17
THE CURRENT STATE OF INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT EDUCATION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

Pattana Boonchoo, Olimpia C. Racela and Chaiporn Vithessonthi

 

 

Introduction

In the past few decades, Southeast Asia has been considered an economically dynamic region, with strong growth in imports, exports, and foreign direct investment. The establishment of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967 has encouraged free trade within the region, despite many strong differences among the member countries in terms of history, geography, politics, laws and regulations, and culture (Charrier, 2001). Given the rapid growth in international business activities in the region, there is a need to develop managers who can operate successfully in challenging international business environments. Extant literature has emphasized this point, noting the need to train managers who can cope more effectively in the globalized era (Bell et al., 2003; Green and Gerber, 1997; Kwok, Arpan and Folks, 1994).

With the majority of Southeast Asia countries categorized as developing economies, there is a strong reliance on inward FDI and exporting as a means to generate economic growth. There is, therefore, a corresponding need to develop a cadre of managers suited to such an internationally oriented business context. The past decade has also witnessed a sharp increase in the number of regional business schools, both public and private, looking to address this specific human resource need (Welch, 2011). It is still unclear, however, to what extent the business schools in this region have developed business programs that cater to the need of producing qualified managers with an international perspective.

Due to the lack of adequate business and management programs available in the region, Southeast Asia had been the primary source of international students to countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan, where universities had proven successful in providing an “international” business education. In terms of international management education (IME) in Asia, two graduate-level higher education institutions have claimed to be pioneers in the field. One is the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) in the Philippines, which was established in 1968 in coordination with the Harvard Business School, as well as various academics and business people. The other is the Asia Institute of Technology (AIT) in Thailand, which was established in 1959 as a collaborative effort involving governments from five countries to develop science students and eventually launched a graduate business school several years later.

The 1997 Asian financial crisis may have been the major impetus for the diffusion of IME throughout Southeast Asia. While IME in Southeast Asia has existed for over 50 years, a clear picture of the region's IME trends and challenges would be a valuable contribution to determining the future educational needs of Southeast Asian managers. Thus, the core questions regarding IME in the region focus on what is being taught, how it is being taught, and by whom it is being taught.

The major goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of the current state of IME in Southeast Asia. Specifically, we describe and compare undergraduate international business (IB)/international management (IM) programs that are being offered by major business schools in the region. The intent is to assess whether undergraduate IM programs in the region cover the key features of high-quality IB/IM programs, such as internships in foreign countries, student exchange programs, language training, etc. (Alon, 2003). By adopting an institutional perspective, we attempt to link the current state of IME development in the region with three major institutional pillars, namely regulative, normative, and cognitive, in order to identify mechanisms that may foster or inhibit IME.

It should be made clear at the outset of this chapter that the terms IB and IM will be used loosely and interchangeably, as the IB and IM programs in the universities under our investigation offer curricula that cover content through three overlapping fields of inquiry: international management, international business, and international strategy (see Chapter 4).

This chapter is organized as follows: first, a socio-historical background of Southeast Asia is briefly discussed in the subsequent section, followed by a review of related literature concerning institutional theory, which serves as our theoretical framework to explain the development of IB/IM education in the region. The next section discusses the research methodologies that we adopt in the current study. Then a discussion of the findings from each of the countries in our sample is substantiated based on the tenets of institutional theory, followed by an overall discussion of the current state of IME in the region. The chapter then concludes with the research limitations and suggestions for future research.

Background of Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia is a subregion of Asia that comprises 11 countries: Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam (ASEAN, 2012). The region captured worldwide attention during the 1970s and 1980s, with the four so-called “Asian Tigers” rising to global prominence after exhibiting several years of exceptionally high economic growth and rapid industrialization. While the four Asian Tigers have since evolved from “newly industrialized country” status to that of “high-income economy,” the subregion of Southeast Asia had become recognized as an important strategic area for international trade and multinational enterprises.

Whereas the countries of Southeast Asia share some similarities, they are distinct in terms of politics, economy, and culture. In preceding centuries, most countries in the region had been colonized by European countries, including Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. The impact of colonization can still be felt today, as people in many parts of the region still speak a colonial language (e.g., Dutch in Indonesia, French in Vietnam, etc.) alongside over 1,000 other local languages in the region (ASEAN, 2012; Charrier, 2001).

Because of the diversity within Southeast Asia, countries in the region view IME in different ways. Unlike most international management degree programs offered in Western countries, such as those in the United States, that have focused largely on preparing students for expatriation and to work in cross-cultural settings, IME programs in Southeast Asia have focused primarily on preparing students for working in foreign multinational enterprises and emphasizing cross-cultural communication, sensitivity, and relations. Southeast Asia has focused more on international trade and commerce, with programs in developing countries focusing on export-import documentation.

Institutional theory and higher education literature

Organizational structure is shaped by institutional environments, which vary across cultures or societal sectors (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Scott and Meyer, 1983). By complying with institutional rules, organizations tend to be more similar over time, as they go through the “institutional isomorphism” process (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Institutional factors shape the nature of markets, competition, organizational structure, and the performance of organizations.

A central premise of institutional theory is that environmental factors are useful in predicting isomorphism, and has been used to explain why higher education systems around the world are based on common models. Much of the early research that applied institutional theory to the field of education had been conducted from a sociologist's perspective, and usually pursued a worldwide view to assess the broad pattern of education (Burch, 2007). More recent studies have focused on the complexities of government policies and other social pressures that have impacts on the evolution of education (Burch, 2007; Rowan, 2001; Coburn, 2004).

In this chapter, we apply institutional theory to assess IME in higher education institutions in Southeast Asia. Institutional theory helps to explain how universities in the region differ in terms of how they offer IM education, given their institutional contexts. The three major institutional factors applied here are regulative, normative, and cognitive. Regulative factors cover the coercive power of governments, public policies, and regulations affecting education (North, 1990; Scott, 1995). Normative factors refer to socially accepted behaviors in the society, including how societal values and beliefs affect organizational structure and behaviors (Scott, 1995). Lastly, cognitive factors refer to the process of building shared identities and social knowledge. It is a system of shared meanings that leads to stability of social life.

By applying an institutional framework to explain how IB/IM education is offered in Southeast Asia, an enhanced understanding of how external factors, such as government education policies and a country's unique history, shape the way universities adapt themselves, how the output of the system (i.e., students) accumulate IB/IM knowledge and prepare to be part of the workforce, as well as how IB/IM, as an area of study, has been perceived by the workforce (Hanson, 2001; Katz and Kahn, 1996).

In this instance, higher education institutions, as key players in the “open system” educational industry, have had to adapt and learn how to “play” by the governing institutional rules. IB/IM education could only be developed based on how higher education institutions respond to formal and informal rules and regulations, information flows, and social values, etc. According to institutional theory, IB/IM education has been developed and has shown some particular patterns based on how universities have coped in the face of various institutional factors (Hanson, 2001).

Research methodology

The Southeast Asia context comprises countries with a total of nearly 2,080 higher education institutions. Due to the large number of institutions, we have used a more lenient and reliable ranking system, the QS Asia University Ranking 2011, to identify and shortlist the business schools in social sciences and management. A total of 44 universities from five Southeast Asian countries were included in the rankings, of which 19 are in Indonesia, 10 are in Malaysia, four are in the Philippines, three are in Singapore, and eight are in Thailand. Information regarding International Management programs offered at the 44 institutions were obtained using two approaches. One was through an attempt to collect primary data using an email questionnaire that had been sent to the Deans of business schools or to the contact persons identified on university websites. Over a one-month period which included two follow-up contacts, four responses were obtained, for a low response rate of 9 percent.Thus, the second approach involved an in-depth search of university websites and other published sources that revealed the programs and curricula of the 44 schools in the sample.

Findings

From the information collected, the number of business schools offering IB/IM as a major and the program requirements pertaining to their internships, programs for studying abroad, and third-language options are summarized in Table 17.1.

From our sample of 44 Southeast Asian universities found in the QS ranking, 20.45 percent of the business schools offer an undergraduate IM/IB major. Among the universities offering an IB major, only 11 percent of them require their students to participate in a program for studying abroad, and only 22 percent of them offer their students internship opportunities at an MNE. In addition, only 11 percent of the universities on the QS ranking offer their students the opportunity to take courses in specialized subjects.

In the following sections, we describe the IB/IM programs and/or initiatives that we found as being offered in the QS-ranked business schools in the five countries in Southeast Asia that are part of our exploratory study and also discuss how different institutional factors affect the design of IB/IM programs, courses, and other related initiatives. Some key national characteristics of these five countries are summarized in Table 17.2.

Indonesia

Surprisingly, we have found from our sample of Indonesia universities that two offer “international management/business” as a core or elective course. We believe this to be a result of at least two possible reasons. First, it is possible that, in the view of employers, there is no demand for “international management/business” knowledge at the undergraduate degree level. If that is the case, the limited number of IME program offerings in Indonesia might reflect the demand side of the economy in recent years. Second, international management/business academic programs might be offered at other levels. For instance, an associate/vocational degree in international trade may be offered so as to fill the demand of firms for people who could conduct international trade functions (e.g., export/import activities). International management/ business courses may be more in demand or gain better value at the graduate level where mid-level managers want to learn more about managing businesses at the international level. These explanations could, each or in combination, explain the limited number of international management/business programs/courses offered at universities in Indonesia. This pattern of observation is similar in spirit to what we have observed in Singapore, where the universities in our sample offer no international management/business course at the undergraduate level.

From the supply side, the Indonesian government has allocated limited funds for higher education institutions. The budget allocation resulted in a relatively limited scope of major offerings at business schools.

Table 17.1 Summary of IM program requirements and business schools in QS ranking

Notes:

*Total number in QS ranking as a percentage of the total number of registered universities.

**Percentage of the universities in the QS ranking that have a business school.

†Computed as a percentage of the total of number of business schools in the QS ranking.

‡Computed as a percentage of the total number of business schools in the QS ranking that offer an IB/IM major.

Table 17.2 National characteristics of Southeast Asia nations

Source: Compiled from various sources including: http://chartsbin.com/view/2222; 2007–10 World Bank statistics and figures; United Nations Development Programme's

Human Development Report.

As in many developing countries, Indonesia might suffer from a lack of qualified lecturers. In the late 1990s, only 8.6 percent and 29.2 percent of faculty members held doctoral and Master's degrees, respectively (Welch, 2011). In light of this fact, the country should continue to invest in its cadre of qualified faculty members. Only when the country has sufficient qualified lecturers in the major functional areas of business will it be ready to expand into a relatively new area of study, such as in IM. Establishing an IM major without qualified lecturers could hamper the image of the field as the products of the program, which are the students, would not be well trained with a solid foundation in traditional business functions before acquiring the broader international perspective and interactions of all business areas.

Regulations also play a major role in offering an international program that uses English as a medium of instruction. Indonesian law stipulates that no less than 50 percent of the courses in any program of study should be conducted in the Indonesian language (Welch, 2011). For a program using more than 50 percent of English as a medium of instruction, there is a need to acquire approval from the Ministry of Education.This policy may discourage schools to establish a truly international program in IM. To cope with this problem, the adoption of a twinning program could be a viable option to address two issues. First, it reduces the demand for qualified lecturers to teach major courses, since universities benefit from cooperation with foreign institutions. Second, cooperation could be seen as a major way to offer the program solely in English, as it bypasses the need to get approval from the Ministry.

Malaysia

Our survey indicated that three out often universities in the QS ranking offer IB/IM as a major in Malaysia. Economic indicators suggest that Malaysia should be considered a middle-income country with a GDP per capita of US$9,732.6 in 2011, an amount much higher than all other countries in Southeast Asia with the exception of Singapore. From an economic standpoint, Malaysia has engaged in a high level of international trade and foreign direct investment relative to other Southeast Asian nations, which can be seen in the country's trade surplus and the large amount of FDI inflows and outflows. The local universities in Malaysia, however, do not offer a large number of programs in IM or IB, which could be a cause or a result of its relatively strong position in international trade and investment in the region.

The rationale of why Malaysia is in its current middle position in terms of the number of IM/IB course offerings might be explained through various institutional factors. First, in terms of cultural exposure, Malaysians have historically been exposed to various cultures, enabling them to deal with people from other cultures and conduct international business transactions more comfortably. They are familiar with Western culture, particularly British culture. To date, higher education in Malaysia is still dominated by a British model, in terms of the way examinations are offered and the format of its administrative systems (Welch, 2011). In light of this exposure, the Malaysian higher education government body might not see an urgent need to offer an IM education at an undergraduate level. Moreover, in terms of language, English is used as the de facto administrative language and is now an active second language often used in business. Basic English classes are compulsory in all public schools (David, 2004). There are other languages, such as Thai and Cantonese, that students can study in school. This could be part of the reason why there is no need for the study of a second or third language that is usually offered as one of the options in IM/IB programs.

As Malaysia is also a member of the Commonwealth, many students might choose to study in various fields, including IM, in other Commonwealth countries, especially the UK and Australia. In addition, there is still a limit to student intake in public universities, and the seats available in these government universities have traditionally been dominated by ethnic Malays. Some ethnic groups, especially Indian and Chinese, were often forced to pursue their higher education abroad or in private institutions (Welch, 2011). The discrimination against some ethnic groups, however, has been partly alleviated due to the Malaysian government's reform policies that respond to market forces, globalization, and privatization (Welch, 2011). These trends are likely to increase the level of international trade and investments and might increase the number of IB/IM programs offered in the future.

To earn a degree in IB/IM, Malaysian students have another unique alternative to access an IM program from branch campuses of foreign universities. A few universities, notably from Australia and the UK, have established satellite campuses in Malaysia. Many of these universities offer a degree program in IB and offer IM courses. For instance, the University of Nottingham offers a three-year Bachelor of Arts program in International Business, and Monash University offers a Masters in International Business. These transnational universities provide Malaysian students with the opportunities to earn a high-quality IB/IM education at a relatively lower cost, since they do not have to travel abroad. The programs have also filled the gap of the limited supply of IM programs in local Malaysian universities.

Philippines

The Philippines had the most progressive economy in Southeast Asia during the 1960s. This status was largely attributable to the country's abundance of natural resources and the USA's investments in infrastructure and prolonged presence after World War II. The electoral presidency of Ferdinand Marcos in 1965 brought significant changes to the management of the country's economy. Under the 20-year administration of President Marcos, the nation experienced widespread social unrest and relied on foreign loans as economic stimulus packages. By the 1990s, the Philippines was spending half of its export earnings on the repayment of foreign debt (Swinterton, 1991). By 2002, foreign debt repayments accounted for 46 percent of the country's national government expenditure, and in 2004 that figure rose to 81 percent. These substantial debt obligations to foreign creditors placed severe constraints on the nation's development in crucial areas such as in health and education.

The Commission of Higher Education of the Philippines (CHEP) was established in 1994 as the governing body to formulate plans, policies, and strategies relating to the development of higher education. In 2012, 2.5 percent of the Philippines' gross national product was allocated to education, far below the UNESCO standard of 26 percent. The shortage of government funding for public education served as the impetus for the creation and subsequent proliferation of private higher education institutions and programs in the Philippines. Although private universities do not receive financial support from the government, they remain subject to specific government policies, including permission from the CHEP for the launch of new subjects and any increase in tuition fees. As part of its mandate, the CHEP defines areas of study, including 21 major discipline groups and over 550 specific disciplines. Nine major disciplines are designated as priority disciplines that receive greater support for research and faculty development. The area of business administration is not regarded as a priority, but accounts for around 25 percent of the country's university enrollments.

In 2010, the population of the Philippines stood at 93 million, with slightly over 2.77 million, or nearly 3 percent of the population, enrolled in higher education. The Philippines had the largest number of higher education institutions in Southeast Asia, with around 2,250 individual institutions, comprising about 200 state and local universities and 1,604 private institutions. The Philippines therefore has one of the highest education privatization rates in the world. About 75 percent of all higher education enrollment was at private institutions. The rapid expansion of such private organizations has raised issues regarding the quality of education provided, with much criticism focusing on the lack of mechanisms to oversee proper accreditation by education governing bodies (Welch, 2011). Nevertheless, private institutions, as well as transnational programs of foreign firms, have had greater flexibility, and thus play an important role in providing contemporary innovative programs and emerging academic fields of study.

The history of IME in the Philippines can be traced back to 1968, with the first formal program for IME offered as a Master degree program at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM). The program had been launched as a joint effort by three leading local academic institutions, namely Ateneo de Manila, De La Salle College, and the University of the Philippines. Additional support had been provided by the Harvard Business School, a grant of $1.2 million from the Ford foundation, and funding from local businesses, including land for the campus. Since its inception, AIM has evolved to become one of Southeast Asia's leading management schools.

As part of our focus on the Philippines, our selection criteria were met by four leading universities, namely Ateneo de Manila, De La Salle University, the University of the Philippines and the University of Santo Thomas. Each of these four universities has a business school; however, none offers IB or IM courses in its curricula. Nevertheless, newly established private universities have played a role in providing a more “international” study environment, with a few offering undergraduate degree programs in IM. For instance, Southville Foreign University (SFU), established in 1990, has promoted itself as the first international university in the Philippines, since it has created a multinational campus environment that uses English as the main medium of instruction, comprising local and foreign faculty members educated in the Philippines and/or abroad, attracted foreigners as full-time or exchange students, as well as established study and faculty exchange programs with foreign universities. All SFU business students are required to complete a 300-hour internship, preferably at a multinational corporation and abroad in countries such as the USA, the UK, and Australia. SFU adopts international standards and teaching methodologies. Thus, the development of new curricula has been driven by market forces that can be better accommodated by private higher education institutions, which have more academic flexibility (Tan, 1995).

The link between institutional characteristics and academic views of IM within undergraduate programs becomes obvious. Without government priorities or budgetary incentives allocated to providing formal education to foster international managers, universities in the Philippines may not be motivated to invest in the development of newer fields of study and courses that stray too far from the traditional business functions such as accounting and marketing.

Singapore

Due to its relatively small geographic size, Singapore's economic prosperity has been attributed mainly to its strategic location for international trade and its highly skilled labor force. This makes Singapore distinct from its Southeast Asia neighbors who have relied on exporting agricultural resources for economic growth. Singapore has been an important international trading link between Europe and East Asia since the nineteenth century while under British rule of Malaysia. Singapore received independence from the UK in 1959 and its first elected prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, whose administration prevailed from 1959 to 1990, nurtured Singapore's economy into one of Southeast Asia's four Asian Tigers and one of the region's most developed economies. Lee Kuan Yew modernized Singapore by establishing key state agencies to oversee development in key sectors including trade, banking, housing, and education. Foreign investments were drawn in by Singapore's favorable foreign tax structure and reputation for a transparent and incorruptible bureaucracy. World Bank statistics show that Singapore's foreign direct investment was 18.1 percent of GDP, the highest proportion among all other Southeast Asia nations. By 2012, Singapore had become one of the wealthiest nations in the world.

Singapore has long been regarded as a multicultural, multiethnic society, and Lee Kuan Yew implemented initiatives to foster social and cultural homogeneity. There are four designated official languages, Mandarin Chinese, English, Malay, and Tamil, with approximately one-third of the population native English speakers. English has been used as the medium of instruction in all schools since 1987, although Mandarin Chinese, Bahasa Malay, and Tamil are used in specific primary school courses.

About 20 percent of Singapore's national budget is allocated to subsidize state education and government-assisted private education, of which nearly 30 percent is allocated to the four autonomous universities. Education in Singapore is overseen by the Ministry of Education (SMOE), which controls the development and administration of state schools that receive government funding and also plays an advisory and supervisory role for private schools. The degrees of autonomy granted to state and private schools for curriculum design, government assistance and funding, tuition burden on students, and admission policies all vary.

In 2011, the population of Singapore reached 5.18 million, of which 3.256 million were of Singaporean citizenship. The SMOE reports that in 2011 there were nearly 161,000 students— roughly 3.1 percent of Singapore's total population—enrolled in higher education (MOE Statistics Digest, 2011). The higher education market comprises eight universities, 13 polytechnics, and 42 foreign universities and institutes. Business administration is the second most popular area of study by enrollment, behind engineering. Overall, Singapore has been regarded as offering “world-class” higher education and producing highly competent graduates.

The three leading universities, namely National University of Singapore (NUS), Nanyang Technology University (NTU), and Singapore Management University (SMU), served as our initial focus for examining IME in Singapore. Although none of these three universities had offered an undergraduate degree program in IB/IM, each had integrated IB/IM education in their own way. NTU had established a Marketing & International Business Division, with more than half of the Division's faculty members hailing from North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, International Business Environment had been offered as a core business course for Tourism & Hospitality Management majors and as an elective course for Marketing majors (Nanyang Business School, 2012). The NUS Business School Department of Strategy and Policy had offered a senior course in Global Strategic Management. SMU had required Bachelor of Business Management students to complete two courses as part of a Global and Regional Studies module, of which International Business had been offered as an elective course. In addition, SMU BBM students had been required to complete a minimum 12-week internship program at both local and international organizations, with the intent of developing the students' appreciation of cross-cultural business practices and research.

Further probing revealed that IME had been part of the graduate business programs at each of the three leading universities, as well as being offered by transnational programs and polytechnics. For instance, Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) had been Singapore's only private university and was designed to offer a broad range of quality overseas degree programs through SIM's network of reputable foreign universities and institutions from the USA, the UK, Australia, and Switzerland. SIM students could earn a Bachelor of Science in International Business from the University of Birmingham, spending at least one semester of study in the UK. Thus, while IM as a formal course had not been offered in Singapore university undergraduate programs, IME had been manifested in student exchange programs, student internships, and international exposure.

Thailand

Thailand is a developing country in Southeast Asia with a GDP per capita equivalent to US$4,972 in 2011. It is the country in our study that has offered the most degree programs in IB/IMB in the region based on the list of QS ranked universities. Historically, Thailand remained safe from European colonization that took place between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. Because the country had never been colonized, one could argue that it has traditionally received less exposure to Western cultures and thus Thai students are in greater need of more training on how to conduct business in international environments. The lack of international exposure might be a rationale behind the many undergraduate IB/IM programs with “third-language” and “study abroad” options. In Thailand, only the Thai language has been widely used and promoted to reinforce the country's identity, even in the several southernmost provinces ofThailand, where the Malay language is predominantly spoken (Welch, 2011). This means that Thais are less fluent in other foreign languages than people in neighboring countries in Southeast Asia.

Academic programs offered in public universities have been highly regulated, making it difficult for government universities to quickly offer new contemporary fields of study. Our findings indicate that all five of the Thai universities in the QS ranking offer IB/IM as an area of business study. These ranked universities are Chulalongkorn University, Thammasat University, Mahidol University, Kasetsart University, and Srinakharinwirot University. Since the Thai government approved the establishment of private universities in 1965 (Welch, 2011), private universities have also served as the means by which the government has extended its capacity to offer innovative areas of study. IM, which is a relatively new field, had been initially offered at private universities in Thailand both at the graduate level (i.e., Asian Institute of Technology) and at the undergraduate level (i.e., Assumption University). When business schools in public universities were funded to offer new programs, IM appeared to be the chosen field of study to expand the scope of their business schools.

In terms of employment regulations in public universities, there was a mass termination of employment of public servants in 1999. Since then, new lecturers employed at Thai public universities have become referred to as “government staff.” The key difference between the former public servant system and the new government staff system lies in the employee benefits and the guarantee of lifetime employment. While public servants had been guaranteed lifetime employment and a much higher pension after retirement, government staff have been subject to a semitenured scheme, undergoing continual performance evaluations before earning a lifetime appointment after achieving an associate professorship academic title. The transition has not been smooth, but the change has been seen as a way to improve the overall quality of higher education. New lecturers admitted after 1999 have been required to produce research publications to pass performance evaluations.

Discussion

Overall, the findings in this chapter show that only a small percentage of business schools in Southeast Asia that had been listed in the QS ranking offer a degree program in IM at the undergraduate level. A comparison of countries in our sample indicates that there has been a wide gap in terms of the number of IB/IM program offerings, ranging from virtually no IB/IM major offered at the undergraduate level to almost 70 percent of the universities offering IB/IM. It should be noted that most universities in the QS ranking are public universities that have long histories and are well established in their respective countries. Private higher institutions in the region have emerged through the last 50 years in order to serve the higher education needs that have not been adequately addressed by public universities.

Government and higher education institutions appear to recognize the need for IB/IM education as globalization has progressed. Yet, our exploratory research indicates that countries follow different paths to fulfill the demand for IB/IM education in their respective contexts.

In this chapter, an institutional theory framework was adopted to explain the factors affecting the development of IME in the region. According to the institutional theory framework, various social and economic factors affect the nature and the format in which the IB/IM program is established and offered. Singapore, the only developed country in Southeast Asia, had offered most of its IME programs only at the graduate level, which represents one end of the extremes in the region. As a shipping hub in Southeast Asia, Singapore needs a workforce that also possesses a basic understanding of logistics and export—import management as well as other related IM education, but the country meets those needs through programs in polytechnic and vocational schools. Courses in international management are only offered at a graduate level, which might imply that the country views IME as the type of knowledge critical for those in the top or middle-level management positions instead of entry-level positions. At the other extreme is the case of Thailand, where the IB/IM major is offered in undergraduate programs at many universities. Malaysia is a country where the IB/IM major is offered at some universities. In the case of the Philippines, the lack of IB/IM being offered as a major might be as a result of limited public funding. The government allocates budget funds to other areas of study according to their economic development priorities. Similar to the Philippines, Indonesia has a limited number of IB/IM courses at an undergraduate level due to a constraint in public expenditure.

According to the definition of IM discussed in Chapter 4, IM might not be deemed as valuable in serving the needs of the Philippines and Indonesia because of the relatively low level of outbound investment to other countries, thus limiting the necessity for international managers. A relatively low number of undergraduate degree programs in IB/IM in the region may also imply that there is a relatively low demand for IM/IB graduates in the job market. There is still a low awareness of the need to study IB/IM in the region since IM does not serve as a requirement to obtain employment in a field of IB/IM. Perhaps employers prefer to recruit candidates who had earned their degrees in different traditional functional areas of study, such as finance, marketing, etc. Until there is a clear requirement in the job market for people with IB/IM qualifications, IB/IM will still need to establish itself as a legitimate area of study, particularly when it is offered at the undergraduate level.

At present, the government policy of privatizing academic institutions appears to be one of the key institutional factors that drive the development of IME in Southeast Asia. The bureaucracy and government funding processes within public university systems slow the curriculum development process. Private universities, which are still relatively young in the region compared with their much older public counterparts, have come to play a significant role in helping the government satisfy industry and market demands for new and necessary areas of study, such as IB/IM. Many private universities, such as those in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand, offer an undergraduate IB/IM program to meet such demands that might not have been adequately met by the relatively limited number of IB/IM programs offered by government universities. In some countries, such as Malaysia, foreign universities have established branch campuses to provide an undergraduate degree program in IB/IM, among other programs, in order to fill gaps as a result of the limited availability of such programs by both public and private universities.

Based on the information gathered from university websites, it can be surmised that the number of faculty members with a doctorate degree in IB/IM has been relatively low compared to that found in leading business schools in the USA or in Europe. This lack in the number of faculty members with a formal higher education in International Business may also be another reason as to why few universities offer IB/IM programs and courses. Considering the fact that IME education had actually been promoted and launched in Southeast Asia in the early 1960s, the seemingly slow growth in the number of faculty members equipped with a doctorate degree in IB is surprising.Thus, the quality of existing IB/IM programs and course delivery has and may remain a key issue in most parts of the region.

On a positive note, interest and employment demands for “international” managers is expected to increase with the upcoming implementation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), the regional integration of ten ASEAN member nations. The major goal of the AEC in relation to education has been to encourage cross-recognition of the professional and education qualifications throughout the region (ASEAN, 2012) by working collaboratively with the Southeast Asia Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) and the ASEAN University Network (AUN) (seamoe.org, 2012). The AEC 2015 is expected to increase the number of foreign students in Southeast Asia. The number of Japanese students, for example, is expected to exceed the current level of approximately 23,000 students (Kakuchi, 2011). With the increase in the level of intra-regional trade and a high potential for economic growth, the study of international business is more likely to gain more attention from the governments of Southeast Asian Nations as firms foster and attempt to increase their competitive capabilities to compete in the region and worldwide. As such, there is a high potential for the diffusion of IB/IM as a field of study in the region.

Figure 17.1 illustrates the drivers of IME in Southeast Asia based on our institutional theory framework. Market demand in this context refers to the extent to which an undergraduate degree in IB/IM is demanded by prospective students. As economic development in the Southeast Asia region has gradually progressed since the 1990s, high-quality candidates possessing an undergraduate degree in business had been aggressively sought by companies. This preference had led to an expansion of business degree programs at many universities in Southeast Asia to meet employer demands. Given the expansion in economic activities as a result of higher levels of international trade and larger amounts of FDI inflows in Southeast Asia, firms have been in need of employees with knowledge in the areas of IB/IM, so as to cope with firms' international-related business activities. Thus, these factors have contributed to the greater demand for high-quality candidates that have a degree in IB/IM, which in turn has led to an increase in business school enrollment.

Industry demand refers to the extent to which companies are interested in hiring candidates with an undergraduate degree in IB/IM. A higher level of industry demand for a larger pool of candidates with an undergraduate degree in IB/IM would gradually put greater pressure on state-funded institutions (i.e., public universities) as well as private institutions (i.e., private universities) to improve their IME courses, programs, and extracurricular activities. Likewise, government and regulatory incentives (e.g., mandates, budgets, tenure, shifts to privatization) would influence the actions of both private and public institutions in terms of how they choose to design and deliver IME so as to equip undergraduate students with knowledge, skills, and competencies sought by local firms wanting to internationalize and MNCs establishing subsidiary operations.

As the demand for business education and IME in the region increases, business schools appear to respond to changes in the environment by (1) concentrating on offering traditional programs only (e.g., offering majors in accounting, finance, marketing, and management), (2) offering IB/IM as an elective course, (3) offering IB/IM as a minor specialization, or (4) offering IB/IM as a major area of study. When the industry and market demand for IB/IM education in the region remains low, relative to the demand for other areas of study in business

(e.g., accounting, finance, marketing, and management), it is more likely that business schools will remain focused on offering traditional programs. At a certain level of demand for IB/IM education, the business schools are likely to begin offering an elective course in IB/IM. Naturally, the business schools would be interested in offering a minor specialization in IB/IM when there is a sufficient demand for it and the schools have the capability to offer it. At later stages, the business school may offer IB/IM as a major area of study, which could be seen as an indication of the increased importance of international-related business activities in the industry. However, it is plausible that business schools may alternatively follow another route in incorporating IB/ IM education into their existing curricula. That is, rather than offering IM as a major, the business school could design the curriculum in a way that IM aspects are fully integrated in many traditional courses in the programs.

As a way to overcome limited budgets and/or regulatory constraints, some business schools have pursued cooperation with reputable foreign universities in offering a so-called transnational program. For example, the business schools may offer a joint program in partnership with a university in Australia, the UK, or the USA, where the business schools in Southeast Asia could benefit from the higher quality of the faculty members at the foreign universities. This type of strategy would mitigate the staffing problems at universities in Southeast Asia, and offer higher quality programs at relatively lower overall costs to students (than, for example, full-time study in the UK).

While this chapter sheds light on IB/IM education in Southeast Asia, there are several limitations and constraints that are worth mentioning. First, the scope of the universities included in our exploratory study had been limited only to those listed in the QS University Ranking in Social Sciences, with a majority being public universities. Future studies should attempt to include a broader range of other universities and institutions of higher learning that were not included in this study, as it would provide a more comprehensive view of IB/IM education in Southeast Asia. However, the inclusion of these universities in a future study would mean that, while expanding the scope, there would also be a higher level of heterogeneity of educational quality within the sample. In addition, future research should include universities in Southeast Asia that do not appear in the QS Ranking in order to provide a more thorough view of IME in the region. A second limitation lies in the fact that this study only explores IME at the undergraduate level. Universities in some countries in the region have chosen to offer IME mainly at the graduate level. As part of the history of IME in Southeast Asia, universities in some countries pioneered IME at the graduate level. Thus, future research should expand their IME investigation to include IME at all levels of education.

In addition, this study principally relies on the information available on the university's websites, since the survey distributed to all universities in the QS Ranking resulted in an extremely low response rate. With a few exceptions of some leading universities in the region, the website content of the majority of these universities had lacked essential information for prospective students; thus, such universities suffer from a lack of transparency. It is relatively difficult to extract information about whether a business school offers an international internship, study abroad program, third-language options for students, etc. The information about research had also been limited in most of the schools' websites, indicating that research may not be the main focus for the majority of business schools in Southeast Asia.This confirmed the issue raised by Liefner and Schiller (2008) that most universities in the region have remained teaching universities with limited focus on research-based teaching. As a result, researchers exploring IME in the future should attempt to adopt other research methods to gather richer information from universities in this region, such as by using in-depth interviews. Due to the limited information provided on websites, it has been difficult to fully explore the differences in the IB/IM programs across countries as well as to gauge the overall quality and breadth of their curriculum. Future research should attempt to overcome this limitation.

IME in Southeast Asia has grown in size and in terms of program diversity in the past two decades. While there had been no business school in Asia that offered IB/IM as a program of study in the early 1980s (Chung, 1985), many universities in Southeast Asian countries now include IB/IM as another major area of study for their students. As can be read from this chapter, various institutional factors have played an important role in shaping the way IB/IM programs have been developed and offered by universities in the region. Institutional theory has been useful to explain the development of the IB/IM program in Southeast Asia, since the countries in the region differ substantially in their institutional environments and we have therefore found IME being offered in very different ways in each country. Some countries in the region appear to be more progressive in terms of their IB/IM curriculum and the manner in which courses are being offered, while others are in an early stage of development. With the trend toward privatization and government approval for private and foreign universities to establish various programs of study in business as well as in other fields, the quality of education will remain an important issue challenging the governments in these countries as they attempt to enhance the quality of education to compete at a global level.

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