Strategic Pragmatism: The Culture of Singapore's Economics Development Board

Rating:
Summary: A case study by a world authority on organizational culture
Review: A detailed case study of a unique experiment in development cooperation between a nation state and business, focused on the body at the centre of the development strategy. Written by a leading expert on organisational culture. It is of interest both to students of organisational culture and for its relevance to globalisation.

Two groups of readers who will be interested in this 1997 study of Singapore's Economic Development Board (EDB). T EDB has been Singapore's chosen instrument for development and implementation of its policies to become a very successful player in a globalised world. Its strategies and practices are of more than passing interest to anyone interested in dealing successfully with globalisation. Both the discussion of the factors in the EDB's success and the discussion of the problems and issues that it - and by extension Singapore - faces make an extremely illuminating case study that, by virtue of EDB's role, incorporates national, governmental and enterprise perspectives. The book also makes an interesting case study of other criteria for successful globalisation identified by both Thurow: Building Wealth and Friedman: The Lexus and the Olive Tree.

Second, students of organisational culture are offered a thorough and lucid account of how the person who is arguably the world's foremost authority on organisational culture went about studying a major organisation in the context of a wider societal culture with which he was not wholly familiar.

Rating:
Summary: A case study by a world authority on organizational culture
Review: A detailed case study of a unique experiment in development cooperation between a nation state and business, focused on the body at the centre of the development strategy. Written by a leading expert on organisational culture. It is of interest both to students of organisational culture and for its relevance to globalisation.

Two groups of readers who will be interested in this 1997 study of Singapore's Economic Development Board (EDB). T EDB has been Singapore's chosen instrument for development and implementation of its policies to become a very successful player in a globalised world. Its strategies and practices are of more than passing interest to anyone interested in dealing successfully with globalisation. Both the discussion of the factors in the EDB's success and the discussion of the problems and issues that it - and by extension Singapore - faces make an extremely illuminating case study that, by virtue of EDB's role, incorporates national, governmental and enterprise perspectives. The book also makes an interesting case study of other criteria for successful globalisation identified by both Thurow: Building Wealth and Friedman: The Lexus and the Olive Tree.

Second, students of organisational culture are offered a thorough and lucid account of how the person who is arguably the world's foremost authority on organisational culture went about studying a major organisation in the context of a wider societal culture with which he was not wholly familiar.