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Towards An Understanding Of Societal Leadership In Southeast Asia: Position Paper, Institute For Societal Leadership Mar 2017

Towards An Understanding Of Societal Leadership In Southeast Asia: Position Paper, Institute For Societal Leadership

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

In this position paper, we delineate the reasons for examining leadership in the social impact sector and for tackling social issues and wicked problems that we face in Southeast Asia region. We begin by discussing the roles of societal leaders and societal leadership, drawing upon notable examples of efforts and strategies that are employed by leaders to create social impact in the region. The paper concludes with a proposed research agenda for studying societal leadership.


Societal Leadership In Southeast Asia: National Landscapes, Challenges And Opportunities To Enhance Societal Impact, Institute For Societal Leadership Dec 2015

Societal Leadership In Southeast Asia: National Landscapes, Challenges And Opportunities To Enhance Societal Impact, Institute For Societal Leadership

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

This study draws its contents from the findings and insights that colleagues from the Institute for Societal Leadership have put together in the form of eleven Southeast Asian Country Insights Labs reports. The Country Insights Labs were undertaken to uncover the critical social issues facing leaders from business, government and civil society in each Southeast Asian country. During the visits to each country, ISL staff also investigated the challenges faced by civil society organisations (CSOs) such as philanthropic organisations, corporate foundations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), activist groups, social enterprises and impact investment funders. This paper aggregates the background research and key …


Understanding Societal Leadership: Strategy And Impact, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim, Molly Delaney Nov 2015

Understanding Societal Leadership: Strategy And Impact, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim, Molly Delaney

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

This study focuses on the construct and discusses the characteristics and factors affecting the phenomenon of societal leadership. Reference is made to many worthy examples of social catalysts, innovators and leaders that the Institute for Societal Leadership (ISL) has encountered in each of the Southeast Asian countries and efforts are made to delineate the strategies that are used by societal leaders to create social impact. The study also discusses the various forms of societal leadership and ways in which effective societal leaders or social impact organisations collaborate across sectors to achieve their goals.


Societal Influence, Leadership And Impact: Defining Traits Of Twenty Pioneer Southeast Asian Leaders, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim Nov 2015

Societal Influence, Leadership And Impact: Defining Traits Of Twenty Pioneer Southeast Asian Leaders, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

This study focuses on twenty Southeast Asian leaders who have been key players during critical transitions in the social, economic and political development of their country. In asking each of the societal leaders questions concerning their motivation, the cause they were championing and the factors that have led to their success as leaders, the study attempts to draw out common traits they possess and investigates whether the traits that make people effective societal leaders differ across socio-cultural and historical contexts. A grounded theory approach is used in the analysis of the attributes and traits that emerge from the transcripts of …


The Thailand Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington, Serene Chen Jun 2015

The Thailand Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington, Serene Chen

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Thai migrants first began trickling into the Chao Phraya river valley from Southern China in the eleventh century. Thai chieftains established petty kingdoms in modern-day Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, initially as tributaries to more established Burmese and Khmer rulers. However, both the diminishing influence of the Khmer Empire and the Mongols’ sacking of the Burmese capital Bagan in 1287 left a political vacuum in mainland Southeast Asia, which was soon filled by Thai kingdoms such as Sukhothai (1238–1463), Chiang Mai (1296–1775), Ayutthaya (1351–1767) and eventually Bangkok (f. 1 782). In the process, the up-and-coming Thai polities supplanted the Khmer Empire …


The Indonesia Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington Jun 2015

The Indonesia Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

A maritime analogue to the silk road running through Central Asia, the Indonesian archipelago was a key ancient trade route linking Chinese goods to markets in India and farther west into the Mediterranean. Its cosmopolitan ports attracted significant numbers of Arab, Indian and Chinese merchants and holy men and fostered the exchange of goods as well as cultural and religious ideas. Cultural appropriation had a clear Indian bias. Starting in the early eighth century, the various islands saw the rise and fall of several Indianised Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms, including Mataram, Singhasari and Majapahit in east Java and Srivijaya in …


The Metro Manila Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington May 2015

The Metro Manila Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Although Western colonisers have, to varying degrees, shaped the political structures and economies of nearly all modern Southeast Asian nations, they achieved an unmatched level of cultural and institutional penetration in the Philippines. Far from the Indic influences that inspired Angkor Wat, Borobudur and Bagan, the island group was only marginally sanskritised during the pre-colonial period. With some notable exceptions in the south, Muslim communities were also never able to establish firm roots. Mindanao, Sulu and even southern Luzon were home to maritime sultanates beginning in the late 14th century, but a Spanish victory over the Muslim Rajah of Maynila …


The Singapore Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Aji Paramartha, Shihui Khee, Regina Unson, Sai Hein Apr 2015

The Singapore Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Aji Paramartha, Shihui Khee, Regina Unson, Sai Hein

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Singapore has come a long way, since her beginnings as a sleepy fishing village and a tiny Malay settlement ruled by the Sultan of Johor. Sir Stamford Raffles first arrived in Singapore in 1819 and immediately recognised that its strategic location along the Straits of Malacca would be useful to the British in developing an alternative to challenge Dutch influence and monopoly in the region. During British colonial rule, Singapore developed into an important free port and trade city, an essential trait that continues to feature heavily in Singapore’s economic development to this day.


The Vietnam Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington Mar 2015

The Vietnam Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Although most of Southeast Asia is home to religions and cultures carrying significant Indic influence, Vietnam alone is the mainland’s only Sinicised culture. Chinese emperors directly ruled northern Vietnam for most of the period spanning 111 BCE to 938 CE. The next eight hundred years saw a series of independent Vietnamese kingdoms administered by Chinese-style mandarins gradually extend control over and supplant the Indic Champa civilisation to the south—even as French incursions began chipping away at Vietnamese territory as early as 1858.


The Bandar Seri Begawan Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim Feb 2015

The Bandar Seri Begawan Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Brunei, known as the “Abode of Peace”, is a small state in Southeast Asia located on the north-west coast of the island of Borneo in the Indonesian Archipelago. Its 161 kilometres of coastline faces the South China Sea while it is enclosed on land by the Malaysian state of Sarawak, which divides it in two. Brunei Darussalam comprises four districts, Brunei-Muara (where the capital Bandar Seri Begawan is situated), Tutong, Belait and Temburong.


The Malaysia Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Natalia R. Rodrigues Jan 2015

The Malaysia Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Natalia R. Rodrigues

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Malaysia’s story is one of pluralism. Like many nations in Southeast Asia, its borders are not drawn along ethnic lines. Immigration and the influence from colonial European powers were particularly prominent in Malaysia because of its many important ports. Thus, many aspects of the country – its economy, its people – are very different on the coasts than they are in the interior of the country, a distinction which generally mirrors the divide between urban and rural areas as well.


The Vientiane Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growt, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim Dec 2014

The Vientiane Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growt, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Laos is a small, landlocked, mountainous country in Southeast Asia. As a country, it shares borders with Myanmar and the People’s Republic of China to the Northwest, Vietnam to the East, Cambodia to the South and Thailand to the West.


The Dili Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim Dec 2014

The Dili Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Timor-Leste, Asia’s newest nation, is located in Southeast Asia, on the southernmost edge of the Indonesian archipelago. The country was colonised by the Portuguese for over 450 years, occupied by the Indonesians for 24 years and administered by the United Nations for two and a half years. As a nation, Timor-Leste has had a very traumatic birth.


The Yangon Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington Oct 2014

The Yangon Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Since its independence from British rule in 1948, Myanmar has struggled with multiple obstacles, including a series of violent internal ethnic and sectarian conflicts, isolationist fiscal policies instituted by an increasingly distrustful military government and international sanctions and condemnation following government crackdowns in 1988 and 2007. In spite of all these setbacks, President Thein Sein’s decision in 2011 to liberalise the country’s political and economic systems has created a new wave of optimism for what was once commonly regarded as a failed state.


The Phnom Penh Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington Oct 2014

The Phnom Penh Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Once a relatively sleepy agrarian kingdom, Cambodia has experienced some of the most horrific violence since the close of the Second World War. Between 1970 and 1999, the country was the victim of both a brutal civil war as well wider regional conflicts. The Khmer Rouge seizure of power in 1975 brought four years of forced collectivisation and mass killings that have haunted the Cambodian psyche ever since. The decade of Vietnamese occupation that followed only further exacerbated the country’s massive humanitarian problems. When the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) exited after elections in 1993, it left behind …