2nd Vietnam-Japan International Business Conference: Asia’s Global Business in the New Era

Conference Goals:

•  Offer a forum for scholars and graduate students to harness advanced interdisciplinary knowledge on the past, current, and future of the globalization of business in Asia
•  Offer paper development opportunities especially for young scholars and graduate students for possible publication
•  Provide opportunities for networking and further research collaboration

Conference Theme:

The conference allows scholars and doctoral students to explore broad topics of the past, current, and future of the globalization of business in Asia from a wide spectrum of academic disciplines. The globalization of business has been around for quite some time. Already at the end of the 1980s, Kenichi Ohmae (1989) published an article titled “Managing in a Borderless World” in Harvard Business Review, arguing that national borders became obsolete for business. Once in the 21st century, Thomas Friedman (2005) published a book titled “The World Is Flat,” which became an instant bestseller.

Asia has been considered one of the best beneficiaries of the globalization of business. Starting with Japan (K. Akamatsu, 1961; C. Johnson, 1982), followed by Korea and Taiwan (B. Cumings, 1984; A. Amsden, 1992) and soon China and ASEAN economies (World Bank, 1993; S. Lall, 1996), East and Southeast Asia have been integrated into global markets through export-oriented industrialization and FDI-intensive global production network.

Along the process, the transfer of technologies by firms of developed economies has helped Asian firms acquire not only advanced technologies but also organizational capabilities (S. Yusuf, M. A. Altaf, and K. Nabeshima, 2004; H. W. Yeung, 2009). The results are their deep integration into global production networks, contributing to their sustained growth and development.

Until recently, the globalization of business was considered irreversible. Asia’s continued success was considered a sure bet. However, just in the past few years, new developments have started challenging this understanding and casting doubts on the linear prediction of the continued rise of Asia. The “Occupy Wall Street” movement in 2011 that spread across the world was one of earlier developments to highlight growing public discontent with globalization (M. Hardt and A. Negri, 2011). China becomes more confident and assertive, raising a host of challenges and questions to governments and firms in the United States and across the world (T. Christensen, 2015). The multilateral trade system, one of the pillars of the globalization of business, has become strained. The WTO Doha Round negotiation was stalled, uncovering the sheer difficulty of sustaining and updating multilateral rules while regional trade blocks have emerged (A. Capling and R. Higgott, 2009). More firms support their governments overtly or covertly pursuing nationalist economic policies (A. D’Costa, 2012). Unilateral actions of major economies, including the United States, become rampant and undermine the integrity of the multilateral system. Then comes the Covid-19 pandemic.

How have Asian firms been acquiring and building capabilities and developing competitiveness under globalization? How have Asian governments been assisting them? Have Asian firms been fairing well under the latest round of new developments to globalization? Are they pursuing business as usual, or anticipating major changes and preparing themselves to cope with them? Is a globally dispersed production network sustainable? Are these developments constraining the rapid growth and development of Asian economies? Finally, are Asian governments addressing these challenges through public policies? The conference invites papers that explore the past, the present, and the future of Asia’s global business by examining these and other related/surrounding questions from broad perspectives.

Submission Guideline:

• Paper submission due by December 31, 2020
• Acceptance notification by January 31, 2021

We consider all academic papers that are applied, empirical, and policy-relevant and related to Vietnam, Japan, and other Asian economies. Theory papers that are relevant to the theme of the conference and can develop applied research will also be considered. Possible paper topics may include, but not limited to, the following:

•   Business Administration, Strategy, and Business Economics
•   Management of Organization, HR, Knowledge, and Technology
•   Marketing
•   Accounting and Finance
•   International Economics
•   Industrial Organization
•   Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth
•   Other Miscellaneous Categories

Manuscripts must be written in English, single-spaced, font size 11 or 12, with a margin of 2.5cm (1 inch) on all sides. Please submit your manuscript electronically as a PDF or Word file to ozakit@rikkyo.ac.jp by December 31, 2020. All the submissions will go through the double-blind review process. The result will be notified to the authors by the end of January 2021.

Publication: We aim to publish a select few papers in a special section of a journal and/or an edited volume.

Cost: There will be no fee to participate in the conference. However, the participants must cover the cost of their travel to the venue if the conference is held on the campus of Rikkyo Unversity, Tokyo, Japan.

Venue: Currently, we plan to hold the conference on the campus of Rikkyo University, which is conveniently located in the center of Tokyo, Japan. However, depending on the Covid-19 situation, we may hold the conference virtually by using Zoom.

Organizing Committee and Contact:

Dr. Nguyen Thi Hien, Director, VJCC Institute, Foreign Trade University, Hanoi, Vietnam

Dr. Mitsuhiko Kataoka, Professor, Graduate School of Public Management and Administration, Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan

Dr. Tomohiro Machikita, Associate Professor, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

Dr. Toshiya Ozaki, Professor, College of Business, Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan

For further information, please contact the organizer (c/o Prof. Toshiya Ozaki, College of Business, Rikkyo University, email: ozakit@rikkyo.ac.jp).

 

References:

Akamatsu, Kaname (1961), “A Historical Pattern of Economic Growth in Developing Countries,” The Developing Economies, Vol.1(1).

Amsden, Alice (1992), Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization, Oxford University Press.

Capling, Ann and Richard Higgott (2009), “Introduction: The Future of the Multilateral Trade System – What Role for the World Trade Organization?” Global Governance, Vol.15.

Christensen, Thomas (2015), The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power, W. W. Norton.

Cumings, Bruce (1984), “The Origins and Development of the Northeast Asian Political Economy: Industrial Sectors, Product Cycles, and Political Consequences,” International Organization, Vol.38, No. 1.

D’Costa, Anthony (2011), Globalization and Economic Nationalism in Asia, Oxford University Press.

Friedman, Thomas (2005), The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri (2011), “The Fight for ‘Real Democracy’ at the Heart of Occupy Wall Street,” Foreign Affairs, October 11, 2011.

Johnson, Chalmers (1982), MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975, Stanford University Press.

Lall, Sanjaya (1996), Learning from the Asian Tigers: Studies in Technology and Industrial Policy, MacMillan.

Ohmae, Kenichi (1989), “Managing in a Borderless World,” Harvard Business Review, May–June 1989 Issue.

Yeung, Henry Wai-chung (2009), “Regional Development and the Competitive Dynamics of Global Production Networks: An East Asian Perspective,” Regional Studies, Vol.43(3).

Yusuf, Shahid, M Anjum Altaf and Kaoru Nabeshima (2004), Global Production Networking and Technological Change in East Asia, World Bank.

World Bank (1993), The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy, Oxford University Press.