The black hole of South‐East Asia: strategic decision making in an informational void

Abstract

Proposes that most managers and researchers acknowledge that emerging and newly industrialized markets do not have the same quantity of secondary data as the long‐industrialized economies of North America and Western Europe. Presents the results of a search of available, business‐related, secondary data on South‐East Asia’s rapidly growing economies; highlights how this dearth of data has resulted in an informational void that affects the practice of strategic management in the region. Also delineates how regional managers cope with and adapt to the informational void, and to the region’s fast‐changing business, cultural and competitive environments, by developing their unique, highly‐intuitive style of strategic management. Finally, provides some suggestions to bridge this informational void for management practice and for future research.

Marketing in Chinese Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs): The State of the Art in a Chinese Socialist Economy

“…Hypotheses relating to marketing control Redding and Ng (1982) reveal that, under the influences of ''face'', Chinese firms tend to use less objective control measures. Haley and Tan (1996) argue that explicit control measures are rarely found in Chinese SMEs. The Chinese decisionmakers, as suggested by Haley (1997), tend to exhibit personal, rather than professional management characteristics.…”

“…Notably, Redding and Richardson (1986) and Redding and Wong (1986) find that the open or participative communications seem not to be found in Hong Kong firms. Haley and Tan (1996) argue that committee meetings rarely occur in Chinese firms and Chinese owner-managers often make key decisions without consulting anyone. Siu (2000b) 4.6.…”

“…Research findings (Wilson and Pusey, 1982;Redding and Wong, 1986) suggest that Chinese firms tend to set conservative instead of offensive or aggressive corporate objectives. Management researchers (Haley and Tan, 1996;Haley, 1997) suggest that Chinese owner-managers adopt defensive strategies by using personal contact networks as a competitive advantage against foreign multinational corporations, local non-network firms, and new entrants without established community experience and connections. Siu (2000a) reveals that the higher performing Hong Kong SMEs set long term profit objectives.…”

Us not them! Impeding knowledge management in supply chains

“…But the Orient is data-poor (in the sense of having a sufficient volume of coherent quantitative data publicly available). By 'data poor' we mean that there is often too little care placed on data consistency, too many regional differences, and too many data omissions, thus formal analysis methods applied in the Orient will fail to generate statistically valid models: indeed many models may not be computable due to a lack of appropriate data (Haley and Tan, 1996). Furthermore, local officials responsible for data collection may have quite simply lied to maintain good relations with senior officials, saying, in effect, that production targets were being met, if not exceeded, when the opposite was the truth.…”

“…We see the consequences of this as Western-trained managers search for large data sets, in their quantitative approaches to issues, and also in the explicit training given to their graduates to be controllers of their own destiny. An Oriental approach, on the other hand, is more modest and more qualitative (Bond, 1994;Haley and Tan, 1996). It would seem reasonable to come to an understanding of how the two methods may be enjoined.…”