نقش توسعه فن آوری در رقابت های ملی - شواهد از کشورهای جنوب شرقی آسیا

Technology development (TD) plays a key role in national competitiveness (NC) by giving a country a competitive edge in our age of information. Lots of researchers have focused on specific areas of TD, such as technology transfer, technology acquisition, and technology management, in most of developed countries. To our knowledge, however, they have seldom discussed the influence of TD on other categories of NC and vice-versa in developing and less-developed countries. In this study, we examine the influences of each category of NC of TD. Southeast Asian countries are divided into three patterns by means of a cluster analysis. The results show that Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Laos have the same rank on measures of TD and NC. Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and Laos have the same rank on measures of TD and Economic Performance. Malaysia and Thailand have the same rank on measures of TD and Management Capability. In contrast, the TD performance of Southeast Asian countries is worse than the human resources performance because of their insufficient human resources assigned to R&D. Furthermore, based on a strategic grid for comparing the relative performance, four types of country and their achievements are discussed. Singapore outperforms all Southeast Asian countries. Malaysia and Thailand have to leverage their TD resources in order to enhance their NC. The other countries are still hindered in developing the determinants of their NC. Finally, our study offers a path to the identification of how countries of each pattern should supplement their insufficient capabilities, and what are the most important issues that need to be addressed in retuning their TD policies in order to enhance their NC.

Technology development (TD) is the basic means by which companies, industries, and countries can foster their competitive capabilities and increase their competitive advantage. Traditionally, the concept of competitiveness has been analyzed on three levels of aggregation [1] — the firm, the industry (or one sector of it), and the country. These organizations usually use technology as a reengineering tool to reform management disciplines at different levels. In this research, we focus on the macro-viewpoint because national competitiveness (NC) has become a major concern for both developed and developing countries. Thus, NC is defined as the competitive capabilities of a nation related to its economic environment. The term “competitiveness” originally comes from several studies. One of these is the “Diamond” model developed by Porter [2]. He studied eight developed countries and two newly-industrialized countries and raised the basic question of international competitiveness: “why do some nations succeed and others fail in international competition?” Dunning [3] treated multinational activities as a third exogenous variable which should be added to Porter's model. Roessner, Porter, Newman, and Cauffiel [4] developed and implemented national indicators of competitiveness in high technology based on data on competitive activity in 28 countries from 1987 to 1995. These indicators include national orientation, socioeconomic infrastructure, technological infrastructure, and productive capacity. Hämäläinen's account of the determinants of NC is grounded in a systematic or holistic approach to economic performance encompassing a broad set of factors, such as resources, technologies, organizations, product markets, external business activities, institutional framework, and government [5]. These studies emphasize the importance of technology and the role of TD in a competitive environment. There are two famous published rankings of competitiveness — the World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) [6], published by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) and the Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) [7] issued by the World Economic Forum (WEF). These publications have been gaining popularity for presenting a core conceptual framework for analyzing competitive capabilities, which are considered to be the indispensable foundation of the long-term economic development of a nation. The WCY has been accumulating data from 60 countries since 1989, applying over 300 criteria for assessing competitiveness grouped into four main categories of competitiveness — economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure. On the other hand, the GCR, which has created a database from the information on 104 economies using 33 indicators that reflect the economic performance and environment for the competitive development of nations. These indicators are organized into three categories — the technology index, the public institutions index, and the macroeconomic environment index. These indices are calculated based on both hard data and survey data (soft data). Although these models are commonly employed to evaluate NC, they remain controversial. For example, Lall [8] has argued that the competitiveness indices of the GCR are too broad, its approach biased, its methodology flawed, and many of its qualitative measures too vague. Nonetheless, these indices are of much interest to policy makers who wish to enhance TD and managerial activities. Though many reports on NC can be found; they concentrate on analyzing the NC of developed countries. Studying the NC of developing and less-developed countries is still criticized for lacking reliable data or publishing questionable data. Developing and less-developed countries, however, are on the merge of moving on to a new stage of economic development. They typically rely on technical and innovative capabilities (developed internally or acquired in part or totally from foreign countries) to increase their NC. Furthermore, the recent drive toward globalization and e-commerce has enhanced the utilization of technology and has greatly influenced the competitiveness of countries. These developments have evolved from an understanding of the central role of TD in determining competitive advantage [9] and of the changing nature of technology in the global economy [10]. Thus, it is very important to investigate the role of TD in NC in the developing and less-developed countries. In many cases, developing and less-developed countries, such as the Southeast Asian (SEA) countries are not as focused as developed countries on their TD and NC, a fact which may reflect their diverse cultures, multiple languages, and various religions. After SEA nations became independent, each country set an individual course for its economic development. Notably, SEA countries experienced an economic ‘miracle’ in the early and mid-1990s. But, since the crisis of 1997, several economies in this region have been struggling to regain the earlier momentum of their growth. Recently, a research team comprised of researchers from National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) and ten ASEAN universities proposed an NC model for SEA countries. The NC model consists of five categories — technology development, economic performance (EP), management capability (MC), human resources (HR), and productivity. These categories were discussed by the NCKU research team and scholars from SEA countries. Some of these categories are also based on the IMD and WEF world competitiveness models. In the NCKU study, the countries studied were split into two groups, peninsulas (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar) and islands (the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore), in order to facilitate discussion of the different characteristics between them. The results of this research have been widely published [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18] and [19]. Based on the NC models proposed by above researchers, we consider the influence of some determinants, such as cultural characteristics, economic and social environments, and technological environment, to be limited. The NCKU research model is employed in this study to further discuss the context of each category of NC. With regard to the role of TD in NC, it has been found that TD is strongly related to NC [20], [21] and [22]. Further, Porter [23], in his analysis of competitive advantage, concludes that technology is an important competitive factor in the value-adding side of firm's business. Fagerberg [24] also provides strong evidence of major contributions of developing national policy from a technological perspective to the growth of a nation as well as to that of its firms. Although the importance of NC and the role of TD have been emphasized in SEA countries, there are some weaknesses in the previous research of NC in this region. Firstly, technology is not just a supporting variable in the e-commerce era. In contrast, technology will gradually play an increasingly important role in pursuing NC, even though the importance of TD has previously not been specifically highlighted. Secondly, the determinant variables of NC have not been clearly defined and there have not been enough of them to represent the performance of NC in previous models, especially the demand variables that focus only on developing and less-developed countries. Thirdly, most NC models concentrate on analyzing NC in developed or just a few developing countries. Though many scholars from different academic disciplines have made a contribution to the development of the NC concept through various approaches, their main focuses have been on countries that have followed more aggressive policies and ‘intensive technological learning’ strategies, such as Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore [25], [26], [27] and [28]. However, to our knowledge, no research has yet explicitly and fully incorporated TD into the planning policies of the developing and less-developed countries [29], [30] and [31]. Furthermore, the potential of TD as a policy lever is often under-utilized because the governmental strategies for its implementation are not clear. Finally, the relationships between TD and other categories of NC have had different impacts on economic growth in SEA countries. Development planners have come to view technological growth mainly as a function of transfer rather than a process of indigenous development; hence, few attempts have been made to devise an operational means to promote TD, even though its efficiency is widely recognized. It is therefore important that governments in Southeast Asia emphasize the importance of strategic planning that takes TD into appropriate consideration [32]. Thus, how one implements a model to analyze the relationships between TD and other categories of NC in this economic region is an important issue that is worth studying further. The organization of this paper is as follows: Section 2 describes the research framework and the data structure of NC. The data sources and methodology are discussed in Section 3. Analysis of the empirical data and discussion of variations among TD and other categories of NC are presented in Section 4. Finally, conclusions and suggestions for future research are given in Section 5.

In this paper, we have presented a conceptual framework to discuss the role of TD in NC. SEA countries have been selected as the target countries for the empirical study because the potential success of their economy has risen sharply and because of the importance of their t role in Asia. In addition, an NC model developed by National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, was used as the basis for the examination of the relationships between TD and corresponding categories of NC, and to evaluate the role of TD in NC. The influence of TD on each category of NC for SEA countries was discussed. Through this empirical study, we have analyzed the variations that have occurred in their NC policy and ways of reshaping their policy in the future. The variations between TD and corresponding categories can be detected using a Radar Diagram and a Strategic Grid. The former can explain matching levels between each category; the latter can explain relative performance among SEA countries. Thus, our results suggest that Singapore, Thailand, and Laos are of the same rank for TD and NC. But, only Singapore has a higher performance relative to other SEA countries. In short, from above tools offer a simple and clear method for depicting variations in terms of TD. Further, we can apply the concepts to verify the performance of factors that impinge on TD in SEA countries. This research was limited by the lack of officially published data on some less-developed countries. However, our results still reveal the context surrounding TD and other categories of NC in SEA countries. We have also uncovered some strengths and weaknesses of each category of NC for SEA countries. These countries can use these results to devise a road map for TD in order to enhance their NC. In addition, this research has paved a new direction for studying NC in developing and less-developed countries. We have also laid out a fundamental procedure for studying the relationship between TD and NC. This procedure can be applied to different NC models to analyze the interrelationships between NC and its different categories. For further study, researchers can discuss the different determinants of NC with regard to TD in order to consider the physical conditions, and then compare the research results with other famous surveys. Besides, SEA countries are facing the big challenge of organizing and maintaining their relationships with strategic alliance, leveraging their resources under competition or cooperation, as the much larger and rapidly-growing regional economies of China and India continue to rise in power. This trend is worth being studied further.