foundation of canada asia pacific - Content Tagged with

government’s Youth International Internship Program. This experience provides a key
ingredient needed in developing business in Asia — an understanding of local practices.
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In all Asian countries, business is done differently than in Canada, whether in jurisdictions
like Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia or India that have legal systems like our own, based
on British common law, or in China or Vietnam, where business relationships are still
largely governed by political influence. It is essential for companies trading in any of
these economies to have an insight into both the society and the business culture. While
companies operating in Asia recognize that markets are different from those in Canada,
and always value local market expertise, there has often been a failure to accept the
need for an understanding of the broader environment in which business is carried on.
Few Canadian businesses operate beyond our own borders, and most that do never
venture beyond the US. Of the estimated 2.5 million businesses in Canada, 1 about 99%
have fewer than 100 employees. Of these small companies, less than 7% trade or
manufacture outside North America. 2 In the past, if business owners themselves did not
have experience outside North America, they seemed to have a limited recognition of
the need for Asian expertise, other than possibly the usefulness of local language skills.
With the great influx of Asian immigrants in the past decade, a better understanding of
the cultural dimensions of doing business has emerged, at least in the major immigrant
centres of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Managers have begun to turn to Asian
Canadians for the extra business expertise they feel they need. However, there seems to
be a widespread misconception about the business skills and connections of young Asian
Canadians who have spent most of their lives in Canada. As a result, there is a feeling
among at least some locally educated Asian Canadians that they are being pushed into
“Asian expert” roles for which they are not always qualified. Meanwhile, those graduates
who have purposely acquired Asian skills find themselves overlooked by Canadian employers,
both at home and abroad. In a series of focus groups organized across Canada last year,
the Asia Pacific Foundation found a surprising number of Asian Canadians under the age
of 40 who felt they were valued by employers mostly as links to Asian business networks
rather than for the skills they had acquired through years of study. 3 They believed this
limited their career opportunities.
HIDDEN ADVANTAGE REVISITED
Six years ago, in a report titled Canada’s Hidden Advantage, the Asia Pacific Foundation
pointed to the failure by many Canadian firms to take advantage of the business skills
and connections of newly arrived Asian immigrants. 4 The lack of Canadian background
and experience of these new entrants into our work force was seen by employers as a
barrier to their recruitment to responsible positions, even if they had proven their
business skills overseas. As a result, businesses were missing out on the chance to build
on these connections to develop new markets.
In the years since that report was published, there are signs that business is more widely
recognizing the value of Asian immigrants as a bridge into Asian markets, both foreign
and domestic. Many Asian business immigrants have established themselves as consultants,
selling their expertise or connections in various Asian economies. However, the report