Research Journal of Economics & Business Studies - RJEBS - The ...

Source: IE Singapore 2011/2012
Singapore’s government-linked enterprises and private enterprises have had rather different
experiences in the GCC (IE Singapore, 2007/2008). In context, nearly every Singapore GLC involved
in the GCC region ranks among the larger domestic businesses (IE Singapore, 2007) – and, as such,
not only is the non-SME (small or medium enterprise) demographic heavily represented by such
GLCs, the SME demographic is basically entirely comprised of private enterprises. More anecdotally,
a strong case can be made for Singapore GLCs having established a strong internationalizing presence
in the GCC, most especially in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and, more recently, Qatar; such GLCs
have been involved in a good number of flagship infrastructural and property developments, the
eventual fate of some of the latter notwithstanding, and arguably have indeed played the role of
vanguard and trailblazer in a most exemplary fashion. Private companies, however, have had a more
mixed experience, with few reaching the same level of success as their GLC counterparts; a somewhat
surprising result, given conventional wisdom that the private firm is generally more flexible in its
operations, with less non-financial goals to pursue, and one that seems somewhat at odds with the
cautionary tale of long-term government involvement that previous regionalization experiences
represent. This paper, as such, presents another dimension to our research with an in-depth look at the
GCC experiences of Singapore’s government-linked companies (GLCs), attempting to glean insight
into the reason for their comparative success, and complements our recent article on Singapore’s
private enterprises in the GCC (How, Yeoh & Neo, 2012).
SINGAPORE’S GOVERNMENT-LINKED COMPANIES IN THE GCC
In theory, a government-linked company garners advantages from its association with a sovereign
government, and in return bears an additional responsibility to said government to further political
aims and achieve extra-economic goals (Dunning, 1995, 1997) In practice, these purported advantages
are heavily predicated upon perceptions of reliability of the associated sovereign government and other
reputation-based factors, while the additional responsibilities to government stakeholders tend to prove
themselves not at all a negligible factor in business relations (Dunning & Lundan, 2008).
Our past research, however, appears to suggest instead that the ‘government’ connection has been
largely an asset to Singapore’s GLCs in the GCC, likely owing to the generally positive perception of
www.theinternationaljournal.org > RJEBS: Volume: 02, Number: 09, July-2013 Page 64