John Benson - Globalization and Labour in the Asia Pacific

STUDIES IN ASIA PACIFIC BUSINESS
1369-7153

Editors: Robert Fitzgerald, Chris Rowley and Paul Stewart

Management in China: The Experience of Foreign Businesses
Edited by Roger Strange

Greater China: Political Economy, Inward Investment and Business Culture
Edited by Chris Rowley and Mark Lewis

Beyond Japanese Management: The End of Modern Times?
Edited by Paul Stewart

Human Resource Management in the Asia Pacific Region: Convergence Questioned
Edited by Chris Rowley

Korean Businesses: Internal and External Industrialization
Edited by Chris Rowley and Johngseok Bae

China's Managerial Revolution
Edited by Malcolm Warner

East Asian Direct Investment in Britain
Edited by Philip Garrahan and John Ritchie

Managed in Hong Kong: Adaptive Systems, Entrepreneurship and Human Resources
Edited by Chris Rowley and Robert Fitzgerald

Editors
Chris Rowley
City University Business School, London
John Benson
University of Melbourne

First published in 2000 in Great Britain by
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Copyright 2000 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Globalization and labour in the Asi Pacific. (Studies in
Asia Pacific business; no. 8)
1. Labor market Asia 2. Labor market Pacific Area
3. International economic relations 4. Deregulation Asia
5. Deregulation Pacific Area
I. Rowley, Chris, 1959 II. Benson, John, 1945 July 23
331.12095

ISBN 0 7146 5035 8 (cloth)
ISBN 0 7146 8089 3 (paper)
ISSN 1369-7153

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Globalization and labour in the Asia Pacific/editors, Chris Rowley, John Benson.
p.cm. (Studies in Asia Pacific business, ISSN 1369-7153)
This group of studies first appeared in a special issue of Asia Pacific business review,
ISSN 1360-2381, vol. 6, nos. 3&4 (Spring/Summer, 2000) T.p. verso.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7146-5035-8 (cloth) ISBN 0-7146-8089-3 (pbk.)
1. Foreign trade and employment Asia. 2. Foreign trade and employment
Pacific Area. 3. Labor market Asia. 4. Labor market Pacific Area. 5.
Free trade Asia. 6. Free trade Pacific Area. 7. Globalization. I. Rowley,
Chris, 1959 II. Benson, John, 1948 III. Series.

HD5710.75.A78 G58 2000
331.12095dc21 00-031563

This group of studies first appeared in a special issue of
Asia Pacific Business Review [ISSN 1360-2381], Vol.6, Nos.3&4
(Spring/Summer, 2000) published by Frank Cass and Co. Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

Chris Rowley and John Benson

The lexicon of globalization continues to be one of the most fashionable and is in common usage in a range of areas even though globalization's exact meaning and effects remain contested. Our examination and analysis of globalization is in terms of its impacts on labour and its organization, and the possible responses, in the Asia Pacific region.

This focus suggested itself for a variety of reasons. First, there was the obvious drive of intellectual curiosity. Second, there was something of a rebalancing need. There is now a disparate barrage of work on globalization from a broad range of angles and subjects. Even within the area of business and management a variety of literature has appeared. Yet, these have twin drawbacks. On the one hand many accounts are nave and simplistic, universalistic and deterministic, while on the other the focus is generally on managerial issues and so neglects the impacts on workers and their organizations. This bias is being rectified to some extent (see Bauman, 1998). For instance, the adverse effects of globalization on unskilled workers and the need for governments to provide social insurance has been examined (Rodrik, 1997), while a recent Financial Times report was titled 'Globalization "is bad for health"' (Williams, 1999). Even more crucially, labour's role in the processes, and tactics and strategies for responding, has been relatively ignored, although there is some useful recent work in this area (see Leisink, 1999; Mehmet et al., 1999). Third, the particular regional focus provided a range of 'types' of economy and labour organization in various contexts and stages of development. It was the unevenness and contrasts in the way globalization impacts on labour and its organization, and how in turn it might be mediated, which were critical. These points forged the main contours of the template for our call for contributions to this volume.

This introduction begins by attempting to locate and define globalization. The emphasis in this section is on its meaning for labour and the key questions it raises in relation to its impacts on the state, labour markets and labour organization. A typology and grouping of the contributions is followed by a broad overview of each chapter. A short conclusion ends this piece.

A number of key points concerning globalization need to be emphasized at the outset. Globalization needs to be grounded and located as part of several wider debates, and these are common to much of the work in this collection. First, there are the perennial 'universalism' and 'convergence' issues. These views are not new (see Rowley, 1997), although they may take on fresh (dis)guises, such as post-Fordism, flexible specialization, lean production, Japanization, and so on. For instance, Cox (1994) suggests globalization accelerated the emergence of a new model of production (from Fordism to post-Fordism). Some of the more universalistic and deterministic nostrums on globalization can be seen within such perspectives. Second, globalization can be seen as part of the ongoing debates revolving around foreign direct investment (FDI) and its impacts and locations, and competition for it. This is often linked to a view that globalization encourages 'regime shopping', 'social dumping' and a 'race to the base', with a global subordination of labour (including poor pay and standards) seen to flow from such trends. These areas are integral to our interest and that of several of the authors in this collection. Third, common threads are the roles of government in deregulation, privatization and enticement of capital through pursuing flexible labour policies, along with the demise of the nation state and the accompanying inability of national governments to regulate/control multinational corporations (MNCs). This last point is evident in the following statistics. Some 70 per cent of world trade is managed by 500 corporations (Korten, 1995), while 70 of the largest MNCs have revenues bigger than the gross national product of Cuba (Handy, 1998). Korea's then second largest chaebol Daewoo, following its relentless expansion abroad (and before its recent dismantling), had assets greater than the gross domestic product of the Philippines (Burton, 1999). A fourth area concerns trade union strategies, such as level of organization and the difficulties of international coordination and cooperation in response to such changes.