The book was inaugurated by His Excellency Dato’ Naimun Ashakli Bin Mohammad, Hon’ble High Commissioner of Malaysia to India. Mr R C Sharma, President, FORE; Dr Jitendra K. Das, Director, FORE and Dr Hitesh Arora, Chairman (Publication, Research and Seminars), FORE shared the dais with the chief guest.
On the occasion, Dr Jitendra K Das said, “How Malaysia has become one of the most prosperous Southeast Asian economies surpassing the income per capita of countries like Indonesia and Philippines and India should try to emulate Malaysia’s success story stemming from outward-orientation, high standards of education and high savings rate.”
MBAUniverse.com presents the highlights from the book.
Malaysia: Challenges and Perspectives
The late nineties saw the spectacular success of East-Asian economies through the forces of liberalisation and globalization and Malaysia became one of the ‘miracle’ and ‘tiger’ economies witnessing almost meteoric growth and development. Malaysia followed an open economic regime with foreign direct investment playing a crucial role in export and output growth. On July 2, 1997 the South-East Asian currency crisis emanated from Thailand and soon ‘confidence’ replaced ‘blind panic’ spreading from Thailand to Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. Malaysian Ringgit depreciated and its financial system collapsed. However, the collapse of the South East Asian economies, including Malaysia, had nothing to do with uncontrolled expenditure and pump priming or financial fiscal profligacy. The crisis was due to the bad banking practices, monstrous leveraging by business conglomerates and very high proportion of short-term dollar-denominated commercial debt.
Malaysia learnt quickly from the calamity and restructured its policies re-emerge roaring back leaner and more efficient than ever before. Today, Malaysia is one of the fastest growing economies with an annual average growth rate of five per cent during 2004-2010. Malaysia has become one of the most prosperous Southeast Asian economy surpassing the income per capita of countries like Indonesia and Philippines. All along, Malaysia pursued an active educational policy in order to advance its economic and social development.
What does India have to learn from Malaysia’s experience? India should try to emulate Malaysia’s success story stemming from outward-orientation, high standards of education and high savings rate. The financial liberalisation and integration with global economies needs to be accompanied by sound macro economic policies, strong regulatory and supervisory framework besides focus on education, strong cultural values and sound infrastructure. Excellent information systems, capable corporate governance and free competition in financial markets are the key to development.
The book ‘Malaysia: Challenges and Perspectives’ contains nineteen articles by the FORE faculty. These articles are a fine integration of different perspectives on Malaysia and have been divided into five broad areas namely, Financial Services, Trade, Infrastructure and Public Utility Services, Women and Cultural Dimensions and Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility.
Financial Services
In his article, Banking Systems in Malaysia and India, Prof. Vinay Dutta examines the performance of banking sector in Malaysia and India on select parameters such as ownership structure, return on assets, capital adequacy patterns and levels of non-performing assets.
The article, Financial System of Malaysia: A Review, by Prof. Kanhaiya Singh presents an overview of the Malaysian economy and examines the new economic policy adopted by the Malaysian government in the post global financial crises era.
Prof. Himanshu’s article, Assessing the Malaysia’s Vulnerability to Financial Crises, is an effort to compare the three major crises of the recent past namely, the Asian Financial Crisis 1997, US Subprime Mortgage Crisis 2008, and the most recent European Debt Crisis, focusing on the leveraging patterns of corporate firms.
Prof. Mohit Anand’s article Malaysian Takaful Market: Cues for the Indian Insurance Industry looks at the development and characteristics of ‘takaful’ (Islamic insurance) which is compatible with the principles of Islamic finance, thereby making it acceptable and attractive for millions of Muslims as an alternative to conventional insurance.
Trade
Prof. Ravikesh Srivastava’s article Post-liberalisation Bilateral Trade between India and Malaysia: Trends and Opportunities analyses the macroeconomic context of India and Malaysia, bilateral trade trends in goods, services and investment.
The economic engagement between India and Malaysia, a major ASEAN member, has been evolutionary. The article by Prof. Faisal Ahmed India and Malaysia: Seeking Broad Based Engagement presents some of its rudimentary and institutional aspects.
In his article India-Malaysia Bilateral Trade: Performance and Policies Prof. Subhasis Bera aims to understand the bilateral trade performance and relevance of trade agreement with Malaysia. Using trade intensity and complementarity index he finds that the trade agreement between India and Malaysia is not based on the assessment of actual trade performance.
Infrastructure and Public Utility Services
In his article Malaysian Education System: A Note Prof. Hitesh Arora attempts to study the educational system in Malaysia since independence in 1957. The article looks at recent trends in student enrollments in the primary, secondary and higher education over the years, and studies other important indicators of Malaysian education.
Prof. Qazi Asif Zameer’s article Infrastructure Development in Malaysia: Lessons for India describes the developments and expansion plans in Physical Infrastructure facilities in Malaysia such as roads, rail and ports.
The article by Prof. Anupam Narula An Insight into Malaysia’s Medical Tourism Industry provides an insight into Malaysia’s medical tourism industry, value network adopted to attract foreign patients, drawing some comparisons mainly with the closest regional competitors, Thailand, Singapore and India where relevant.
The objective of the article Comparison of Public Transport Service Quality: Malaysia and India by Prof. Mohita Sharma is to compare the service quality of Malaysian and Indian public transport empirically to derive lessons for India.
Women and Cultural Dimensions
Prof. Freda Swaminathan’s article Cultural Dimensions in Malaysian Brand Communications reviews the cultural dimensions of Malaysian brand communications. Prof. Sanghamitra Buddhapriya’s article Women in Malaysian Society: The Continuing Struggle for Equality tries to examine the overall status of women in Malaysian society, identifies the reasons for their poor representation in business and critically analyses the role of the state in improving their condition. Prof. Anita T. Lal’s article Malaysia is Truly Asia… say Malaysian Indians discusses the cultural aspects of Malaysia.
The significance of listening skills for the efficiency and effectiveness of on individual and organizational success is beginning to be recognized around the world. Prof. Reeta Raina together with her co-authors, Deborah Britt Roebuck and Cheng Ean (Catherine) Le seeks to explore the listening skills of managers and non-managers from three countries—India, Malaysia, and the United States in their article An Exploratory Study of Listening Skills of Managers and Non-Managers within India, Malaysia, and United States.
An attempt has been made to study Malaysian culture from the perspective of the Hofstede cultural dimensions in the article Understanding Malaysian Culture by Prof. Neetu Jain. She explores the Malaysian culture through the lens of the 5-D model of Hofstede to get a good overview of the deep drivers of Malaysian culture namely, power-distance, individualism, masculinity femininity, Uncertainty Avoidance and Long term-orientation.
The article Influence of Power Distance in Negotiations in India and Malaysia: Future Research Implications by Prof. Prachi Bhatt attempts to explore avenues for research in the area of power distance in negotiations.
Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility
The article by Prof. Ambrish Gupta Corporate Governance Reporting Requirements: Malaysia vs. India attempts to describe and analyse the principal objectives of the Accounting Industry Reforms Act, 2002 (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) and investigate the chronicle of the Malaysian and Indian journey towards corporate governance to identify what Malaysia and India can learn from each other.
The main objective of the article Corporate Social Responsibility Practices in Malaysian Companies: An Exploratory Study by Prof. Shallini Taneja is to define the state of CSR efforts in Malaysian companies.
