Asian executives are ‘worried about productivity’—and the solution may be giving young workers more say in how things are done

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For all of their fast growth, Asia’s economies are grappling with stagnant productivity. Much of Asia’s recent growth is driven by greater investment, and not by improvements in total factor productivity, or in how efficiently inputs are turned into outputs. At best, productivity growth is slowing down; at worst, it’s declining. 

And even where productivity is still improving, it’s not doing so fast enough to catch up to leading firms in developed markets like the U.S. Throughout the 2010s, leading firms throughout Southeast Asia grew productivity below the global average. (China, by comparison, managed to keep up.)