Chapter 6: Science & Engineering Indicators 93
National Commitment
The national commitment indicator attempts to identify those nations whose business, government, and cultural orientation encourages high-technology development. This indicator was constructed using
information from a survey of international experts (Click here for footnote 65.) and published data. The survey asked the experts to rate national strategies that promote high-tech development, social influences
favoring technological change, and entrepreneurial spirit. The published data were used to rate each nation's risk factor for foreign investment over the next 5 years (Frost and Sullivan 1987 and 1989).
The four Asian NIEs received very close ratings on this indicator. (See figure 6-27.) However, experts' higher ratings for Hong Kong's cultural and social
attitudes about new technology and its strong entrepreneurial spirit elevated that economy's composite score over the other NIEs. (See appendix table 6-30.)
Three of the four emerging Asian economies (China, India, Indonesia) scored quite low relative to other nations on this indicator. Their scores were brought down by experts' comparatively low judgments of
their cultural and social attitudes toward new technology and entrepreneurship. China had the lowest overall score of the three, a result of being judged to have the highest investment risk and the lowest
predisposition for innovative action and risk-taking.
According to this indicator, Malaysia leads the other EAEs in its national commitment toward achieving technological competitiveness. Malaysia's scores were consistently and significantly higher than those of the other EAEs across the full range of
variables considered for this indicator. Nevertheless, Malaysia's scores were still well below those for the more advanced Asian NIEs.
Footnote 65:
The survey instrument consisted of 15 closed-ended questions with responses on a 1-point scale. The instrument was sent to a sample of country experts in April 1990; these experts were selected based on their knowledge of the technology policies and
socioeconomic conditions in the countries studied. Occasional high variance in responses to individual survey items were attributable to rater inconsistencies rather than to inherent uncertainty about a nation's status. Generally, the survey items
discriminated well among countries, and the median standard deviation of responses to individual questions within countries was less than 1 on the 5-point scale (Roessner, Porter, and Xu 1992).
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