ABSTRACT
The impending third millennium presages basic, and unwelcome changes for this style of business culture. Before the end of the 1990s, the political leadership in nearly every Asean country is destined to pass from the scene. Just one year after Porter’s steadying words in 1985, economist Hans Christoph Rieger took a decidedly more sombre view of the future. Asians consistently edge ahead of other ethnic Americans in scholastic testing. Scores of studies fret over the much greater time spent studying mathematics by Asian children, than by other Americans. ‘America’s future is likely to be increasingly Asian,’ said the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington group. In trade friction, Asean increasingly feels the sort of pressure normally applied against the sharper side of the ‘East Asian Edge’, that is, the rapidly growing, autonomous industrial economies of Northeast Asia. Finally, the omnipresent political uncertainties in Asean dog its economic and business future.
