Political Business In East Asia

The relationship between government and business has become a central issue in East Asia since the financial crisis of 1997. As the Asian economies try to advance the reform process, recent scandals involving corruption and cronyism have demonstrated the ongoing significance of the issue. This edited book features a range of distinguished international specialists and explores the interaction between politics and business across the region. Detailed case-studies focus on Japan, China, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia. This is the first comprehensive introduction to government-business relations in the region and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the problems faced by the Asian economies.

The Political Economy of Business Ethics in East Asia: A Historical and Comparative Perspective deals with modes of ethical persuasion in both public and private sectors of the national economy in East Asia, from the periods of the fourteenth century, to the modern era. Authors in this volume ask how, and why, governments in pre-modern Joseon Korea, modern Korea, and modern Japan used moral persuasion of different kinds in designing national economic institutions. Case studies demonstrate that the concept of modes of exchange first developed by John Lie (1992) provides a more convincing explanation on the evolution of pre-modern and modern economic institutions compared with Marx’s modes of production as historically-specific social relations, or Smith’s free market as a terminal stage of human economic development. The pre-modern and modern cases presented in this volume reveal that different modes of exchange have coexisted throughout human history. Furthermore, business ethics or corporate social responsibility is not a purely European economic ideology because manorial, market, entrepreneurial, and mercantilist moral persuasions had widely been used by state rulers and policymakers in East Asia for their programs of advancing dissimilar modes of exchange. In a similar vein, the domination of the market and entrepreneurial modes in the twenty-first century world is also complemented by other competing modes of change, such as state welfarism, public sector economies, and protectionism. Compares Chinese, Japanese, and Korean business ethics from a comparative and historical context Explores recent theoretical approaches to capitalist development in modern history in non-Western regions Discusses the theoretical usefulness of new institutionalism, modes of exchange, and neoclassical discussions of business ethics Evaluates historical texts in their own languages in its attempt to compare Chinese, Japanese, and Korean business ethics in the pre-modern and modern times

Offering a coherent overview of the historical and institutional context of enduring patterns in East Asian political economy, this updated and expanded second edition textbook explores the dramatic regional and international transformations that this key region has faced since the 2008 financial crisis.

East Asian Business in the New World: Helping Old Economies Revitalize discusses how to conduct business in East Asia. The main objective of the book is to help American workers and businesses gain competitive advantages in a global marketplace in which the emerging Asian economies are rapidly becoming major players. The American economy appears to be on decline, especially relative to the rapidly rising economies in places such as China. To revitalize the American economy and those of the ‘old world’, we must pay close attention to the economies with which America competes. The objective of this book is two-fold, with an initial focus on the opportunities and challenges of doing business in East Asia that includes tactics that will help readers understand Asian economies and business practices so that they can compete more successfully in the region. Secondly, the book seeks to teach readers how the U.S. can learn from East Asia in revitalizing its own economy. This is what sets the book apart as it analyzes the social institutions in major Asian countries, including the political, economic, and cultural institutions, and then compares them with the institutions in the U.S., identifying the strengths and weaknesses of U.S. institutions and providing strategic and policy recommendations that may help the U.S. economy and American firms compete in the global marketplace. Discuss how America and older economies can learn from Asia Provides a theoretical framework of rule-based vs. relation-based governance to help readers understand the differences in doing business in Asia vs. doing business in mature economies Offers business insights based on the author’s business experience in Asia Approaches the topic from a comparative perspective

This new edition updates its precedessor and uses the Asian economic crisis to indicate how theoretical differences identified in the South-East Asian boom were brought into even sharper relief in the analysis of the crisis and recovery strategies.

This book is about power in a changing world economy. Though power is ubiquitous in the study of International Political Economy, the concept is underdeveloped in formal theoretical terms. This collection of essays analyses recent experience in East Asia to advance our theoretic understanding of state power in IPE. Over the last quarter century, no other region of the world has had a greater impact on the global distribution of economic resources and capabilities. China, with its "peaceful rise," now stands as the second largest national economy on the face of the earth; South Korea and Taiwan have become industrial powerhouses; Hong Kong and Singapore are among the world’s most important financial centres; and new poles of growth have emerged in several southeast Asian countries – all while Japan, long the region’s dominant market, has slipped into seemingly irreversible decline. The volume’s nine essays, contributed by leading scholars in the United States, Britain and Taiwan, aim to extract relevant inferences and insights from these developments for the study of state power. All are framed by a core agenda encompassing four key clusters of questions concerning the meaning, sources, uses, and limits of power. These essays ask: What new lessons are offered for power analysis in International Political Economy?

Business Networks in East Asian Capitalisms: Enduring Trends, Emerging Patterns builds on the foundational studies conducted in the 1990s by gathering contemporary empirical and theoretical chapters which explore these themes in a comparative perspective. The book includes contributions from authors working on the relationship between personal and business networks in countries including China, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. Authors emphasize enduring trends in social and business networks and/or track new emerging patterns, both within East Asian nations or between East Asia and other regions such as Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Provides contemporary, up-to-date empirical material and theoretical interpretation, charting the influence of more recent globalizing trends and institutional change in the region Includes studies of networks within PRC, between PRC and other regions, and in Chinese communities Offers studies centered on Korean, Japanese, and South East Asian Networks Includes a geographical scope that will be broader than other books, aiming to include studies of newly developing economies in South East Asia that share a common cultural heritage (e.g Vietnam)

Political leadership styles in East Asian states are shaped and influenced by a number of domestic factors. These factors include the type of political system that an East Asian state adopted from their days of independence and decolonization. There is a diverse array of political systems in the region, ranging from Western-style liberal democracies like Japan and South Korea to autocratic one-party states like North Korea. Most other East Asian countries adopt systems somewhere in between these two polar ends. This volume begins with a macro-political perspective of leadership. It then looks at case studies of political leadership and the factors that influence the shape and outcome of leadership styles in the region.The book also examines the concept of community leadership and its impact on community well-being. Several specific case studies are examined in depth. While examining political leadership from a macro theoretical and empirical perspective, the book also adopts historical-anthropological perspectives to analyse case studies. The case studies also examine policy formulation and implementation to look at the role of government in handling community-level issues.Finally, the book focuses on economic leadership in international political economy and global business.