The Internationalization of Singapore’s State Enterprise Network: Notes from Singapore’s Gambits in the Gulf Region

• Main Authors: YEOH, Caroline, HOW, Wilfred Pow Ngee
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2011
• Subjects: International Business
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/3078; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/4077/viewcontent/11._20Caroline_20Yeoh.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The Singapore system of state-led, market interventions and its concerted attempts at creating overseas infrastructural-industrial township projects have received its share of controversies. These state-engineered projects are premised on the exportability of Singapore’s state credibility, systemic and operational efficiencies as well as technological competencies of Singapore companies, government-linked or not, to locations where the attributes are less distinct. This paper, as part of our series on this topic, revisits the city-state’s determined efforts to encapsulate economic space for Singapore-based firms to expand beyond the region, and tests the efficacy of the ‘Singapore system’ exported to foreign locales. This research, however, takes on an ‘Arabian allure’, as we present evidence from the gambits of Singapore’s government-linked companies in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Our results show that the strategic advantage created in the Singapore-styled projects remains uncertain; as well, we find that socio-political intricacies in the host environments continue to stymie efforts to import competencies and business practices.