Basu Sharma
Basu Sharma (born 29 September 1950 in Hile of Lekharka, Bhojpur, Nepal) earned a Ph. D. degree in industrial relations/economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A., in 1983, and emigrated to Canada in 1984 to teach at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon as an Assistant Professor. In June 1985, he accepted a faculty appointment as an Assistant Professor at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Canada.

He rose through the ranks with a promotion to Associate Professor in 1987 and Professor in 1992. He was granted tenure in 1991. He received the UNB Merit Award for extraordinary performance in research, service, and teaching in 1990,1998 and 2005. He also received the Faculty of Business Administration's Excellence in Research Award in November 2006 for outstanding performance across his career. In 2018, he received the Award of Excellence from the Atlantic Schools of Business Conference Society. After being in academia for nearly four decades, Basu retired on December 31, 2023.

At various times, Basu also held appointments at the National University of Singapore, Tribhuvan University (Kathmandu, Nepal), and the Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat, Oman. He also consulted for the International Labour Organization, the Singapore National Employers Federation, the Singapore Institute of Labour, and the Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago during his academic career.

He was the founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Comparative International Management[1]from 1997 to 2022. The journal is now edited by Professor Elie Chrysostome of Western University. This is one of the very few international journals in the field of comparative management. The Journal recently established an annual "Basu Sharma Award for the best JCIM paper" to honour his contribution to comparative, international management scholarship.^[1]

Basu's intellectual contributions have been in diverse areas related to business, management and economic development.

Contribution to industrial relations theory: His research monograph Aspects of Industrial Relations in ASEAN was published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore in 1985. In this monograph, he developed a stage theory of industrial relations, which postulates that different patterns of industrial relations emerge at different stages of economic development: a political unionism pattern in least-developed countries; a repressive pattern in semi-industrialized or newly industrializing countries; and a cooperative or co-optative pattern in newly developed countries. Basu tested this hypothesis against the evolution of industrial relations patterns in a group of Southeast Asian countries--Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand—-and found the theory useful in explaining variations in industrial relations patterns in these countries. Professor Kozo Kagawa of Doshisha University in Tokyo translated this monograph into Japanese and published it in 1986.

Contribution to trade union growth research: Traditional mainstream economic model of trade union growth has been studied generally using the famous Ashenfelter-Pencavel model. Their model is postulated based on the theory of the business cycle. Wages, unemployment, prices and profit are the key variables influencing trade union membership growth. This model was not used to study trade union growth in developing countries. Basu modified the model by adding the rate of economic growth as another explanatory variable for developing countries and tested it using data from newly industrializing Asian countries and found it useful to study trade union growth in developing countries as well. This study motivated some other scholars to pursue this line of research. Bhattacherjee and Chaudhuri(1994)^[2]) is one notable case in this regard.

Contribution to small business and entrepreneurship literature: Small businesses are the most important foundation for economic growth and employment creation everywhere. However, most small business firms have a very high failure rate. Policymakers want to know what factors contribute to their survival and growth. And academic research becomes important for informing policymakers in this respect. I co-authored (Sharma and Rashid, 1988) a paper examining the employment effect of profit sharing in small business firms in Canada.

Contribution to human development and economic growth in developing countries: Basu has an enduring research interest in the economic development of developing countries, and his main research focus has been on the role of foreign capital. He has examined the effects of foreign direct investment on employment, labour movement, economic growth and human development. The 2004 paper examining the impact of foreign direct investment on human development has motivated many researchers to extend it. One recent case is Hamdi and Hakimi (2021) ^[3].

I co-hosted, with the University of Science and Technology Beijing, an international conference in Beijing in 2006. The following video describes the mission of the conference.

basu1.wmv