Korean direct investment in Southeast Asia

Shin, Yoon Hwan; Lee, You‐il

doi:10.1080/00472339580000111

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Phil Knight, Chief Executive Officer of Nike, when asked about the subsistence-level wages paid to workers pointed out that 'there were thousands of Indonesians lined up outside the factory gates, waiting for jobs.' 7 Significantly, much of the surge in foreign investment in Indonesia's manufacturing sector since the mid-1980s has come from East Asian NICs like South Korea, where firms have been troubled by rising labour costs and unrest (Thee, 1993;Shin and Lee, 1995). The owners of such mobile assets are keenly aware of their ability to move again if the investment climate in Indonesia becomes less attractive.…”

Section: The Contemporary Situationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Labor and the politics of structural adjustment in Australia and Indonesia

Beeson

Hadiz

1998

Journal of Contemporary Asia

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Over the last few years there has been a remarkable growth in the amount of scholarly attention given to the internationalisation of economic activity. While a good deal of interest has also been generated by concomitant and interconnected political developments, both domestically and internationally, less attention has been given to the impact of such developments upon workers and organised labour. And yet labour not only remains a potentially important influence upon the way international economic force are mediated at the national level, but it is an important index of the impact international economic change and the success of national policies of structural adjustment.In this article we consider the ways labour in two quite different nationsAustralia and Indonesia -have attempted to come to terms with changing economic and political circumstances. In particular, we examine labour's participation in the distinctive political accommodations that have developed in very different national contexts. A comparison of such disparate national political economies is valuable for several reasons. First it provides an important corrective to some of the more undifferentiated 'globalisation' and 'convergence' theorists, and the implicit suggestion that economic development is either unilinear or likely to generate similar political outcomes. Second, it illustrates not only the sorts of enduring differences in national political practices that are obscured in less nuanced accounts, but also highlights some surprising commonalties that are generally neglected by accounts which privilege the economic aspects of internationalisation processes. Third, this sort of comparative exercise has important theoretical implications. We shall draw attention to the respective national experience with different forms of corporatist social relations in particular, and consider the implications for state-society relations more generally.The article is divided into four parts. In the first section we briefly consider some of the more important international developments to which national labour movements have had to respond. The second and third sections present case studies of the Australian and Indonesian experiences respectively. Particular attention is paid to the way in which state-capital-labour relations are defined within the context of specific historical and political experiences. The final section draws out the implications of this comparison and assesses its implications for both national labour movements. Although the historical setting in both countries is discussed, the major focus of attention is the last twenty years or so, when the internationalisation of economic activity became a greater influence on domestic policy.

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Section: The Contemporary Situationmentioning

confidence: 99%