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On Technological Readiness of ASEAN Countries for Global Competitiveness

This study utilized exploratory data analysis or data mining using multivariate factor, cluster and principal components analyses in order to determine the technological readiness of the ASEAN member countries based on the World Economic Forum 2013 -2014 edition. Factor analysis was able to identify three factors namely, technology competence, access to technology and technology users which were used as bases for clustering the ASEAN member Countries. The means of each cluster for each factor were further utilized to assess the extent of technological readiness of the ASEAN member states through a model obtained using the principal components analysis. With this model, Singapore, the only nation that belongs to Cluster 3, emerged as the most technologically ready among the ASEAN countries. Group 2 ASEAN nations comprising Thailand and the Philippines, are the next two countries with a very high technological readiness, respectively as compared to Cluster 1 ASEAN member states. On the other hand, ASEAN member states belonging to Cluster 1 are found to be relatively least technologically ready, except for Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam that ranked fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively with a slightly competitive technological readiness. It was found out that technological readiness of an ASEAN country varies directly with the country’s technological competence, access to technology, and level of technology utilization. More specifically, technological readiness is mainly determined by access to technology which is related to both culture and economy. Meanwhile, global competitiveness highly correlates with technological readiness. Thus, while economic productivity mainly drives global competitiveness, both culture and economic productivity determines technological readiness. The high correlation between technological readiness and global competitiveness is also limited with culture as much as it is driven by economic productivity.


Introduction
Competitiveness determines the level of productivity of a country that is characterized by a set of institutions, policies, and other factors (Global Competitiveness Report, 2014-2015. The rates of return gained from different investments in an economy measures the level of productivity of a country. Thus, an economy that grows faster over time tends to be more competitive.
There are several determinants which drive productivity and competitiveness. Understanding the factors behind this process has occupied the minds of economists for hundreds of years, creating theories ranging from Adam Smith's

Recoletos Multidisciplinar y Research Journal
focus on specialization and the division of labor to the neoclassical economists' . Recently, factors such as education and training, market efficiency, macroeconomic stability, good governance, firm sophistication, market efficiency and technological progress among others are considered indices of global competitiveness.
According to Global Competitiveness Report of 2013-2014, the technological readiness measures the agility with which an economy adapts existing technologies to enhance the productivity of their industry. The importance of technology adoption for national competitiveness has been growing in recent years. As such, it progressed to the dissemination of knowledge and the increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICT's) which has become increasingly considered.
This study tries to present the importance of technological readiness for the transition of economies from limited to innovative economies. Hence, this study will therefore analyze and assess the factors of technological readiness. More specifically the researchers would cluster, categorize and assess the extent of technological readiness of ASEAN countries.

Conceptual Framework
Global competitiveness of ASEAN Countries represents how countries respond to the challenges posed by global competition. In response to the challenges, technology is relatively needed for a country to compete and prosper. For a country to become technologically ready, key factors have been identified by the World Economic Forum. These includes (a) availability of latest technology (b) firm-level technology adoption (c) foreign direct investment and technology transfer (d) individuals using internet (e) broadband internet subscriptions (f ) international internet bandwidth and (g) mobile broadband subscription. The factors identified would be analyzed using multivariate factor, cluster, and principal components analysis to determine the extent of technological readiness of ASEAN member states.

Design and Methods
This study utilized exploratory data analysis or data mining using multivariate factor, cluster, and principal components of analyses. These treatments transform the available data to become meaningful in order to determine the extent of technological readiness of ASEAN member states and to generate a theory of technological readiness. Multivariate factor analysis will be used to unify the variables to form a concept out from the given factors of technological readiness. Cluster analysis then will be applied to cluster the ASEAN member countries based on the identified concepts and its corresponding factor loadings, respectively obtained using factor analysis. Then the principal components analysis determines the corresponding weights assigned to each of the factors identified from the cluster means of each group of ASEAN member states and its known index of competitiveness from the given factors of technological readiness. The resulting model based on the identified concepts generated using the principal components analysis will be utilized to assess the technological readiness of the ASEAN member countries.
Furthermore, the following variables that characterized technological readiness were derived from the World Economic Forum 2013

Results And Discussion
The following results present the factor analyses on the technological readiness of ASEAN Countries in terms of the availability of latest technologies, firm-level technology absorption, FDI and technology transfer, Internet users, broadband Internet subscriptions per 100 population, internet bandwidth, kb/s per user and mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 population. The ASEAN member countries in no particular order are composed of (1) Brunei Darussalam, (2) Cambodia, (3) Indonesia, (4) Lao PDR, (5) Malaysia, (6) Myanmar (7) Philippines, (8) Singapore, (9) Thailand and (10) Vietnam.

Variables
Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Communality Factor analysis was used to group variables to form a factor. These factors can be computed by multiplying the loadings of the variables on a factor.
The set of variables 1,2, and 3 have a relatively high positive loadings on Factor 1 while a relatively low loadings on Factors 2 and 3, respectively. These variables pertain to technological competence readiness of ASEAN countries that will be characterized as "technology competence". Meanwhile, the set of variables 5, 6 and 7 load higher on Factor 2 than on Factors 1 and 3 respectively. This set of variables will be identified as "access to technology". Variable 4, on the other hand, has a load on Factor 3 greater than on Factors 1 and 2, respectively and hence will be determined as "Technology Users". These findings suggest that for the ASEAN countries to be technologically ready, one has to adopt technological competence, wide access to technology and must be an optimum user of the advancement of technology. These results are well explained through factor analysis of a cumulative variance of 98.10%.
Moreover, the succeeding findings depict the multivariate cluster analysis considering the three identified factors that determine the technological readiness of the ASEAN member states.

Cluster Analysis of ASEAN Countries in the Aspect of Technology Competence, Access to Technology, and Technology Users
The following figure shows the Dendrogram of the ASEAN countries depicting the groupings of the member states.    Table 2 determines the number of ASEAN countries that belongs to a particular group of ASEAN nations.
The clustering of ASEAN member countries was based on the countries similarities on the level of the three indentified concepts, namely, technology adoption, technology competence and technology users obtained through factor analysis.

Variables
Cluster 1 (9) Thailand both belong to cluster 2 while (8) Singapore is the only ASEAN nation that comprise group 3. These two clusters also possess a distinct level with respect to the three identified factors of technological readiness. Table 3 shows the cluster centroids for the three different groups of ASEAN member countries across the three identified factors namely, technology competence, access to technology and technology users.

Cluster1
Cluster2 Cluster 3 Table 4 depicts the distances between cluster centroids for the three different groups of ASEAN member states across the three identified factors, technology competence, access to technology and technology users.
The clustering of ASEAN countries is characterized mainly by competence of the technological advancement of the country. Cluster 3 is classified as the most technologically sophisticated group of ASEAN nations as evidenced by the most positive competitive index on technology competence. Moreover, the technological readiness of a cluster of member states of the ASEAN are also greatly influenced by wide access to technology and a high proportion of technology users of the country.
The following table reveals the extent of competitiveness on technological readiness among member states of the ASEAN in terms of technology competence. This is obtained through multiplying the loadings of the variables on this identified factor, namely, availability of latest technology, firm -level technology absorption and FDI and technology transfer for this identified factor.

ASEAN Countries
Cluster #  Singapore, the only ASEAN nation belonging to Cluster 3, is found to be the most highly competitive in terms of technology competence as compared from among other ASEAN countries. On the other hand, Malaysia and Indonesia ranked second and third, respectively, among ASEAN countries, which are categorized as highly competitive as to the technological competence in the region. The competitiveness index on technological competence of these countries seems to surpass the Philippines and Thailand's index of competitiveness that ranked fourth and fifth, respectively, in the same category. Although, the Philippines and Thailand belong to Cluster 2,  (10th), are the ASEAN member states that assumes the last four ranks among ten ASEAN countries. These nations are determined to have a moderately competitive technology competence lower than the rest of the ASEAN countries. These finding supports the fact that cluster 1 ASEAN countries, except for Malaysia and Indonesia, had a relatively low technology competence than the other two clusters. Group 3 composed of only one ASEAN state, Singapore seemed to be the leading cluster that dominates in terms of the competence of the technological advancement. This is because Singapore is considered by many multinational companies as a regional base for testing the markets in Asia. Also, since Singapore offers a good environment for investors to establish their businesses, many expatriates go to Singapore bringing with them the technology and giving them chance to innovate, introduce a better and new technology. Singapore is also becoming a digital hub of the world made possible through the presence of the best education, technology and infrastructures that it can offer (www.npr.org). Table 6 shows the extent of competitiveness concerning the technological readiness of ASEAN member countries in terms of access to technology.
Singapore, the only ASEAN state that composed Cluster 3, is still deduced to be the most highly competitive in terms of wide access to technology as compared to other ASEAN countries. On the other hand, Cluster 2 ASEAN countries, made up of Thailand and the Philippines, occupy the second and third ranks among ASEAN member states, respectively. These countries are categorized as very highly and highly competitive states, respectively in terms of access to technology. Cluster 1 ASEAN countries, namely; Indonesia (4th), Malaysia (5th), and Vietnam (6th) assumes the succeeding three ranked positions with a slightly competitive access to technology. All other ASEAN countries in Cluster 1, namely, Myanmar (7th), Brunei Darussalam (8th), Cambodia (9th) and Lao PDR (10th) ultimately determines the remaining ranks in the list. These countries are classified as least competitive for the same aspect relative to other ASEAN nations. These facts imply that Singapore, as the sole ASEAN country belonging to Cluster 3, remains as the most highly competitive in terms of wide access to technology than the rest of the ASEAN states. Group 2, on the other hand, are composed of Thailand and the Philippines which revealed a highly competitive access to technology greater than those ASEAN countries belonging to Group 1. The access to technology of either groups of the ASEAN nations are mainly characterized by the number of fixed broadband Internet subscriptions per 100 population, mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 population and international internet bandwidth (kb/s) per capita. Table 7 reveals the extent of competitiveness on technological readiness among ASEAN member countries in terms of technology users.
Cluster 3, composed of one ASEAN nation, Singapore is deduced to have the largest proportion of technology users as compared from among other ASEAN countries. Meanwhile, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, and Vietnam, which belong to Cluster 1, ranked second, third and fourth, respectively in the list of ASEAN countries, with a relatively high proportion of technology users. These ASEAN countries are a part of Cluster 1 with a cluster centroid of 23.4558 lower than 27.5462, the cluster centroid of Group 2, comprising the Philippines and Thailand ranked fifth and sixth, respectively. These countries are known to have a relatively lesser proportion of technology users in the region. The former ASEAN nations are found to be superior to those countries belonging to Cluster 2 in terms of the percentage of technology users in the area. This is because each of these countries are a part of group 1 having the relatively high index than each of the member states in Cluster 2. Other ASEAN countries found in Group 1 namely; Indonesia, Lao PDR, Cambodia, and Myanmar are all categorized to have a relatively least proportion of technology users in the country. These findings suggest the fact that Cluster 1 ASEAN countries, except for Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, and Vietnam had a relatively least percentage of technology users in the region. On the other hand, Singapore, the only ASEAN nation in Cluster 3 remains on top with the highest proportion of technology users in the area than the rest of the countries of the other two groups. Technology user is a factor identified that determines the percentage of individuals using the internet.

ASEAN Countries
Cluster # Technology Users Index Rank Interpretation      Thus, the higher the technology competence of an ASEAN country, the greater is the index of technological readiness, the greater access to technology, the higher is the index. Moreover, the more technology users of an ASEAN nation, the greater is the index of technological readiness.
The following table reveals the extent of competitiveness on technological readiness among ASEAN member countries using the above model that considers the three identified factors namely, technology competence, access to technology and technology users.
The overall results revealed that Singapore, the only ASEAN nation in cluster 3, is found to be the most highly globally competitive in terms of technological readiness among other ASEAN countries. Group 2 ASEAN nations comprising Thailand and the Philippines are deduced as the next two countries with a very highly and highly globally competitive technological readiness, respectively as compared to cluster 1 ASEAN member states. These two succeeding ASEAN countries ranked second and third, respectively, in terms of technological readiness among other ASEAN nations. On the other hand, ASEAN countries belonging to group 1 are found to be relatively least competitive as to its technological readiness, except for Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam that ranked fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively. These member states were determined to have a slightly globally competitive technological readiness.
Singapore which was a third world country in the mid twentieth century is an example of how the government can change the economic tract of a country. Singapore found its wealth not through oil deposits, or diamond and gold but through its government which capitalized its geographical location that makes its port a busy stopover for many ships. The government also made sure that its airport would attract airline passengers who would want to consider going to Singapore en route to other Asian destinations. Singapore does not also tax its constituents that high which allows its people to spend more money and help its own economy (www.servcorp.com.sg). These actions plus the presence of very good education, best technology and best infrastructures make Singapore at the top of the ASEAN in terms of many things and specifically in technology advancement (www.npr.org).
The following correlational analysis determines the relationship between the extent of competitiveness on technological readiness and global competitiveness index among ASEAN member countries.
The results revealed that there is a very strong positive correlation between the extent of technological readiness index and the global competitiveness index ( 038 . 0 , 661 . 0 = − = Value P r s ) among ASEAN member states that is statistically significant at 0.05 level of significance. That is, as the technological readiness index of an ASEAN country increases, likewise, its global competitiveness index increases as well. Thus, global competitiveness can be determined through the three identified factors of technological readiness, namely, technological competence, access to technology and technology users.

Conclusion
For a country to become globally competitive one has to possess the three aspects of technological readiness, namely access to technology, technology competence and technology users. Technological readiness is mainly determined by access to technology. On the other hand, access to technology exhibited a relationship to culture and economy. Thus, global competitiveness highly correlates with technological readiness. Likewise, global competitiveness determines the productivity while culture and economy has an impact on technological readiness. Therefore, global competitiveness is also culture bound.