Strategic Coupling

In Strategic Coupling, Henry Wai-chung Yeung examines economic development and state-firm relations in East Asia, focusing in particular on South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Henry Wai-chung Yeung is Professor of Economic Geography and Co-Director of GPN@NUS Centre at the National University of Singapore. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK) and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (UK). He is the author of Transnational Corporations and Business Networks, Entrepreneurship and the Internationalisation of Asian Firms and Chinese Capitalism in a Global Era and coauthor of Global Production Networks.

An interesting study that augments the state-centric perspective of the developmental state model with a more nuanced view that highlights firm-level agency and the strategic potential of embedding into global value chains.

One of the many great merits of this book is that it brings together a rich amalgam of theory and empirical evidence to bear on the concept of the developmental state.... Through a rich empirical analysis the author illustrates the three distinct strategic coupling processes engaged by East Asian firms in the global electronics, semiconductor, shipbuilding, automobile and service industries since the early 1990s—namely, strategic partnerships, industrial marketspecialization and (re)positioning as global lead firms.... Yeung is a worthy heir to the likes of [Robert] Wade because he can legitimately claim to have made some original contributions of his own by addressing the debilitating state-centricity of the original thesis.... Magnificent.

An excellent overview of the developmental state literature and more recent empirical analyses that raise questions about this model both historically and in the last couple of decades.... Yeung's analysis brings together incisive and carefully documented explanations at the firm and industry level using these organizational concepts with a broader understanding of national economic policy, a combination not typically found in research on East Asian economic development.... Very suitable for courses in international business, organizational sociology, and economics that focus on firm strategies, organizational and industry change, the evolution of the world economy, and technology industries.

Examines East Asian industrial transformation and strategic coupling in national global articulations, how East Asian firms have survived and competed since the 1900s without direct financial support from their domestic states, and the nature of state presence in the changing reconfiguration of state-firm relations.

Henry Wai-chung Yeung's Strategic Coupling is timely to fill up the vacuum on East Asian develomentalism literature in the wake of globalization challenges since the 1990s. This much-needed exploration on the trajectory of post-developmentalism in South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, offers an empirically rich and theoretical cohesive account of three successful cases in coping with industrial transformation in the age of globalization.

Dan Breznitz, Munk Chair of Innovation Studies, University of Toronto:

Strategic Coupling is a timely and excellent contribution to our knowledge. Anyone who wishes to understand how East Asia gained and maintained prominence in high technology industries in the new world of globally fragmented production should read this book. Strategic Coupling teaches us how the world works, and as such reveals as much about the future of the United States as it does about the future of Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.