BANGKOK (ILO News) – Before the Asian crisis and the rising tide of globalization, a company’s success could be measured by its balance sheet. But the days of the “inward-looking” approach to corporate performance are over, says Mr Nobuo Tateisi, Chairman and Executive Director of Japan’s giant Omron corporation, an automation specialist. Today, business must be public-oriented.

Mr Tateisi is to address representatives of employers, workers, and governments from 12 Asia-Pacific countries and one special administrative region taking part in an Asia-Pacific Round Table on Enterprise-Society Partnerships, which the International Labour Organization (ILO) is hosting at Bangkok’s Amari Watergate Hotel (Petchburi Road) from 22 to 24 September.

Thailand’s Minister of Industry, H.E. Mr Suwat Liptapanlop, will deliver the inaugural address to the meeting, which ILO Asia-Pacific Regional Director Mitsuko Horiuchi opens Wednesday morning at 9.00.

It marks the first time that the ILO’s “tripartite” membership of employers, workers and government representatives (traditionally from ministries of labour) will be sitting down with representatives of industry ministries to chart how industry, labour, governments and civil society can work together to take on the social problems afflicting the region as it emerges from the financial crisis.

Discussion will focus on three technical areas: human resources management, corporate citizenship and small business development.

As new technologies and globalization lure many companies down the path of retrenchment, it is more important than ever, Ms Horiuchi stresses, for enterprises to make the most of their human assets. This, she explains, requires enterprises “to invest more in skills development and give employees a healthy and safe working environment”.

Globalization, Ms Horiuchi points out, has made companies not just “citizens of the countries they operate in, but citizens of the world. Corporate citizenship carries duties as well as rights. In the ‘reputation marketplace’ social commitment and environmental concern weigh as heavily as financial accountability”.

Ms Horiuchi is confident that the successful companies of the 21^st century will be those with a record of good industrial relations, no child labour and equal treatment of women and men.

In developing countries, according to a background report prepared for the meeting, small and micro-enterprises employ as many as 60 per cent of workers. The report sees small enterprise development as one of the surest ways for Asia to tap the employment potential for getting its economies on a firm footing and ending the social crisis that the financial crisis left in its wake.

Unemployment is still a nagging legacy of the crisis. From 1996 to 1998 unemployment figures nearly doubled in Hong Kong, China (up from 2.8 to 5 per cent) and the Philippines (7.4 to 13 per cent). The rise was even greater over the same period in Indonesia (from 4 to 12 per cent), the Republic of Korea (2.6 to 7.6 per cent); Malaysia (2.5 to 6.7 per cent) and Thailand (1 to 4.4 per cent).

Best practices in human resources management, corporate citizenship and small business development will be discussed by speakers from the the ASTRA group (Indonesia), the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Eicher group (India), Malaysia’s Workers’ Institute of Technology and by ILO technical advisers from China, India, the Philippines, Thailand, Viet Nam and staff from the Organization’s headquarters in Geneva.

On Friday 24 September at 9.00am Ms Chen Ying, Deputy Director-General of the China Enterprise Directors’ Association, will chair a special open session on women’s entrepreneurship which features a panel of women entrepreneurs.

By the close of the Round Table participants are expected to agree a statement of common understanding, after which they will get a chance to observe first-hand how one large Asian company is facing the challenges of the day during a Friday afternoon visit to the Toyota assembly plant at Samutprakarn.