Introduction

With two-thirds of the world population living in Asia, and with the corresponding increase of Asian purchasing power, has come the stimulation and emergence of various approaches to business development. Historians and geographers, as well as scholars from other disciplines from the West and from Asia, have long since contributed with research and pushed the frontiers of our knowledge in many areas. However, research on ‘business development’ — within the disciplines of Management Science and International Business — is of recent origin. The economics of nations, the business models of corporations as well as the daily lives of many consumers have evolved such that we need the work of researchers to help us understand these trends. To combine parts into a whole is often a valuable contribution in research, a contribution which this book aims to make. In addition to integration, the other important key factor in this book is responsiveness; that is, our striving to see ‘root causes’ and ‘responses to influences’. This book is an anthology comprised of contributions presented at the annual conference of the Euro-Asia Management Studies — EAMSA — in October 2003 in Stockholm. Twelve of the papers presented were chosen, of which ten were later rewritten for the purpose of this publication. The book is in three parts, each comprised of four chapters focusing on one of three major themes that run through this book. Part I is based on the theme that corporations and governments make major adjustments in order to realign their positions to new realities.