1. Unpacking the business of Asian business

The rise of Asia as an important region for global business has been widely recognized as one of the most significant economic phenomena in the new millennium. In his February 2005 speech delivered at Lancaster University’s Management School, Stephen Green, the Group CEO of HSBC Holdings plc – the global bank that arguably knows Asia best – noted that the rise of Asia ‘will fundamentally reshape the world’s economic landscape in the decades ahead . . . At HSBC we believe developing markets will provide about half the growth in demand in the world economy over the next 25 to 30 years. And we believe that China and India will be core to that . . . I would go further and say that the economic modernisation of Asia is the most seismic consequence yet of the globalization of human commerce’ (Green, 2005: 1, 4). Many business and economic indicators have conclusively shown the superlative upward trajectories of Asian firms and Asian economies: the number of leading Asian firms listed in Fortune Global 500 is growing rapidly; the GDP per capita of Asian economies is increasing dramatically, and thereby creating huge domestic consumer markets; Asia is attracting a large proportion of the world’s foreign direct investment, and becomes a favourite investment destination for global corporations; China and India alone are contributing to a substantial portion of the world’s manufactured products and IT services; and the list of achievements by Asian firms and Asian economies goes on and on. While substantive academic studies of Asian business have been in existence for several decades now, there is relatively little systematic integration of our knowledge and research on Asian business (see also Leung and White, 2004). Most of the existing studies either focus on business and management issues in specific Asian firms (Calingo, 1996; Hamlin, 1998, 2000; Turpin and Shen, 1999) and Asian economies (for example Japan, Indonesia and Hong Kong), or champion an all-embracing Asian-style/way of management (for example Chen, 1995; Lau et al., 2000; Backman and Butler, 2003; Warner, 2003; Tipton, 2005). The former research approach tends to place much emphasis on economy-specific characteristics, at the expense of broader regional and global forces, in shaping business and management issues in a particular economy. In some cases, the analytical focus is highly limited to micro-management issues within Asian firms. On the other hand, the latter approach often caricatures the great diversity of management practices in Asia, and makes sweeping generalizations that call for an exceptional view on how a singular form of Asian business differs from the so-called ‘Western’ practices in business and management. An unfortunate consequence of either approach is that Asian business becomes rather mystified as either unique to specific Asian economies or similar across all Asian economies. These approaches are clearly unsatisfactory, as Asia is becoming much more articulated into the global economy. We need a more holistic approach that combines micro-level analysis of Asian firms and industries, with macro-contextual analysis of local, national, regional and global influences on Asian business.