Business networks and dyad studies: theory and practice in Southeast Asia

Abstract

There has been in recent years a growing interest in business networks as an alternative to the organizational capabilities traditionally reposed in formal, large scale organisations, and there are important aspects of Far Eastern business, its structures and success which can usefully draw on these theories. This paper reviews the literature on this topic, and surveys a series of research projects, conducted in the period 1988 to 1994, and covering Indochina, the China Rim and the Special Economic Zones along the mainland China coast. It then speculates upon arrangements for further studies into the network-dyad exchange relationships of the fief and clannish organisations to be found within the strategic trading space of Southeast Asia.