Asia-Pacific Tiers of Change

This article starts by outlining five explanations of economic growth and four stages of economic development in the Asia-Pacific region. The developed countries there include Japan, Australia and New Zealand. the ‘Asian tigers’ of Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan form a top tier of post-Japan industrialisers. A second generation of ‘tigers’ includes Malaysia in the vanguard, with Thailand and the PRC following. A third tier of industrialisers may include countries as diverse as Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia and, perhaps, the countries of the Indian sub-continent. Such a classification provides a context for discussing various approaches to human resources and industrial relations issues in this article and the ones that follow.