My PhD thesis, entitled Swedish management in Singapore: a discourse analysis study (2009) will be printed within the week. In this post, I’d like to share with you the Acknowledgements section of my thesis. This section tells briefly, the story of how the PhD thesis began and the individuals who helped me put it together.
More about my PhD thesis can be found at cherylmariecordeiro.com. The public defense of the thesis will take place on Saturday, the 9th of May, 2009 at 10:00 hrs, Room T302, Arkeologen, Olof Wijksgatan 6, Gothenburg, Sweden.
The Invite to the thesis will be posted on my website shortly.
Acknowledgements
Photo for CMC © Kevin Dominic Cordeiro 2009.
My PhD years at the University of Gothenburg and this thesis has had mentorship from numerous outstanding individuals both from within the university and outside of it. It is to these individuals, including the Scandinavian and Asian respondents that took part in my study, that my heartfelt gratitude and thanks go out to, for without their help, this thesis would not have seen its ISBN number.
First and foremost I would like to thank my parents Rita and Adrian Cordeiro and my brother Kevin, who through my childhood and study career had always encouraged me to follow my heart and inquisitive mind in any direction this took me. My parents provided me with a loving home, one where an academic mind was celebrated, and Kevin’s sharp sense of humour has been a gift in my life. If we ever had a family motto that would have been – If there’s a will, there’s a way – a philosophy of life I have been carrying with me every day.
I grew up in the Republic of Singapore. The history of this city state is not older than that I have followed much of its development myself, from its modest situation after its separation from Malaysia in 1965 towards becoming a small but modern state, with its gross domestic product (GDP) per capita ranking among the highest in the world. Singapore has accomplished this and several other milestones without basically any natural resources. In fact, Singapore does not even have enough natural freshwater resources to sustain its own population. I could not help but ask myself, how did Singapore make all this possible?
Singapore is also multi-cultural and multi-religious, as such, there was often some kind of celebration going on somewhere. The cultural beliefs and obligations were legion. My school- and classmates were Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians and Arabs etc, all living as far as I could tell, happily together. As I grew up, I was surprised to understand that this was not always the case in many other places of the world. Here again, I could not help but ask, how does Singapore handle the multi-faceted social fabric of its society?
Later, during my university years and while studying towards two separate Masters degrees I got to notice that there were many foreigners coming to Singapore to set up and run Asian market head offices. Among those were many Swedish organizations. It was obvious to me that these foreign companies were part of the what made Singapore a successful business hub.
Eventually my inquiring mind put me in contact with Jan-Erik Nilsson in Sweden who, being one of the founding fathers of the Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg III ship project, had a lot of thoughts on this subject.
It was our discussions around the peaceful and profitable historical Swedish – Asian trade adventures of days gone by and its modern continuation in Singapore that eventually led to the beginnings of this PhD thesis.
