Asian Organizations Research Articles

Integrating Western Change Management Concepts into Voluntary Welfare Organisations in Asia

Voluntary welfare organizations in Asia are under increasing pressure to change from its traditional ways of operations to ones that will keep pace with client needs in modernizing societies. The rapidly changing Asian economic, social, and technological environment presents both opportunities and problems. Healthcare organizations, in particular, face increasing pressures to contain costs while maintaining quality services. The increasing complexity of Asian nations necessitates organizations networking with others in related fields. This paper examines how an Asian voluntary welfare organization in Singapore adapted western management concepts about organizational primarily from Lewin (1975) and Senge (1994) to help implement a necessary development process. Senge (1994) helped to provide a strategy for change whilst Lewin (1975) helped in explicating the resisting forces and how these can be overcome. But most importantly, ongoing consultation with staff, managers and Board informed the ongoing dialectics which related theory to practice.

Asian Charter on Human Rights

AbstractThrough the efforts of the Asian Human Rights Commission and other groups, a major consultation process was initiated in 1994. Over 100 Asian NGOs were consulted and provided information which was subsequently used by a drafting committee consisting of six persons. After three further consultations, a first draft was finalised. The draft was once again submitted to a large number of Asian human rights NGOs, community organisations, concerned persons and groups. The final document was completed in 1997.

New Essays in Chinese Philosophy (review)

Reviewed by: New Essays in Chinese Philosophy Michael R. Martin (bio) Hsüeh-li Cheng , editor. New Essays in Chinese Philosophy. Asian Thought and Culture, vol. 28. New York: Peter Lang, 1997. xiii, 256 pp. Hardcover $48.95, ISBN 0-8204-2878-2. This book contains fourteen papers from over one hundred presented at the Fifth International Conference of Chinese Philosophy held at the University of California, San Diego, in 1987. While each paper can be read on its own, the editor has arranged them in six groups in an effort to provide a sense of cohesion. The groupings may appear somewhat strained or arbitrary at times (at least two of the papers included under "Moral Sense and Moral Justification in Life," for example, might just as well have been among those on "Revitalizing and Reconstructing Chinese Philosophy"), but a strong point of the book is that several issues and themes do recur from time to time across the articles, with points of view varying just enough to give the reader a valuable added perspective. Indeed, several of the essays that might on their own appear overly scholastic or smug, come to life when read in the wider context. In one of the most readable essays in the collection, Tai K. Oh discusses Confucianism in the context of the modernization of East Asian businesses. Oh gives a tough-minded account of Confucianism in terms of hierarchy, obligations, and formalities. Of the five Confucian cardinal relationships, four are hierarchical and only one a relation of equality. In the four hierarchical relationships, the roles of the subordinate are prescribed and the roles of the superior left more vague. Oh explains the proverbial Confucian harmonious social order starkly in terms "maintaining absolute loyalty and obedience to authority" (p. 82). This emphasis helps explain not only the vertical character of many Asian business organizations, he suggests, but also the alleged Confucian characteristic of exclusiveness in dealing with others. The hierarchical structures are maintained by systems of obligation, particularly the obligations of the subordinate to the superior. The emperor or father figure or company chief all become unassailable. "In the society as whole, the lack of superior to subordinate obligations has led to dysfunction in some respects," Oh writes (p. 83), citing as results a sense of general distrust and a hostility that is repressed with respect to one's superiors but vented downward to subordinates. "The higher the authority, the more absolute it becomes. . . . The distrust that pervades Confucian organizations . . . produces highly self-centered, individualistic managers. . . . The main organizational method of motivation is fear, and strict and thorough control of employers" (ibid.). Formalism enters in, too, through the socialization process by which individuals "learn the stylized responses appropriate to every situation. Individuals are [End Page 404] judged entirely by the way they fit into the prescribed patterns for interpersonal relations. Being polite means adhering to the prescribed formal model, and is the principal measure of one's virtue" (p. 84). Being caught out, in this context, results in feelings of shame and loss of face, "the ultimate social disaster in East Asian society" (ibid.). The ritualistic patterns make communication difficult and in extreme cases lead to double standards, deception, and hypocrisy. While defenders of Confucius may feel that Oh goes too far or paints too stereotyped a picture, many a liberal working in any number of Asian organizations will recognize what Oh is writing about, whether his descriptions reflect an ideal Confucianism or not. Oh himself seems to regard the nature of Confucianism as clear and settled, and does not take up the question of whether Confucianism might be reinterpreted or advanced somehow to meet the objections implicit in some of his more provocative descriptions. (He mentions Japan as avoiding some of the excesses of hierarchical organization in Korea and China, but gives little sense of how far modifications might be taken and still count as Confucian.) On the narrower question of whether Confucianism is good or bad for business, Oh is somewhat ambivalent. One can think of motivation by fear, self-centered managers, ritualistic patterns of communication, and so on as negative things harmful to good management and business success, but are they...

The Beijing Conference on Women as Seen by Three International News Agencies

Of the seven major United Nations conferences on global issues in the last decade, only one took place in Asia. However, the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995 was one of the largest multinational gatherings ever held, with 17,000 participants from 189 countries. In hosting the conference, China hoped to overcome the negative publicity it had endured after Tiananmen Square and to showcase the progress made by Chinese women. This study examines coverage of the conference by three international news agencies: the Associated Press, Reuters and Inter Press Service. It seeks to determine the amount and kind of coverage given to conference themes, and to Asian actors, organizations and nations in reports from the three news agencies.

Incentives in the Asian Context: Theory and Preliminary Evidence

Incentive design for productivity gains has become important for Asian organizations in recent years. This paper introduces the theory of incentive design to an Asian audience while extending the agency theoretic approach to control. Hypotheses derived from this theory were tested in 61 retail stores in Singapore. The results show that employee skills, output measurability and task uncertainty impact incentive design. The results indicate that agency theory may be applicable across cultures. Implications for the Asian context, and its adaptation in terms of behavior, are discussed.

The Concept and Dynamics of Face: Implications for Organizational Behavior in Asia

Research on cross-cultural psychology, sociology, and anthropology suggests that the influence of face on social interactions is both pervasive and powerful in Asia. Face, however, has not gained general acceptance as an important theoretical concept in the literature on Asian organizational behavior and management. In this paper, we propose face as a key variable that can explain much of the complexity of social interactions in Asian organizations. We attempted to elaborate on the concept and dynamics of face in Asia in such a way as to capture its pervasive, significant but often subtle influences on organizational behavior. We also examined conditions, functions, and consequences of face dynamics to generate testable propositions for future research. We argue that scholars have to go beyond the individualistic assumptions about human behavior implicit in theories of organizational behavior in the West to better understand the richness of organizational behavior in Asia. In Asia, organizational behavior is better predicted by an individual's external attributes such as face than internal attributes such as desires, emotions, and cognition.

Tensions in providing services to South Asian victims of wife abuse in Toronto.

South Asian community-based organizations provide services to non-English speaking women from their communities. Because they depend on the state to fund their programs, they have had to modify their agendas and restrain their criticisms of patriarchal society. Community-based groups have to weigh the immediate goals of the women they serve against their long-term feminist goals of reducing violence by men and destabilizing the patriarchal state. Consequently, they give priority to ensuring access to social services for non-English speaking, working-class, immigrant women. But helping women with their problems does not expose the systemic power relations underlying wife abuse and, although some political and social change does occur, it is slow and moderate.

REGIONAL OFFICES IN SINGAPORE: SPATIAL AND STRATEGIC INFLUENCES IN THE LOCATION OF CORPORATE CONTROL

This paper reports a postal questionnaire survey of 130 regional offices in Singapore. The survey examines location decisions, current location evaluation and business objectives of regional offices. The extent to which competition for regional offices is possible among Asian business centers and the regional development consequences of business strategy linked to regional offices are assessed. Variations among regional offices according to country of origin and year of establishment are analyzed. The survey concludes that Singapore retains its lead as a center for regional offices, but that the sources of its attractiveness are changing and that it is not gaining from any relocation of corporate control out of Hong Kong. Public policy incentives to attract regional offices in competition to Singapore may be most successful if aimed at Asian organizations. Promotion to offices from North America and Europe should emphasize the relative growth opportunities in Southeast and East Asia.

Culture/Community/Race: Chinese Gay Men and the Politics of Identity

Abstract: Culture/Community/Race is an ethnographic account of the development of identities and correlative collective practices among a group of Chinese men in Toronto in the 1980s. The cultural and racial politics of these identities/practices are explored through an examination of the role of Chinese culture in their development and through a discussion of the sexual politics of race among men. This latter material addresses the sexual meanings of racial difference and the politicization of these meanings among Chinese men.Resume: Cet article est une description ethnographique du developpement des identites gaies dans un groupe de Chinois a Toronto pendant les annees 1980 et des pratiques collectives qui y ont ete associees. Les dimensions politiques des aspects culturels et sociaux de ces identites/pratiques sont explorees au moyen de l'examen du ro1e de la > chinoise dans leur developpement et de l'analyse de certaines dimensions raciales des politiques sexuelles chez les gais. Ce dernier aspect approfondit les significations sexuelles des differences raciales et la politisation de ces significations chez les gais chinois.Contemporary interest in the cultural construction of gender and sexuality has in recent years produced a growing, largely anthropological literature on the historical emergence and globalization of male identities (Herdt, 1997; Lancaster, 1997; Manalansan IV, 1997; Parker, 1985; Weston, 1993). In his discussion of emergent identities in Asia, Altman (1997: 423) argues that such definitions of the self and the correlative development of discourses of group identity -- a -- are recent historical developments within countries, products of These modern subjectivities, of personhood defined through a sexual orientation and involvement in homogender relationships, may coexist with or define themselves in opposition to older, indigenous organizations of same-sex sexuality (where these exist). Such older forms are usually organized through alternative constructions of gender and various forms of gender-crossing behaviours.Co-existing with an identification with a global peoplehood is the simultaneous process of asserting localized, culturally specific forms of identity (Friedman, 1990: 311), a process Appadurai (1990: 295) describes as the indigenization of modernity. In Altman's work (1997), this is expressed by his informants' desire to assert a specifically identity in contrast to Western constructs and meanings. Attention to such differentiations is paralleled in recent deconstructions of the unitary homosexual subject, to analyses of the multiplicity of same-sex sexualities and ways of being gay. This article explores some of these processes among a group of Chinese men.The global emergence of a Chinese male social movement dates to the late 1970s and early 1980s. One measure of its development is the expansion in the number of Chinese groups or organizations both in Asia and throughout the Chinese diaspora from that period to the present. In 1981 there were a total of four predominantly Chinese organizations, one in Hong Kong and three in North America. By 1995, there were approximately 35 such groups distributed through eastern Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. These groups vary in their objectives and activities and are linked in a number of ways, particularly through the transnational movement of individuals and through the development of a now global Chinese media. In Europe, Australia and North America, these groups commonly identify themselves as gay Asian organizations. Gay Asian has come to be a widespread label of self-identification for men from a diversity of eastern national and ethnic origins although men of Chinese descent numerically dominate this category.I conducted ethnographic field work with one such organization and its constituent networks of Chinese men in Toronto, Canada in the mid-1980s. …

ETHNICITY, GENDER, AND MARITAL VIOLENCE

Based on a two-stage questionnaire with six South Asian organizations that focus on South Asian women, this article examines the factors that determined the creation of such organizations. Through an analysis of their organizational ideology, structure, goals, and strategies, the article demonstrates their relevance and the instrumental role they play in shifting marital violence among South Asians in the United States from a “private problem” to a “social issue.” Central to the analysis is how ethnicity and gender intersect in addressing social change. These organizations are a growing social movement.

Caste — A Personal Perspective

The author, a member of the Dalit caste of Chamars, describes and analyses his own experience of caste. He recalls that a sense of his own low caste identity was impressed upon him at a very early age, especially at school. Yet the practice of the high castes was not always consistent and inflexible – a low caste person who has influence or whose skills are sought after might be offered hypocritical respect. In any case the high caste view of the low castes is not internalised by the latter, especially those who have been influenced by the modern Dalit movement. Caste consciousness and behaviour pervades all communities in India in some form; it is not a monopoly of Hindus. When the author came to Britain at an early age he was initially more concerned by the effects of racism, but soon found that castism was as strong among Indians living in Britain as in India. This is not always made explicit, but most Asian organisations are in fact caste-based. If anything, this castism is stronger than it was in the early days of Indian settlement in Britain when migrants were more inclined to share facilities with each other. Even those who did not practise caste openly effectively support the institution by marginalising the issue of caste intellectually and politically. The only explanatory model which can make sense of the contradictions in Indian society is a model of groups with conflicting interests which however survives because of the capacity of the thin cement of Brahminism to hide the rifts in the structure.

Corporate culture:(1)subtle movement beneath the surface

Dr. Shih here develops the sense and substance of corporate culture as they apply to Asian organizations, seen from his vantage point as CEO of the China Productivity Center, a major consulting firm headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. Western readers will at once profit from his numerous illustrations and find in them major commonalities with their own experiences.

The Private Social Work Practitioner's Role in Working with Southeast Asian Organizations

The paper is directed toward private practitioners who have limited experience with the Southeast Asian community. It identifies some of the broad cultural perspectives that non-Asian social workers need to take into consideration as they attempt to work with Southeast Asian organizations. Concepts of community, community leadership, informal networks and communication styles are examined and discussed. Specific attention is given to the role of mutual assistance associations (MAAs) in the refugee community. The paper concludes with suggested guidelines for practice.

Toward a ‘working peace system’ in Asia: organizational growth and state participation in Asian regionalism

Over the period from 1950 to 1975, regional cooperation increased dramatically in Asia. Expansion in the scope and capabilities of regional organization proceeded through the establishment of 24 IGOs primarily concerned with technical and economic problems. With institutions characteristically specific in function and making decisions through consensus and intergovernmentalism, the structure and growth in Asian organization may be described from the theoretical perspective of classic international functionalism. The more politicized IGOs have not been successful and politicization has been most influential in retarding organizational growth. The rate of growth in Asian organization increased only as politicization from East-West, North-South, and developmental and power differences among participants was avoided by limiting participation to compatible nations. A rising rate of growth in Asian organization was correlated with an increasing concentration of cooperative activity among nations in Southeast Asia compatible in policies on East-West and North-South issues and similar in power and level of development.

European Influence in South-East Asia, c.1500–1630

The more precise definition of the European impact upon South-East Asian trade and society prior to the nineteenth century has become an important pre-occupation of historians of that region in recent years. The hypothesis of J.C. van Leur that “modern capitalism” took shape only after 1820 impelled him to suggest an equality or near-equality between Asian and European commercial organization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A corollary of this view was his negative assessment of the Portuguese achievement in South-East Asia, his refusal to accord them technical or organizational superiority except in a limited military sense, his insistence upon the small and unimportant Portuguese share of inter-Asian trade, and his denunciation of the Portuguese as little better than a band of condottieri who lacked an effective central administration.