This volume is the third in a series on comparative business history, this installment turning to Thailand and Indonesia, two of the largest emerging economies in Southeast Asia. The editors frame the inquiry around a deceptively simple question: Can capitalism be ethical, and if so, what would ethical capitalism look like when assessed not against the standards of Anglo-Saxon shareholder governance but against the institutional, cultural, and historical conditions of Southeast Asia? The conceptual anchor draws on Shibusawa Eiichi's notion of gapponshugi (a collective principle of socially embedded capitalism), asking whether this philosophy, transmitted through Japanese investment and business culture, has left a meaningful imprint on Thai and Indonesian entrepreneurship. The introductory chapter leans on a statistical comparison of the two economies that establishes their importance without fully explaining why these two countries belong together in the same volume. The editors are on stronger ground when they turn to the questions the book sets out to explore, though the observation that Thai and Indonesian entrepreneurs have produced no uniform response to the forces of globalization and crisis is valid but still demands a stronger answer to the obvious follow-up question: If the responses are so diverse, what holds the analytical framework together? The invocation of Austin et al.'s (2017) concept of alternative business histories provides the volume's theoretical scaffold, recovering the logic of business development in emerging economies on its own terms rather than as a deviation from a Western norm. Chapter 2 by Shimada and Tanaka introduces Shibusawa Eiichi and Matsushita Kōnosuke with admirable pragmatism, presenting both men as rounded historical figures rather than idealized archetypes. The discussion of the gappon system is illuminating but occasionally slides into prescription, describing what the world ought to look like rather than analyzing what is. However, the section about Matsushita's joint ventures with pribumi Indonesians reveals a careful balance between philosophical commitment to empowerment and shared benefit, and hard-headed pragmatism about protecting Japanese investments from anti-Japanese sentiment. In terms of direct relevance to Thailand and Indonesia, however, the chapter reads more as an account of what can be learnt from these two Japanese figures than as an investigation of the two countries. Yongue's Chapter 3 on the emergence of Thai capitalism opens by identifying vulnerability to external shocks as Thailand's defining business characteristic, though this is unconvincing because it is generally true of the wider region (Mulder et al. 2012, 25). The more genuinely interesting argument emerges later: that the distinctive feature of Thai capitalism is the interplay among the king, Chinese and Western capitalists, politicians, bureaucrats, and the military—a competitive rather than monopolistic form of clientelism that benefited rather than impeded economic growth. The chapter contains a wealth of important historical material: the long period of weak indigenous business development before the mid-twentieth century; the de facto protectionism created by slow adoption of national metallic currency; the heterogeneity of the ethnic Chinese population; the distinct role of Japanese firms that connect productively back to Chapter 2. The drawback is structural: the chapter reads at times like several strands of excellent research in search of a unifying argument, and the reader must do some work to draw the threads together. Sato's Chapter 4 is framed as a study of the applicability of the Shibusawa framework to Indonesian business groups in the plural. Yet it delivers its most substantial analysis through the singular case of Astra and its founder, leaving the broader landscape of Indonesian conglomerates somewhat underexplored. There are genuinely interesting wider observations on other business groups buried in the chapter and its conclusion, but they deserve more systematic development. The chapter rewards close reading but asks more of the reader than it perhaps should. Three chapters examine Thai business through case studies. Endo's Chapter 5 on the Central Group is a solid contribution to the literature on Chinese-Thai family businesses, but it would have benefited from closer coordination with Chapter 3: The two chapters cover overlapping ground and their division of labor is not always clear. Chapter 5's conclusion focuses narrowly on the future of the Central Group when a broader reflection on the implications for Thai family business groups would have been more useful. Intarakumnerd's Chapter 6 on entrepreneurship and innovation in Thai manufacturing is excellent—a well-balanced account that combines sectoral breadth with firm-level case studies and a clear-eyed conclusion on the challenges facing Thai industrial entrepreneurship. Chapter 8 by Srisuphaolarn and Ihara traces the history of Sahapat and its founder Thiam Chokwatana. Its opening is promising, framing doing business during an economic takeoff as simultaneously an opportunity and an institutional challenge. The conclusion is less satisfying: Having drawn the reader in with a structural argument about navigating institutional voids, it ends by dwelling on the remarkability of Chokwatana, rather than drawing out wider implications for Thai business development. Chapter 7 by Wahyuni and Haudy builds directly on the conceptual groundwork laid in Chapter 4, arguing that stewardship behavior (a form of corporate governance in which managers act as trustees of the firm's broader social obligations rather than merely as agents of shareholder value) is positively associated with competitive advantage and firm performance—well-motivated and carefully executed. Crucially, the chapter makes the link back to Shibusawa's gapponshugi explicit, demonstrating that the stewardship model is not simply imported from Western governance theory but has plausible conceptual lineage in the Japanese philosophy the volume takes as its framework. In retrospect, this chapter also illuminates why Chapter 4 focuses so intently on the unusual case of Astra: The empirical rarity of Soeryadjaya's stewardship model in the Indonesian context is precisely what Chapter 7's framework would predict. Readers are well advised to read these two chapters in conjunction. The Indonesia-focused chapters by van der Eng and Fakih are among the volume's most accomplished. Chapter 9 brings van der Eng's characteristic archival rigor to the question of whether CSR-type practices were present in Indonesian business before the term existed, finding that Dutch-owned companies in the early twentieth century routinely provided benefits far beyond legal requirements. The chapter proceeds carefully, acknowledging the methodological difficulties of mapping contemporary CSR frameworks onto historical business practices. It sets up the concluding Chapter 12, which surveys the institutional changes wrought by reformasi (including Indonesia's 2007 law making CSR compulsory) and analyses the conditions under which ethical capitalism has become, at least nominally, a feature of Indonesian corporate life. Fakih's delightful Chapter 10 uses published egodocuments (biographies, autobiographies, and personal narratives) to reconstruct how business elites have narrated their own ethical positions and tracks the shift in public attitudes toward the business class. The common tropes of these narratives (the businessman as nationalist, activist, or an individualist) map onto meaningfully distinct ethical orientations, and Fakih handles the source limitations with appropriate caution. His conclusion that Indonesia's complexity resists reduction to any single alternative to Anglo-American capitalism is judicious, though it raises a question the volume might have engaged more generally: Does heterogeneity preclude an alternative model, or does it simply require a more pluralistic conception of one? Chapter 11 by Srisuphaolarn and Assarut examines Thailand's “sufficiency economy” through a case study of the agricultural sector. The concept is interesting; rooted in King Bhumibol's 1997 response to the Asian financial crisis, it emphasizes rational, holistic decision-making about production, consumption, and investment as an alternative to the short-termism of shareholder capitalism. The chapter positions it as one of several possible complements to existing capitalist models. The difficulty is that the sufficiency economy as a royal policy prescription and as an analytical framework for evaluating farm-level economic behavior are rather different things—a distinction the chapter does not always maintain. Table 11.1's binary between mainstream capitalism and the sufficiency economy approach flattens the very diversity of capitalist forms the book otherwise emphasizes. The conclusion is markedly idealistic in tone. As a policy philosophy it is suggestive; as a generalizable model it still awaits a more rigorous test. The volume makes a valuable contribution to the business history of Southeast Asia. Its greatest strengths lie in the historical chapters and in the productive tension between the Japanese conceptual framework and the empirical realities of Thai and Indonesian business. The absence of a concluding chapter is unfortunate. A wider reflection on what the Thai and Indonesian cases reveal about the conditions under which ethical capitalism in developing economies is possible would have sharpened the argument. As Austin et al. (2017) remind us, alternative business histories are most persuasive when they articulate not merely that a non-Western logic exists, but what that logic is and where it breaks down. The editors gesture toward this ambition; a concluding chapter would have fulfilled it. These reservations should not overshadow a genuinely rewarding collection. Scholars of Southeast Asian political economy, business historians, and researchers interested in the comparative study of capitalism will find much of lasting value here. Read selectively, and with Chapters 4 and 7 in close conversation, the volume offers a rich and carefully researched account of the distinctive forms of capitalism that have developed in two of Asia's key economies. The author declares no conflicts of interest. Data sharing not applicable to this book review.
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