as the development of the firm’s strategy, culture, and human resources talent to deal and use digital technologies to solve sustainability issues. There is a consensus among scholars and practitioners that organizations need digital innovation to stay competitive. Businesses that are digital innovators consider new ways to solve old and new sustainability problems facing the Asian region. This book, with its practical examples, gives the reader impulses for new Asian’s approaches and encourages the readers to dare to think and act in new ways. This book is the first annual compilation of innovative ideas and valuable managerial solutions produced by the region’s managers and decision-makers who think and act creatively, helmed by Tobias Endress and Yuosre F. Badir from the School of Management at the Asian Institute of Technology.

This report is a combined effort by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations University (UNU), and the Institute for Global and Environmental Strategies (IGES), and is being published as governments and other stakeholders prepare to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – a plan for people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership. While “transformation” has become a buzz-word during the formulation of this agenda, how to make it happen has not been addressed properly. This report underlines that the Sustainable Development Goals will only be achieved when key Asia-Pacific megatrends are managed in a way that creates opportunities for achieving sustainable development outcomes. It supports national and regional efforts to implement the 2030 Agenda. Regional megatrends such as urbanization, trade and economic integration and rising consumption and changing consumption patterns are already shaping the future patterns of resource use, and defining who will be the ‘winners’ and who will be the ‘losers’. The report examines the four critical determinants of the relationship between the economy, people and nature explored in this publication as targets for a fundamental transformation – social justice, resource efficiency, investment flows and economic structures.

This book assesses the progress in the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in ASEAN, India and China using the above framework conditions in the context with three main propositions. First, translating the SDGs into regional economic integration strategies during the pandemic recovery can enhance the link between global objectives and the multifaceted reality of an ASEAN community building process, and providing a strategic option to strengthen the regional approaches. Secondly, a regional approach on complementarities to SDGs can facilitate the definition of relevant targets/indicators and enhance the monitoring and evaluation framework. In so doing it could also offer the scope to integrate more closely ASEAN community’s social and environmental concerns into existing economic, social and political frameworks. Thirdly, focusing just on the geo-economic sphere – the area where south east and East Asian economic integration is relatively more advanced – will prove the hypothesis that effective regional integration through mega trade agreements such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) can support the Asia’s transformation agenda and foster more inclusive and sustainable growth.

Provides an opportunity for Asia and the Pacific policymakers and stakeholders, such as those from the private sector, academia and civil society organizations, to actively engage with the global negotiations, and to lay out the financing and partnership frameworks for the development agenda beyond 2015 from the regional perspectives. The publication calls for the Asia-Pacific region to work together to raise and channel more substantial financial resources to invest in the social sector, infrastructure development and efforts to tackle climate change in order to ensure a transformative change to bring about inclusive growth and sustainable development.

This book provides practical policy recommendations that are useful for developing Asia and for accelerating poverty reduction plans in the rest of the world. Poverty reduction in all its forms remains one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. In developing Asia, rapid growth in countries and sub-regions such as China, India, and Southeast Asia has lifted millions out of poverty, but progress has been uneven. On the other hand, the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the global economic recession that it has caused are pushing millions of people back into poverty. Poverty reduction, inclusive growth, and sustainable development are inseparable, and poverty reduction is the premise for sustainable development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a bold commitment to finish what we started and end poverty in all forms and dimensions by 2030. However, because of the current global recession, the world is not on track to end poverty by 2030. Given the aforementioned situation, if we plan to achieve the no-poverty target in line with the SDGs, governments need to reconsider their policies and economies need to allocate their resources for this aim. Owing to the importance of the topic, this book provides several thematic and empirical studies on the roles of small and medium-sized enterprises, local businesses and trusts, international remittances and microfinance, energy security and energy efficiency in poverty reduction, and inclusive growth.

The publication describes pathways to achieve more inclusive and sustainable post-pandemic recovery in Asia and the Pacific. It identifies elements for a common agenda for present and future generations centered on protecting people and planet, leveraging on digital opportunities, trading and investing more together, raising financial resources and managing debt. It underlines the need to listen and work with the youth, placing women at the center for crisis-prepared policy action and new people-centric partnerships, with a readiness of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to serve.