A perspective on the “Singapore climate” – a response

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Message from Ken Ang, owner of Wavelength Innovation Technologies (Singapore), via FB, 3 June 2012.
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If a govt’s role is to be a provider of a platform for businesses to conduct their business activities and at the same time foster entrepreneurship and helping various industries move up the value chain.

But i dont really see that here in SG or just half-hearted attempts that fizzle out after a few years like IT or Life Science.
What really bothers me is that GLCs are competing directly with local SMEs and subsequently monopolizing the relevant industries, even pawn shops are now.

I have read about China decentralizing and privatizing their state entities like the big four banks and airlines but in SG i see how govt through GLCs are consolidating and strengthening their stranglehold on the industries they engage in.

What is your outlook for SG’s economy and youths in the next 15-20 years, given this climate?

I always feel that we are a sprinter and not a marathon runner, and we lost the plot from the very beginning; as early as the 60s and 70s by not enforcing joint ventures with the foreign investors who set up their manufacturing facilities here and then allowing them to relocate in the 90s; while not having learnt anything valuable from them other than gaining a few decades of tax and job opportunities.

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Photo and Text © Alen Cordic and C Cordeiro-Nilsson 2012

Hi Ken,

I can see that we are not focusing on quite the same issues when talking, but I will try to address your question and point of view.

With my post of Paddy Ashdown’s TedsTalk on FB, the point of fascination for me relates to how global processes are right now forcing even academic theories in various fields to come up with more integrated theories in order to explain and understand current phenomena in the field of international business that relates to my work in research.

Your questions and concerns however, seem related more specifically to the role of the State, which in my view, is interesting only to the extent of how that role is currently being defined in relation to other agents of change on the global scene, and then again, back in relation to my field of research.

In other words, the matter of state governance is interesting but not primary to my interest with my posting of Paddy Ashdown’s talk.

When it comes to the governance of Singapore per se, I will need to say that this space is not intended for such debates – my FB page, albeit open to public, remains still a personal space, currently used as a means to keep in contact with my network of family and friends, and I would prefer to keep it as such.

There are however other forums of interest that you can find over the Internet that might prove more interesting and useful for your purpose – the Online Citizen for example is one such forum that you might be interested in joining (?).

But having said that, I could share my point of view on what you wrote and asked above, with regards to the ”Singapore climate”.
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Leadership as a dependent variable – brief round table reflections

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Tonight’s read: “The Work of Managers: Towards a Practice Theory of Management”, edited by Stefan Tengblad, 2012. Oxford University Press.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012

It was Professor Sune Carlsson who first published the book Executive Behaviour in 1951 that earned him recognition as one of the founding fathers of the field of Scandinavian management studies, his perspective being that management work is more an art rather than an applied science. The compilation of articles that Stefan Tengblad has put together in this book follows through on Carlsson’s point of view where managerial work that is often thought of as rational, organized and planned that numerous theories on management behavior have thus far argued for since the mid-1900s, is really revealing itself to be a process that is much more social and serendipitous in action and solutions to problems. And while the study of management lends itself to scientific analysis, what researchers in Sweden have found is that good managerial practices develop also rather independently from management science. It is also just about here that I realize again, how useful the Swedish fika as a session can be when it comes to even managerial work practices.

There is also a point of view of an effort to move away from the use of the word “leadership” in the Swedish academic circles of management studies, since the idea of studying leadership is much like studying the ethereal – the study of leadership does not come from studying ‘leaders’ or top managers of organizations per se but rather from the variables of the surrounding context that contribute to the concept. For example, a group of middle-managers tended to attribute ‘leadership qualities’ to the person in top management who was perceived to have made good decisions for the group as a whole. And a person in top management who was trustworthy with perceived sound judgement by the group with whom s/he worked was also attributed qualities of charisma.

This book reflects generally, a Nordic perspective and a Scandinavian tradition of management research that very much includes qualitative aspects of management science grounded in narratives, organizational symbolism, mythmaking and ‘the irrational of decision-making’ where formal rationality often times limits the ability to understand organizational life and behavior.

The evolving Tao of language

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Photo and Text © Alen Cordic, C Cordeiro-Nilsson 2012

In the midst of preparing an academic paper for an upcoming Yin Yang themed conference at the Stockholm University School of Business, I as usual got sidetracked into other interesting reads. This time one by L.H. Wee[1], on how Singapore Colloquial English (SCE) helps build Singapore’s national identity.

Growing up in a Eurasian family in Singapore[2], there were many on my father’s side who worked as civil servants, mostly within the British administration system, English being their mother tongue and language at work. I always marveled at how very proper their spoken English sounded but never thought much of it.

Eventually when I started school at the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus[3], I noticed that not all classmates of mine had English as first language, and the fact that my paternal grandparents spoke English with Received Pronunciation, became more of a dismay to me than anything else, since the English my friends spoke outside of the speech and drama classes from the Nuns, was different.

It was so different that it included words that didn’t even belong to English at all. I was a bit confused but tried to keep this ‘other’ language secret from my grandparents and other aunts and uncles who when I had slipped and spoken with a more Hokkien influenced English intonation, had rapped my knuckles followed by disapproving clicks of their tongue, tsk tsk…

Still, there was no stopping learning this ‘bad English’ at school, because socializing across cultures meant that a common language was needed in order to be part of the group, whether it was playing games or buying food at the canteen.

This ‘bad English’ was of course my first encounter with SCE or Singlish.
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The Swedish culture of denial

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For the part of the world who have found it a point to notice that there is such a country as Sweden – at some distance easily mixed up with Switzerland – Sweden might appear as somewhat of an ideal state of equality, untroubled by racial riots and religious taboos.

On close encounter a different picture emerges that speaks about a state of denial that have grown into a culture of its own. In a time when globalization is increasingly becoming a non-issue, when through the Internet Syria is as close as Malmö, this phenomenon might become a problem. The problem, being that the wider meaning of the word ‘culture’ in Sweden has been obscured and cemented into oblivion so much that there are almost no words there to talk about the fact that values, beliefs, religions and various ideas about what is right or wrong are different in different parts of the world.

Defining culture

In the early 2000s when I began to prepare my research for my doctoral thesis in the field of managing across cultures and leadership across cultures, it appeared that almost every author touching upon the topic of culture had come up with a definition of their own. Already during the 1950s, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn had compiled a list of 164 definitions. The definitions spanned fine arts and humanities, pattern of human knowledge, beliefs and behavior, shared attitudes, values, goals and practices. Everything from cultivating small societies of bacteria in a Petri dish to my favourite, Geert Hofstede, who defined culture as a ‘collective programming of the mind’. It appeared that the only common ground was the agreement that there was such a thing as culture and in its broader sense all were the creations of man to fit in between them and what was given by nature to make just about any place on earth inhabitable. Thus, of course, any “culture” would vary with the places and be whatever served its purpose best at that place.

This wider definition made for three simple observations:

  1. There is such a thing as culture
  2. They vary with their geographical location
  3. Their usefulness will vary since what is useful in one place will be plain stupid in another

What we arrive at in the most secular country in the world is however, the contradiction that the Swedes do not believe in the thesis of Greek philosopher Protagoras, that “man is the measure of all things” but would much rather go with the Old Testament’s belief in absolute truths, that what is true to one man is true to all.

When I went on in the course of my research and talked to Swedish top managers about their “management style”, asking if they felt that their ‘style’ would broadly correspond to the “Swedish culture and values” most Swedes would have it that there did not exist any particular Swedish management style, and certainly no framework of a Swedish national culture that influenced this non-existent “Swedish management style”.
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Sunset at Montjuïc El Xalet, Barcelona summer of 2011

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Dr. Cheryl Marie Cordeiro Nilsson with Irene (Kenya) and Mame (Senegal), IFP 2011 dinner.

IFP 2011 Graduation Dinner, Montjuïc El Xalet.
The IFP 2011, IESE Business School, University of Navarra saw 41 participants from 26 different countries gather in Barcelona for three weeks of intense studies for executive management faculty.
Photo: JE Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011

The last day of the the International Faculty Program (IFP) at the IESE Business School in Barcelona saw the Class of IFP 2011 gathered for a farewell dinner at Montjuïc El Xalet, a restaurant with a picturesque view of the city of Barcelona!

For three weeks I enjoyed the company of some of the world’s most interesting academics and professionals, from more than 26 countries across the globe.

The Class of IFP 2011 had a broad variety of backgrounds even if the syllabus of the program was specifically designed for faculty members of business schools. The course had a distinct focus of IESE’s brand of case studies as a method of teaching and learning in higher education, in particular with MBAs and EMBAs. The lectures and sessions with various cases proved highly motivating and made for numerous memorable learning experiences.
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The Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg – and the tiger economy of Sweden

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The Swedish East India Götheborg III was launched in 2003, in Gothenburg, Sweden.

In 2003, launching of the Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg III
Photo © JE Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC 2003-2011

My personal involvement in the Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg III project was so early that I had not myself realized it back then. In the project newspaper GotheborgsPosten that was distributed in 360,000 copies throughout the entire western Sweden in 1996, it was outlined that one of the research objectives that would be targeted was Swedish-Chinese Business Communication. The Professor that in 2003 would arrange for me to receive the Anna Ahrenberg Research Funding Scholarship to help me start a PhD research (graduated in 2009) in doing precisely that, was interviewed. Strange indeed are the paths of life. Today, I go off to work everyday by ferry straight across Wargö Håla, the historic departure point of the Swedish East Indiamen in the western Swedish archipelago. In fact the house in which we live features one of the ship’s actual water provision wells in our very garden.

Currently at work, at the University of Gothenburg School of Executive Education AB, prevalent topics of discussion circle around Swedish-Chinese business relations and the future of work prospects with Sweden’s competitive growing economy that earned acknowledged nods from Swedish leaders, specifically that of its Finance Minister, Anders Borg, of the country being a Nordic tiger economy (ref. Di, DagensPS and Epoch Times). All this showing that the Swedish East Indiaman still has a relevant role to play, more so today than ever in its importance of growing global contacts. Its shared goodwill initially created by the East Indiaman Project is everywhere present.

In the media recently, a passionate discussion has arisen about what to do with the ship, now when its initiating ideas have been completed – the ship built and it has traveled to China and back. What now?

Many suggestions including turning it into a museum, an amusement park and why not – firewood – have come forth. Personally not even at today’s energy prices does the idea of firewood sound very brilliant.

Eventually, the original Founders of the project have chosen to step forth, and in this weekend’s local newspaper GP, have briefly presented their views of how the ship could continue to earn its keep and do much more than that.

The following article were published in GP, in January 22, 2011, as part of the ongoing debate about the future of the Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg III ship.

H.R.H. the King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden disembark the Goteborg III and officially set foot on Chinese soil.

H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf and H.M. Queen Silvia, disembark the Gotheborg III in Canton, China, 2006.

From the point of view of Anders Wästfelt and the Think Tank Gotheborg, the ship is far from done sailing:

In view of the past few days defensive debate in the media and our City Council, on the future of the East Indiaman Gotheborg, it is time to lift our eyes beyond the horizon. In the right hands the Götheborg III – our ship – is a regional and national asset with huge potential.

She has great future tasks, functioning as a symbol of our community, an inspiration for continued work and as a source of financial revenues. She is well-built and with proper maintenance, she can sail for another 20-30 years.

The project to build a replica of the 1700s Swedish East Indiaman began in 1992 as a private initiative. It was well thought through and enjoyed the support of international shipbuilding expertise, the best marketing specialists, lawyers, economists, politicians, sinologists, university faculties as well as members of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Swedish Trade Council.

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La Vie En Rose at The Astor House Hotel, Shanghai

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro-Nilsson, at La Vie En Rose, the Astor House Hotel, along the Bund, Shanghai.

Breakfast at La Vie En Rose, the Astor House Hotel in Shanghai, along the Bund.
Photo © Yina Huang, P O Larsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC 2010

Every New Year most people will find themselves writing new resolutions for the year ahead – a healthier year ahead, a more successful year ahead, new goals to be attained or renewed interests in old goals previously unattained – but for me, as 2010 passes and this night welcomes 2011, I can’t help but go back to what has been there for a very long time. A time when I was growing up, of photographs now a natural sepia in family albums.

One such place where time has seemingly stood still, and which now come to mind from my travels in the past year is The Astor House Hotel along the Bund in Shanghai.
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United Nations Association of Singapore (UNAS) – Celebrating its 40th Anniversary

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Kamal Malhotra, UNAS 40th Anniversary Gala Dinner, Singapore.

At the UNAS 40th Anniversary Gala Dinner 2010.
The tables such as this of the Guest of Honour, Mr. Kamal Malhotra, was decorated with flags from the countries represented at the table.
Raffaele Di Nardo, Patrik Tan and CM Cordeiro for CMC © 2010

The United Nations Association of Singapore (UNAS) recently celebrated their 40th anniversary with a charity gala dinner, with the event opening with a Welcome Speech by Dr. Tham Seong Chee, who is President of the UNAS. The event was held at the Shangri-La Hotel and the purpose was to raise funds for the association’s educational and humanitarian efforts.

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At the United Nations Association of Singapore, UNAS 40th Anniversary Gala Dinner, Singapore. In a black and gold underlay gown by Francis Louis Ler of Amor Meus, 36 Purvis Street in Singapore.

The main goal for UNAS when it was formed was to build awareness and support for the United Nations and its ideals. As such, this event marked Singapore’s milestone in its efforts in continued support of the United Nations and their international programs.

The Guest of Honour this evening was Mr. Kamal Malhotra, UNDP Resident Representative for Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei and UN Resident Coordinator for Malaysia.

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Visiting the Geely Holding Group in Hangzhou, November 2010

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Geely headquarters, Hangzhou, China.

The Geely Holding Group headquarters in Hangzhou, November 2010
Photo: J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC © 2010

It was with great expectations that I went to visit the Geely headquarters in Hangzhou, the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. Ltd, as part of a Swedish delegation from the University of Gothenburg. Geely’s acquisition of the Swedish car manufacturer Volvo with their headquarters in Gothenburg was announced on Monday the 2 August 2010 and with that, the Zhejiang Geely corporation had concluded the largest ever acquisition of a foreign car company in the history of China.

Geely headquarters, University of Gothenburg visit 2010.

A warm sign at the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group headquarters that welcomed the visit by the Swedish delegation.

Geely headquarters, hallway.

Just inside the Geely headquarters entrance.

Having followed the Ford and Geely negotiations as well as could be done in the press, I expected this acquisition to be an important opportunity to study the process of top management knowledge transfer between modern China and the West.
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Jonsered – Swedish knowledge industry now, and then

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Jonsereds herrgård, terrace.

Jonsered Mansion, today owned by the Gothenburg University
Photo © J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC 2010

When we first approached the Jonsered Mansion it was one of those early winter days where the night frost had added a crystal sparkle to everything, like a dusting icing sugar on the grounds.
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