The Evolving International Political Economy of South Korea and the Northeast

June 22, 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Mānoa Campus, East-West Center Research Program, John A. Burns Hall, Room 3012 (3rd floor)

Dr. Jonathan Westover
POSCO Visiting Fellow, East-West Center

The vast cross-disciplinary literature exploring worker attitudes and workplace conditions has linked worker experiences to many individual, organizational, and social outcomes, yet this research has largely failed to shed much light on why cross-national differences in worker satisfaction and engagement and their determinants persist over time. Cross-cultural researchers suggest that these differences are due to cultural differences in each country. However, this approach has largely failed to show how countries with similar cultural orientations still experience significant differences and related challenges. Thus, the question remains, what are the causes for these differences and what are their long-term impacts of sustainable economic development and labor prosperity, particularly in the Northeast Asian region? Moreover, much research has been conducted that shows either the general improvement or decline in the quality of work, but few studies have looked at such changes in work quality cross-nationally, over time from the perspective of the workers, while accounting for country-contextual characteristics.

This seminar will examine these questions using attitudinal data from multiple waves of various international social survey databases and country contextual geopolitical and economic data to examine and explore the political and economic structural factors impacting the labor transformation in South Korea and the region, with a focus on changing societal and work attitudes and values from 1981-2014. Additionally, this seminar will explore practical suggestions for implementing ethical and socially responsible management and organizational practices in the S. Korean and Northeast Asian workplaces moving into the future.

Jonathan Westover is a POSCO Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center and Associate Professor of management and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Ethics at Utah Valley University. Additionally, he is currently serving as president of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. Dr. Westover's primary teaching and research areas of interest include human resource management, organizational development, organizational behavior, and leadership. He has published extensively in a variety of academic journals across social science disciplines, as well as other academic books and textbooks. Additionally, he is a Fulbright Scholar and recently was a visiting scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. and has been a regular visiting faculty member in graduate business programs in the U.S., France, Poland, Belarus, and China. He has also done consulting work in the for-profit, NGO, government, and higher education sectors and has several years of international corporate organizational/human resource development experience.


Event Sponsor
East-West Center, Research Program, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Cynthia Nakachi, 944-9439, NakachiC@eastwestcenter.org

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