The international business literature often struggles to depict a universal experience of internationalisation from the perspective of large countries. This book seeks to enrich the literature by providing a nuanced overview of the little-known Australian experience, being an atypical case of a small- to medium-sized economy which liberalised rapidly from the 1980s outside any trading bloc. Six data-rich survey chapters explore Australia's mixed success in founding its own multinationals. The experience of Australian firms is set in historical and comparative perspective, including interactions with inward and specifically American FDI. Five industry studies next consider why firms in retail, wine and professional services were more successful than in financial services and shipping. Nine detailed case studies of firms then identify the elements of administrative heritage, strategy and learning that have been the key to success or failure. The book concludes by outlining what can be learned from Australia's example and presenting implications for future research. The Internationalisation Strategies of Small-Country Firms will appeal to scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in international business and international economics.

Until the 1900s colonial and indigenous governments of Southeast Asia farmed out the right to run opium, gambling and other monopolies. Yet by about 1920 all of the major farms had been abolished and the collection of revenue brought under direct bureaucratic control. This book tries to explain the rise and sudden fall of revenue farming to trace the changing fortunes of the Chinese businessmen who held the major farms and to use the study of revenue farming to examine the emergence of the modern state in Southeast Asia and the great economic changes of this period.

Until the early 1900s governments of Southeast Asia farmed out the right to run opium, gambling and other monopolies. Yet by about 1920 all of the major farms had been abolished and the collection of revenue brought under direct bureaucratic control. This book explains the rise and sudden fall of revenue farming, traces the changing fortunes of the Chinese businessmen who held the major farms, and uses the study of revenue farming to examine the emergence of the modern state in Southeast Asia.

The extended metropolitan regions of Southeast Asia are the dynamic cores of their national economies and societies and the frontiers of accelerating globalization. ""The City in Southeast Asia"" explores ways of moving beyond outmoded paradigms of the Third World City or a Southeast Asian city 'type'. It begins by contrasting the acknowledged world cities of Singapore and Hong Kong with the aspiring world city of Kuala Lumpur and the still disorganized cities of Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila, and draws comparisons with the national second cities of Chiang Mai, Surabaya, Penang and Cebu. The authors analyze the changing relationships between people and place brought about by temperature controlled environments, the industralization of consumption through large-scale shopping malls, the role of cities as platforms for the globalisation strategies of Asian multinational corporations, and the transformation of public space into private space. They also examine public policy in terms of markets, land use and urban planning, and draw out the implications for research, business and policy-makers. This joint effort by a geographer and an economist will be of interest to economists, geographers, planners, political economists and sociologists.

Surabaya is Indonesia's second largest city but is not well known to the outside world. Yet in 1900, Surabaya was a bigger city than Jakarta and one of the main commercial centers of Asia. Collapse of sugar exports during the 1930s depression, followed by the Japanese occupation, revolution, and independence, brought on a long period of stagnation and retreat from the international economy. Not until the export boom of the 1990s did Surabaya regain prominence as Southeast Asia's leading non-capital-city industrial area.
Previous thinking on Indonesia is being reassessed in light of recent political and economic upheaval. "Surabaya, City of Work" offers an alternative to the Jakarta-centric focus of most writing on the country. It is a multifaceted view of a fascinating and complex city in the dimensions of time and space, economy and society, and the current transition toward decentralization makes it highly topical.
Exploration of this eventful economic history gives new insight into Indonesia's modern economic development. Industrialization is recognized as being associated with rapid urbanization, but this is the first study of Indonesia from an explicitly urban perspective. "Surabaya, City of Work" takes a broad approach that links industrialization to socioeconomic trends, the increasing role of government, changing land use, and trade patterns.
This well-illustrated local history encompassing national events and trends will be a central work on Indonesia for years to come.

Multilateral and bilateral aid agencies now direct much of their East Asia activities to so-called 'governance' reform. Almost every major development project in the region must now be justified in these terms and will usually involve an element of legal institutional reform, anti-corruption initiatives or strengthening of civil society - and often a mix of all of these. Most are, in fact, major exercises in social engineering. Aid agencies and major multilateral players like the IMF, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, are attempting not just to improve governance systems and combat corruption but, implicitly, to restructure entire national political systems and administrative structures. 'Conditionality' puts real weight behind these projects. If successful, they could transform the face of East Asia. Defining 'governance' and understanding 'corruption' are therefore not minor issues of terminology. However, a great deal of optimism is required to believe that social engineering for good governance will succeed in either Indonesia or Vietnam within the foreseeable future. In Indonesia, there is neither the political will nor the mechanism to act, since the legal system is itself utterly corrupted. Better laws have been passed, but they fail in implementation. In Vietnam the problems are somewhat different, but the outcomes are similar. Corruption is widely recognised to be a major political, social and economic issue - even by the Party itself - but few cases are ever tried. The bureaucracy (including the legal system) and the party are so complicit that reform is impossible. These systemic problems point to the basic flaw in the good governance agenda and strategy. A politically powerful alliance of foreign and domestic interests is necessary. Foreign multilateral agencies, donors and NGOs are able to set the international policy agenda, but their domestic allies are politically weak. In the absence of rule of law, the basic institutions of these transitional societies remain largely as they were and there is, as yet, no viable alternative system in either Indonesia or Vietnam. The argument of this book is that more might be achieved sooner by much better understanding of political, legal, commercial and social dynamics in Indonesia and Vietnam, not as they are meant to be but as they are. Multilateral agencies, donors, NGOs, business firms and scholars on the one hand; and local politicians, bureaucrats, business people, lawyers, journalists, academics, and NGOs on the other hand have much usefully to discuss. Only out of that dialogue, a dialogue between the world as it is and the world of ideals, can steady progress be made. This book examines these problems initially in an abstract theoretical sense before testing the frameworks thus established through a series of case studies of Indonesia and Vietnam, two very different Asian states: one (Vietnam) still socialist but in difficult transition from command economy to a limited market structure; the other (Indonesia) embracing a market economy and an emerging democratic system; one with a Confucian legal and political tradition, the other not; one with a socialist, the other a civil law, legal system. The book is divided into three parts. The first, 'Frameworks', establishes some theoretical approaches to the problem of corruption and governance (including a East European example). The second part looks at case studies from Indonesia; and the third part looks specifically at Vietnam. Relevant legislation and judicial decisions can be found in the table of cases and a detailed glossary and list of abbreviations will assist readers unfamiliar with the countries under examination.