This paper explains how and why transnational corporations have chosen to collaborate with the Singapore government in certain industrial programmes, and not in others, between 1965 and 1999. In the analysis, this paper links two concepts, the global game of industrial production, and the developmental state, to explain the outcomes of three national industrial programmes in Singapore: the industrial transformation (1965–1980), industrial upgrading (1980–1990), and regional industrialization (1990–1999) programmes. This research finds that because of their relative autonomy from national governments, transnational corporations would collaborate not just due to the effectiveness of embedding strategies, but when these strategies were complementary to their own global business strategies within the global game of industrial production.
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