ABSTRACT
Relative to other Asian countries the Philippines has a fairly long history of promoting industrialisation and HRM in industries. In the l950s the policy of import-substitution industrialisation (ISI) paved the way for the rapid rise of light industries assembling varied products, from toiletries to vehicles, out of imported semi-processed materials or knocked-down packages. In the l970s ISI was replaced with the policy of export-oriented industrialisation (EOI), initially known as labour-intensive export-oriented industrialisation (LIEO). LIEO/EOI is anchored on the promotion of FDI in enterprises based in export processing zones (EPZs) or housed in bonded warehouses engaged in re-export manufacturing (Ofreneo, 1993). In the l980s a World Bank-supported structural adjustment programme (SAP) sought to deepen EOI by opening up the economy through the privatisation of government enterprises, deregulation of key sectors of the economy, i.e. finance, agriculture, transport, distribution and telecommunication, and the adoption of varied trade and investment liberalisation measures (Balisacan and Hill, 2003; Lim and Montes, 1997).
