22 - 23 MAY 2000
AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
PREBAS
Platform for Research on Business in Asia
By SIKKO VISSCHER
At this first meeting of PREBAS, a group of PhD candidates met to discuss their work-in-progress on matters concerning business in Asia. The initiative is a direct spin-off from the seventh Nordic-European Workshop in Advanced Asian Studies (NEWAS), organized in April this year by the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies (NIAS) and the Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam/Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (CASA/ASSR). At this meeting (reported on in the IIAS Newsletter No. 22, p. 41), one of the possible thematic clusters was constituted by candidates working on contemporary business issues in Vietnam, Indonesia, India and Singapore. Themes and characteristics connecting their projects included the attention they paid to networks and the strategic behaviour of businessmen, as well as an interest in the embeddedness of business in wider social and political arenas.While the participants were very content with and stimulated by the qualified academic support from the international team of scholars at NEWAS, the idea was mooted that the communication between PhD candidates should be maintained and the exchange of ideas and methodological approaches should be deepened in a follow-up meeting. When CASA/ASSR agreed to support the follow-up by providing the infrastructure to hold it, and when a travel grant from the Centre for Development Research (CDR) in Copenhagen allowed two Danish researchers to attend, there was nothing to stop inaugural PREBAS workshop could take place.
The core of the workshop consisted of seven PhD candidates, five of the original NEWAS participants and two additional Dutch researchers. From the staff of CASA/ASSR, Dr Mario Rutten sat in on all sessions, providing useful comments and insights, while Dr Bert Schijf shared his expertise during the session on the methodology of network research. Although modest in size, the informal but intensive set-up of the meeting was conducive to in-depth discussions on the individual projects as well as to questions of methodology, theory, and research angles.
As the disciplines represented at the workshop included anthropology, geography, history, and sociology, a wide array of angles and foci was only to be expected. Indeed, projects ranged from zooming in on individual companies and specific commercial or manufacturing sectors, to the attention paid to a geographical location of business and organizations representing local business communities at home and abroad. Despite this variety in range and approach, many fields of interest and research hypotheses could be causally linked to a number of key concepts. The concepts indicated in the discussions included: entrepreneurship, the social and political embeddedness of business, managing of risk through strategy, the role of culture in business behaviour and the importance of the state as a facilitator and regulator for, and at times a competitor to, private enterprise.
As a point of departure for the session on the methodological approaches to and operationalization of business research, one paper, 'Practising New Economic Geographies? Some Methodological Considerations' (Paper presented at the RSG-IBG Annual Conference, Brighton, Universtiy of Sussex, 4-7 January 2000), by Dr Henry Wai-chung Yeung of the National University of Singapore, was circulated in advance. It provided a methodological base-line from the field of economic geography which then served as a starting point for a wider, multi-disciplinary discussion. The participants gained valuable comparative knowledge from each other's approaches and benefited from the input of the staff members.
As many of the researchers in this initial group of PREBAS enthusiasts will be busy conducting their fieldwork, PREBAS II, to be held in the second half of 2001, promises to be another interesting and fruitful meeting. The initiators of PREBAS aspire to expand this research platform and therefore invite PhD candidates working on projects pertaining to business in Asia to participate in future meetings and initiatives. Apart from regular workshops, we envisage the possibility of joint publications on specific themes or geographical locations. Future activities will be announced in this newsletter. Do not hesitate to contact Pepijn van de Port (pvandeport@pscw.uva.nl) or Sikko Visscher (visscher@pscw. uva.nl) for more information. *
Sikko Visscher is affiliated with the Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam and is currently completing a dissertation on the history of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce.
E-mail: visscher@pscw.uva.nl