Culture, Institutions and Business in East Asia

Abstract

The structures of business in the East Asian 'miracle' economies have been explained by culturists in relation to pre-modern belief systems, and more recently by institutionalists in relation to pre-modern traditions and emerging 'institutional environments'. Each school of thought draws selectively on the work of Max Weber. While the latter school's account carries a higher face validity than the former, it is argued that both are at best partial, are often misleading and, at worse, serve to legitimate, rather than critically analyze, the activities of East Asian business élites. In locating business structures firmly in society-wide belief systems or institutional environments, both approaches tend to give deterministic accounts which deny a role for human agency, and which neglect the importance of interests, power and ideology in the design and maintenance of business structures.