Critical practice lens for economic and Government Transformation Programmes

“TRANSFORMATION” has been a recurring pervasive principle and nametag among all the Malaysian public sector initiatives — beginning with the Multimedia Super Corridor in the mid-1990s, then the knowledge-based and innovation economies, and subsequently the regional development corridors in the 2000s. In the last two years, however, the Government has been taking a radically new approach to national transformation. The Government Transformation Programme was initiated in 2009, followed by the New Economic Model and Economic Transformation Programme in 2010. More recently, new programmes were started in the areas of political and rural transformation. Presently, transformation can be perceived as the inception stage, as the various programmes will be undergoing a long continuous implementation journey into 2020. In order to make a real significant change to the condition of the Rakyat, the transformation needs to be driven from a synthesis of economic, managerial, organizational, social and technological dimensions at the multiple levels of the individual, organization, industry, government, society and nation. We offer another way of seeing and doing transformation using an enhanced critical theory and critical practice. We define critical practice as an iterative reflexive process, firstly by developing knowledge-for-understanding from a sophisticated model of reality. Secondly, we provide a critique of underpinning assumptions and presumptions whereby the constraining conditions of the status quo and emancipation become knowable and explicit, that is, knowledge-for- evaluation. Finally, we re-create, re-define, re-design, re-imagine, re-invent and re-vision the pragmatic, doable and implementable programmes from knowledge-for-action. We re-define the concept of “Doing and Being” whereby Yin meets Yang in critical practice of the economic, government, political and social transformation initiatives to transform Malaysia into a high-income developed country by 2020

Patterns of Advanced Computer Applications in Singapore

This thesis analyzed the state of practice in Operations Research (OR) and Management Information Systems (MIS). Special emphasis is placed on the role of computer technology in these advanced application areas. A major finding of the research reported in this thesis is that both OR and computer-based MIS were used only by approximately a quarter of the survey samples. Operations Research was mainly applied to operational and tactical problems on an ad-hoc basis by various functional areas. The majority of the techniques were used regularly only by a third of the users. It was only with in the last five years that most of the OR techniques were implemented. Overseas headquarters and associates were the most frequent source initiating the use of operations research in Singapore. In contrast to practices in the West, OR has not suffered from lack of top management support. Management-oriented information systems were found in less than half of the electronics firms. An Information Systems (IS) Typology was developed to classify information systems of various degree of sophistication. Using this conceptual scheme, the analyses revealed that number of employees, product type, nationality, age, market and equity capital influenced the sophistication of information systems. The state of practice and development trends in computer based information systems were also examined. The survey found that the use of computers in information systems has been a recent phenomenon and computer impact was mainly felt in lower level management activities and in the accounting and logistics areas. In general, systems management activities were under the jurisdiction of the Accounting / Finance Department-traditionally the predominant location of systems activities. It is not expected that there will be large scale expansion in computer-based OR and MIS in the near future. The manority of OR techniques and applications will continue to be financial in nature, based essentially on an extension of the accounting system to generate information for management decision support. A general direction towards developing management-oriented in formation systems was identified in this research

National transformation success @ A theory of everything based on simplicity and sophistication

The Government has been taking a radically new approach to national transformation in the past three years. The Government Transformation Programme was initiated in 2009, followed by the New Economic Model and Economic Transformation Programme in 2010, and subsequently political and rural transformation. The “Transformation Budget 2012” announced the “National Transformation Policy”. Presently, transformation can be perceived as the inception stage, as the various programmes will be undergoing a long continuous implementation journey into 2020. In order to make a real significant change to the country, the transformation needs to be driven from a synthesis of economic, managerial, organizational, social and technological dimensions at the multiple levels of the individual, organization, industry, government, society and nation. We offer another way of seeing and doing transformation using an enhanced critical theory and critical practice. We define critical practice as an iterative reflexive process, firstly by developing knowledge-for-understanding from a sophisticated model of reality. Secondly, we provide a critique of underpinning assumptions and presumptions whereby the constraining conditions of the status quo and emancipation become knowable and explicit, that is, knowledge-for-evaluation. Thirdly, we re-create, re-define, re-design, re-imagine, re-invent and re-vision the pragmatic, doable and implementable programmes from knowledge-for-action. Finally, we combine the extant government transformation model of “Doing and Being”, a simplicity model with critical practice, which is a model of sophistication. This new ‘theory of everything’ could be the underlying basis of the transformation methodology for the success of the various national transformation programmes to convert Malaysia into a high-income developed country by 2020

Knowledge super corridors in Southeast Asia: seeing and doing from a critical lens

Developing countries in Asia are in the process of transitioning from a production economy to a knowledge-based economy. Various new knowledge and information communications technology mega-projects are being designed and executed at the international, national, state and industry levels to sustain competitiveness. The structures and processes by which these so-called “knowledge super corridors” are developed and implemented are complex economic-social-political decisions. The author develops an enhanced framework from critical theory, whereby the critical practice lens provides an iterative reflexive process, firstly by developing knowledge for understanding from structuration theory. Secondly, the author provides a critique of underpinning assumptions and presumptions whereby the constraining conditions of the status quo and emancipation become knowable and explicit, that is, knowledge for evaluation. Thirdly, the knowledge for action generated will enable the decision makers to re-create, re-define, re-design, re-imagine, re-invent and re-vision pragmatic, doable and implementable programs to transform a developing country into a k-economy. The author illustrates the value of the enhanced model using two case studies concerned with formulating and implementing a k-economy blueprint and developing a knowledge portal in emerging k-economies in Southeast Asia