Johnny Sung – författare

The East Asian miracle, or its supposed demise, is always news. The Four Tiger economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea have experienced some of the fastest rates of economic growth ever achieved. This book provides the first detailed analysis of the development of education and training systems in Asia, and the relationship with the process of economic growth.

Explaining the Economic Success of Singapore explores the transformation of Singapore in the last three decades, going beyond the conventional explanations. The book argues that there was more to the transformation than a simple 'right place, right time' scenario as other developing countries benefited from similar multinational corporation investment and political stability but did not achieve the same success. Johnny Sung illustrates what differentiates Singapore from these other similar countries.This book argues that both neo-classical economic theory and early versions of the developmental state theory have contributed little to understanding the nature of worker participation in Singapore's 'miracle growth' period. By developing a complementary concept - the developmental worker - the book examines the socio-political context in which workers became central to the national growth strategy and its skill formation projects. It further argues that one of the most important achievements of the developmental state is its ability to systematically embed the skill formation process through building innovative worker stake-holding while explicitly recognising the importance of social commitment for economic growth.Providing important lessons for workforce development policies, this book will appeal to workforce development policy makers, researchers, academics of labour studies, Asian studies and political science, as well as consultants advising on workforce matters.

Johnny Sung and David Ashton are two of the leading scholars in the area of skills.  This book combines challenging theories with cutting edge research in a way that should bring skills to life for students. I strongly recommend it for anyone researching or studying in this area. - Irena Grugulis, Leeds University Business School "A much needed contribution to the complex debate of how skills can best be utilised to enhance company performance, with particular emphasis on an innovative sectoral approach. It is a model of clarity in its presentation of the authors’ conceptual models using a historical narrative as well as comparative case studies in both the UK and Singapore." - Bert Clough, Leeds University Business School Public skills policy in most market economies in the last forty years made one repeated error, time and again. We seem to be unable to learn from those mistakes. Consistently, public policies view a wide range of economic and social issues e.g. low productivity, low-skilled jobs, low wage, inequality and in-work poverty as the consequence of skills deficits and a lack of qualifications held by individual workers. Whilst mis-diagnosing the source of the problems and failing to deliver any effective change, public skills policies continue with a policy prescription of ‘more skills’ and ‘more degrees’. If we have not solved the problems with this decade-old approach, why should the same medicine work this time?

 

This book examines the role of public skills policy from a completely different perspective. It starts by challenging the lack of a systematic analysis of the link between skills utilisation and business strategy, and provides a new model for fresh thinking. The book extends this theoretical analysis to examine the implications for the sectoral approach to skills development as a more effective form of public skills policy. David N. Ashton is Emeritus Professor at the University of Leicester and Honorary Professor at Cardiff University. Johnny Sung is at The Institute for Adult Learning, Singapore Workforce Development Agency, Singapore.