Pressures which sustain or transform training programmes run by regional headquarters: Organisational fields of multinational corporations in Singapore and the perceptions of their managers

This paper proposes to clarify the mutual transformative interaction between Japanese multinational corporations (MNCs) and their immediate social situations in foreign lands. For some time now various theories have been put forward to explain the forms in which  mutual interdependence exists between the MNCs and their host society. In this paper the concept of embeddedness and the organisational field are adopted to define major actors, rules and structures of the organisations as they undergo transformations. Singapore is chosen because of its ability to help us identify responses that relate to the economic regionalisation of Japanese MNCs (JMNCs).  The activities of multinational corporations in Singapore have steadily increased since 1970s, attracted by the strategic location and the government’s industrial policies. With the advance of a globalising and knowledge-based economy, Singapore's character as a regional industrial hub has been strengthened.  Singapore is now identified as a key centre of global production networks which involved MNC firms in the ASEAN region.  The JMNCs in Singapore are analysed with a focus upon their regional headquarters (RHQs), since it is from there that the enhanced technological level of subsidiaries is accelerated, and therefore their training programmes are a crucial factor for their performance in the ASEAN region.  The research data has been gathered from various interviews and some surveys since the beginning of this century. The analysis considers the changes in the RHQ’s training programmes that have come about from changed relationships between JMNCs and their host community.  The actual transformation of the organizational activities will be conditioned by the MNCs managers’ perception of the change in the perceived patterns of embeddedness and of the field itself.