| Abstract: | Singapore has a remarkable reputation for its successful deployment of limited resources and for its strength and stability even during Asia's current economic crisis. Widespread recognition and attempts by other countries and cities at emulation of some of the strategies it has adopted have confirmed that Singapore has achieved longstanding aspirations for excellence in many areas. As Singapore positions itself to enter the new millennium the government's distinctive and sometimes controversial corporate management style is evidenced in its approach to such matters as growing the economy, enhancing the physical infrastructure, constraining residential segregation, and encouraging increased family size to enhance domestic labour supply. Sometimes it is the means of achieving the desired ends which attracts criticism, at others it is the goals themselves which are questioned. This paper examines some of the features of Singapore's drive to enhance its regional and global role in vastly different circumstances from those which confronted the same government at internal independence in 1959 and full independence in 1965. |
