Multicultural Organizations in Asia

A new study of how Asian Pacific organizations and private enterprises are expanding into markets beyond their national bases by transforming themselves in multinational and transnational directions.

It shows how multicultural relations are fundamental to such shifts. It explains the organizational processes that characterize economic restructuring and the transgression of state borders by organizations seeking economic opportunities. It shows how these ambitions require boundaries to be overcome both inside and outside of organizations.

This study also details the trend towards fluidity and complexity of boundaries – both physical and symbolic – within and without of organizations due to the speeding up of key processes.

This, however, does not imply that boundaries are disappearing. Organizational change always challenges identities and sets new targets for this very identification. Mergers, acquisitions and strategic alliances all generate new organizational forms and necessitate the redefinition and renegotiation of organizational boundaries. The manifold ways in which organizational boundaries are affected by economic restructuring and at the same time affect social processes within and between organizations, in particular in the context of the booming economies of the Asia Pacific area is the focus of this volume.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the Asian Pacific Business Review.

Heidi Dahles is professor in organizational anthropology in the Department of Culture, Organization and Management at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She is author of a.o. Tourism, Heritage and National Culture in Java: Dilemmas of a Local Community (Richmond/Surrey: Curzon 2001) and editor (with Otto van den Muijzenberg) of Brokers of Capital and Knowledge. Changing Power Relations in Asia (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). Her research interest is in organizational networks and processes of identity formation in transnational spaces in Asia. E-mail: h.dahles@fsw.vu.nl

Loh Wei Leng is professor in history at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. Her research interests focus on business and maritime history of Malaysia. Recent publications include "The Role of Large-Scale Western Enterprise’in Cheah Boon Kheng (ed.), Vol. VII, Modern History, The Encyclopedia of Malaysia (Singapore:Editions Didier Millet, 2001); ‘The Colonial State and Business: The Policy Environment in Malaya in the Inter-war Years’ in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (2002, 33:2); and ‘Chinese Business Research in Malaysia’(with E.T. Gomez and Lee Kam Hing) in E.T. Gomez and H.H.M. Hsiao (eds.), Chinese Business in Southeast Asia (Richmond/Surrey: Curzon, 2000). E-Mail: lohwl@um.edu.my