Chiba University Leading Research Promotion Program
Online International Seminar (in English)
Toward a Fair Society After-Corona:
Challenges and Scope for Narrowing Disparities
Date & Time：14:30-17:00, 5 Sept. 2022(Mon), Japan
Abstract: This is a research essay based on the transcript of the seminar “Toward a Fair Society After-Corona:
Challenges and Scope for Narrowing Disparities”. The aim of this online seminar is to address the issue of
disparities and seek for a way to achieve “fairness” under the global economy currently suffering from thenegative impact of the COVID-19, which have been making an unprecedented impact on socioeconomic
activities across the globe. Dr.Benjalux Sakunasingha from Mahidol University International College
introduced the case in Thailand based on the topic of “Impact of COVID-19 on MSMEs and Post-COVID
Revival: The Case of Thailand”. And Mr. Licheng Liang from Keio University talked about “The impactsof COVID-19 pandemic on overseas production activities: empirical evidence of Japanese MNEs”.
Discussion was initiated and research ideas were exchanged afterwards.

Moderator
・Prof. Hikari Ishido (Chiba University)
Panelists
・Dr. Benjalux Sakunasingha (Mahidol University International College)
・Mr. Richard Licheng Liang (Keio University)
・Prof. Jiro Mizushima (Chiba University)
・Prof. Masaya Kobayashi (Chiba University)
・Assoc. Prof. Takayuki Kawase (Chiba University)
Organizer: Chiba University Global Fair Society Program

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Introduction (by Prof. Hikari Ishido)This online seminar is entitled “Toward a Fair Society After-Corona: Challenges and Scope for
Narrowing Disparities”. We have the next 2.5 hours to discuss in-depth this very important
issue. We are still in the middle of COVID-19, impacted by it, and we may often wonder where
the fairness is, and what kind of a fair society we can have, especially after the COVID, after
this experience. There are challenges, but also some scopes for narrowing the existing
disparities or inequalities in our society. We have two economics major scholars to givepresentations here today, also my own colleagues from another different fields to enrich our
topic. The background of this seminar is that Chiba University, based in Japan, has launched a
5-year research program entitled “New Frontiers of Studies on Fair Society: Values and Public
Vision in the age after COVID-19”.
Opening Remark (by Prof. Jiro Mizushima)
As you know, during the pandemic all over the world, the inequality and disparity in the society
has widened considerably, not only between rich and poor, but also regions and countries. Thatis without doubt a serious unfair situation. Today, the emphasis of our seminar would be on theeconomic aspect under COVID-19, the most vulnerable segment of the economy was, as Dr.
Sakunasingha would explain, micro and small-sized enterprises. They were hit severely by the
pandemic, also the same in Japan. However, I believe small but starting new enterprises with
innovative spirit are the keystone of dynamism of our contemporary economy. Almost all big
enterprises were at the beginning, small, tiny startups. So fair economic chance for everybody
that is quite important. And then we can pursue a fair economic society.
Chair’s Overview (by Prof. Hikari Ishido)
We will be covering this very important issue of fair society after COVID: challenges and scopefor narrowing disparities. Two speakers will give their presentations mainly based in theeconomics discipline, and then we will expand focus and coverage by inviting our colleagues
from slightly different discipline. The first presentation is “Impact of COVID-19 on MSMEs
and Post-COVID revival, the Case of Thailand” by Dr. Benjalux Sakunasingha, AssistantProfessor, Business Administration Division of Mahidol University International College,
which is based in Thailand, a very nice school dedicated towards this issue, businessadministration at a microscopic level. Our second speaker is Mr. Richard Liang of Keio
University. And his topic is “The Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic on Overseas Production
Activities, Empirical Evidence of Japanese MNEs (Multinational Enterprises)”. Afterwards,
Professor Masaya Kobayashi will discuss fully about the meaning of fairness and, also his own
research issues, especially in the realm of politics and psychology. Then he will be making
some comments on the previous two speakers’ presentations. Then the floor will be open forquestions and answers, and we wish these two speakers could make feedback comments.
Next, it is Chair’s Overview of the topic.
SDGs, as we know is United Nations Development Programs’ Sustainable Development Goals.
I used to work for the United Nations, so I’m familiar with the process of how this goal cameabout. It has 17 goals, and the first one is No Poverty. This is by far the most important goal,
development component. The next one is Good Health and Wellbeing, which is very much
related to poverty. Another category is environment, reduced inequalities, which we must focus
on as the topic today is about how we can narrow inequality and disparity. All the others areenvironmentally related topics. We surely will have to be covering all these environmentalrelated topics into the future.

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Professor Masaya Kobayashi from Chiba University propounded that fairness has four
components, compliance, equity, ethicality, and reciprocity. Compliance means observance,
observing societal rules and laws. It means we must comply with social norms. The second
component of fairness is equity. Today’s topic relates very much to this component.
Elimination of inequality and disparity in various dimensions, in economic sense, and in a lotof other senses, discrimination, gender issue, ethnic minority issue, the right to vote, all theseissues can relate to equity. Then the third component of fairness is ethicality, considering others.
Simply to put, it means we need to consider others when we make our own economic decisions.
Economics is sometimes considered as homo economics sort of discipline or people are rational
and they always think about themselves. Ethics is very much important. When you think about
yourself, you also must think about other people, so that is ethical. Then, reciprocity.
Reciprocity can be summarized as, this sentence, “Do to others as you would have others do toyou”, which is taken from the Bible. Do to others, so when you do to others, your philosophy
or ethics should be okay, if you would like others to do to you okay, do the similar thing toother people. Reciprocity is give and take, not take and take, or give and give. Give and take,or reciprocity is quite important. There is a coherence of fairness in terms of these four factors,
four components “One in Essence”. Fairness is at the core with four components, compliancerequirement, equity requirement, ethicality requirement, then reciprocity requirement. Eachcomponent of fairness can be seen as a tetrahedron’s node, and fairness as One in Essence. In
other words, the four components of fairness cohere when the fairness concept expands fully
and completely, then that will cover this compliance requirements, equity requirements,
ethicality requirements, and reciprocity requirements. For example, do to others as you would
have others do to you, then of course, this is reciprocity principle, give and take, but ethicality
principle as well, consider others, and then equity related because give and take on an equal
footing, so that way we can eliminate inequality and disparity. If we follow or comply withthis ‘Do to others as you would have others do to you’, the reciprocity principle, then we arecomplying with the societal rules and laws. In essence, I would think that compliance factor,
equity factor, ethicality factor, and reciprocity factor are all coherently related with fairness
concept at the core.
Impact of COVID-19 on the MSMEs and post COVID Revival in the case of Thailand(Presented by Dr. Benjalux Sakunasingha)
Before moving on to focusing on the content, let me share the background about the situationin Thailand before COVID-19 arrived. Thailand has been described as being in a “middle
income trap” for so long, not just recently, but it has been there for a long time. It has lost its
competitive advantages in low wage cost manufacturing due to its own rising wages and poor
productivity. We can see the signal of the middle-income trap in Thailand such as very slow
growth in GDP and, very slowdown of the foreign direct investment into the country. Thatwould lower the manufacturing rate as well and impact the labors who work for manufacturing.
At the same time, Thailand has been unable to break into the higher-value-added activities andmarkets that require more knowledge, innovation, new technology, creative and skill-intensive
activities due to low investment, slow growth in the manufacturing sector of the economy,
limited industrial diversification and poor labor market skills and conditions. Hence, Thai
economy has been stagnating and real income growth is stuck.
When it comes to what the government has done to help, first, the government tried to invest a
lot in infrastructure such as the seaport, the roads, also in education. However, the infrastructure
and the education still do not go to the rural area as much. We can see there a slowdown ingrowth, in manufacturing sector especially, and we cannot come across or we cannot solve that

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problem, which is the middle-income trap. For Thailand, the problem has been remained 7 to
10 years before COVID-19. Now the government tried to launch what is called “Thailand 4.0(2016)”, which means they try to move onward to the digital economies. The government tries
to improve in terms of innovation and putting a lot of investment on infrastructure. The national
strategy Thailand 4.0, since the year of 2018 up to 2037, is aimed to solve the problems.
I’m looking at the inequality in terms of small to medium-sized business which we could call
MSME. Micro business, small business, and medium size of business don’t have the same
opportunity as the large firms, especially in terms of the opportunity to raise funding. Funding
is very important for MSME because they need to survive. In Thailand, MSME is classified
according to the revenues and the number of employments and differs according to theoperation or function of an enterprise as manufacturing or services (Figure 1). In terms of
reducing inequality, MSMEs also help Thai citizens quite a lot because they create jobs. You
can see that in terms of the medium enterprise under the manufacturing so they can have theemployment less than 200, and you can later see the information that MSME is one of the
backbones of Thailand’s productivities in the past as well. I believe personally that regardlessthe size of the company, whether it’s micro or small or medium or even large enterprise, all ofthem are sharing or contributing to the economic growth of the country.
Definitions of MSME

Figure 1 (Royal Thai Government Gazette, 2020)

Due to MSMEs’ wide distribution, they represent as one of the engines of Thai economies
where they create jobs in agriculture sector as well as manufacturing and service sectors.
MSMEs also bring huge proportion of revenue and create important or significant number ofthe profit margin for the country compared to the large enterprises will. The office of the SME
promotions (OSMEP) addressed that MSMEs are important vehicles for development of Thai
economy, as in the year of 2019, the total of the MSMEs contributed about 35.3% to the national
GDP. It increased from the previous year by 3%. The main factor of growth in MSMEs werethe expansion of the domestic demand from the consumption of both state and private sectors,
including the revenues from the foreign tourists as well. This also shows the significant growth
towards the Thai economy.
In terms of the exports value and the percentage of the total exports, we can see that the large
firm certainly plays an important role. On the trend from year 2015 up to 2019 before COVID19 arrived, you can see that there is an increase both in the export proportion or export value
for the large firms, while there is a big decline for the MSMEs (Figure 2), and that is what wewant to identify what the problem is. And we can see that the large enterprise in Thailand
contributed nearly 60% of the GDP in 2019 while the MSME is about 35.3%. Within that
35.3%, medium enterprise is about 17%, and 15% from the small enterprise, and the microenterprise is around 3% (Figure 3).

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Value and percentage of Total Exports,
Classified by Size of Enterprises, 2015-2019

GDP by Enterprise Size, 2019

Figure 2 (Office of SMEs Promotion, 2015-2019)

Figure 3 (Office of SMEs Promotion, 2020)

It is clear that MSMEs are very important to Thai economies as follows. First, MSMEs rank
third in terms of the digital readiness in Southeast Asia so that means that MSMEs havepotential to go digital economies. They have somehow the knowledge about using technology,
using programming, and being ready to move on with the new digital era. Second, MSMEs
contribute nearly 35% to 40% of the Thai GDP as presented in the year 2019 before COVID19 arrived. Also, MSMEs provide about 78% of the employment for the Thai citizens and 3
million labors, including service, manufacturing, wholesale, and retail, which are the top three
key business activities in MSMEs. In 2019, Nearly 42% of MSMEs businesses was in service
sector such as restaurants, food, food stands, hotel but not very big scale hotels, logistics,
transportation. In terms of manufacturing, it was about 31%. Wholesale and retails were about
20%. But because of COVID-19, the economy slowed down, and the tourism sector slowed
down, and the expenditure of the private sector also did. We can see that one of the main engines
for Thailand, the accommodation and tourism industry were impacted a lot, especially theaccommodation and food services were badly affected. However, retail business was notdamaged fiercely as they could put and sell products online so that the shopping could still be
ongoing.
We could clearly understand that COVID-19 pandemic caused a disruption to the global and to
every country. Most country participated lockdown, working or studying from home. And wehave a new word called social distancing because we don’t want to be contacted too close
otherwise we might transfer the disease to each other. People have also changed behaviors. We
increased shopping or buying food online. New products for health have been the top productsthat people were looking for. Space utilization for businesses, switching of working hours,
which we can see have been becoming a “new normal”. Many offices downtown here in
Bangkok right now have reduced the size of the rental floors. We have also learnt to travel tothe less crowded area. Some hotels here in Thailand tried to get “SHA Plus” which is the healthcertificate for the hotel operation. We can see that people wanted to be more hygienic, to behealthier. The degree of impact on COVID-19 I believe that varies to the size of the company.
Large-sized firm may not be impacted badly. We are still under the “new normal”.
When it comes to the effect of COVID-19 to MSMEs, first, it has pushed MSMEs closer
towards digital economy, which makes MSMEs more resilient and competitive. For example,
many of the MSMEs, especially the food stands, or small shops were not quite capable with thetechnology or the use of computer and gadgets, unless the owners were younger generation.
However, they had to adapt into the digital era faster than they were thinking about. They
needed to use the QR code in terms of accepting the payment online, and they must learn
quickly. And digital markets and E-commerce facilitated MSMEs access to both domestic andinternational markets. In Thailand, top sales channel were Facebook, Line application, andwebsite while the mots lucrative online business was restaurants, food vendors and delivery.

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Only 38.6% of MSMEs have quickly shifted their focus to online also accepted online payment
such as bank transfer, Prompt Pay or others, But the others were not able to rapidly shift toonline methods which might bring high risk of failure. For example, the motorcycle riders in
Bangkok, who usually provided transportation of short distance travel to daily workers or
tourists, have also had to change their way of working. They have changed to provide delivery
service from restaurants and food stands when people could not eat outside. And they havechanged to learn how to use gadgets and electronic devices even though lack of technology
knowledge. But people without the capability of learning new knowledge could be very likely
to be in high risk of business failure.
According to Siriphattrasophon’s research, wholesale and retail of MSMEs would recoverfaster than the others following by the manufacturing sectors in the post COVID-19 era. The
manufacturing sector under MSMEs are such as food, consumer goods will take approximately
half a year to recover. Service sector might take longer time as this sector includes service
valuation from travel, tourism, hotel, entertainment, restaurants, shops, transportation, logistics.
This service sector needs a human touch so that it will take longer time to recover, usually 9months or a year which we were looking forward to at the end of the year.
However, there are also the challenges ahead besides the COVID-19 such as expected economy
recession, rising energy and oil price, Russian- Ukraine conflict, and aging society in Thailand
which might make it harder for MSMEs to recover. Especially, the high inflation rates. This
morning, the Bank of Thailand has announced that the inflation rate last month increased from
7.6% to 7.86% which means that this would impact the money in our pocket as well and thepoor people would be impacted the most because the earnings are not that much, but theexpenses are getting higher and higher due to the inflation.
The main problems of MSMEs’ are lower productivities and the reduce of exports as I
mentioned earlier, also the sustainability of business which is one issue leading to inequality.
According to previous research by Charoenrat and Harvie (2021) 1 , old firms can be moreexperienced due to superior management experience, knowledge and higher technology andequipment, therefore are more efficient than younger firms to survive COVID-19. Smaller Sizefirms are more technically efficient than medium ones due to adaptability and flexibility tochange in the market. And firms with technology upgrade, good CG and managerial skills could
increase competitiveness and potentially draw attention from foreign ownership and investment.
However, this should also need government supporting policy.
Our research focusing on productivity enhancing determinates of FDI2 mainly addressed threeconclusions showed in the date analysis under three different models (Figure 4-6). First, lagersized companies attract more investment from abroad. Larger size companies have broader
range of opportunities to raise funding such as bank loan, bond market, equity market, and evengo abroad for foreign investment and foreign partnership. On the other hand, MSMEs
participate more financial difficulties during the pandemic, also this recovery period. Since
most of MSMEs depend on their reserved or internal funding (liquidity), and domestic funding
such as bank loan and private equity. To survive this economic situation, MSMEs had tomaintain their business activities and market share while cutting down the unnecessary
expenses. E-commerce and digital trade might be solutions to reach the market. Therefore,
1

Analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Thailand fromcompetition policy and market access perspectives, 2020 UNCTAD MSME Survey(Interviews of 219 MSME
manufacturing enterprise samples in Thailand, Dec.2020-Jan.2021 )2
Productivity Enhancing Determinates of FDI: Firm-level Analysis, Thailand. Part of this research has beenpresented at APEC Study Centre Consortium Conference (ASCCC 2022, July 21, 2022 By H.Ishido,
B.Sakunasingha and L.Liang)

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small or medium size companies seemed to have disadvantages to attract more direct foreign
investment.

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

Second, younger-age companies attract more foreign investment. Younger companies that startwith unique ideas, most of which tend to come from people’s experiences and try to solve thepain-point, new products or services will have potential to grow fast. These younger or newly
emerged companies with their new products or services may enter the market to improve
individuals’ daily life and households’ products, some of which may cause the current orcommon products to be no longer in demand. These “early stage of businesses” with innovativeideas are quickly received attention from domestic angel investors, and some may havepotential to receive attention from foreign investment if it relates to innovation and technology.
For example, the home automation such as the lighting control, air conditioning control frommobile phones, the applications for medical service for the senior citizens, seeing the doctor
online rather than going to the hospital so that patients could discuss with the doctors privately
through mobile phones or computers, are all something new that have been emerging during
the COVID-19 era as we had to stay home and the senior citizens were not allowed to go thehospital for the regular schedules with the doctor, most of which were developed by the younger
companies started by the younger generation then have become very popular. On the other hand,businesses that have been operating for some time and reached maturity stage of life cycle needto rethink about how to keep creative and launch innovative products and services, upgradewith new technology, broaden product line, even penetrate different fields. In summary, theyneed a new S-Curve (Figure 7), which means when the old companies’ technology hits thelimits or reaches the maturity, they have to make efforts to develop or apply newer technology
to survive. The more this process repeats and continues, the more obviously the S-Curve we
could see. Therefore, firms with turn-around strategy or know how to pick up the new S-Curvesuch as firms being more innovative, preparing employees for the new era (the HRD), investing
in intangibles have higher potential to attract foreign partnership regardless of their sizes.

Figure 7

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Moreover, companies with a large amount of intangible assets also draw more attention frominvestment overseas. Clearly, intangible assets (IA) bring growth to the company. Based on our
research, companies with new technology or technology transferred from abroad may gain
advantages apart from on-balance sheet IA, also the off-balance sheet IA such as the knowledge,
skill labors, operational procedures, connectivity. Companies with more IA, especially those
involving with new technology and innovation may have more opportunities to raise funding,
not only from domestic financial institutions, but also from abroad since many foreign financial
institutions, investors or partners understand better about the nature of IA investment, which
are more capable of taking investment risk in IA more than domestic banks that play moreconservative roles in supporting firms’ operations in general.
Furthermore, the limitations that Thai MSMEs themselves have also affect the flow of foreign
investment. Lack of entrepreneurial and management skills and marketing knowledge, lowaccess to financial resources and difficulties to obtain funding, lack of creativity, innovation,and technology to secure sustainable growth, lack of skilled workers, low rare to participate ininternational market, all discourage investing interest overseas. To solve the problems, first,
MSMEs need to know how to take advantages of government policies which are temporary
though. They need to be able to stand strong and firm on their own feet. Second, MSMEs needto rapidly adopt and adapt to new normal. They have to be more flexible and learn new things.
Third, MSMEs need to reserve sufficient cash and cash flows then have financial discipline.
MSMEs have around 20% of non-profitable loan due to the lack of financial discipline
nowadays. Then, they have to create new marketing channels with online marketing and digitaltrade. In addition, MSMEs need to prepare for restarting the operation and look for new
business opportunity as well. Besides, Observation on the “Mega Trend” is very necessary as
low-to-middle income class is rising, and the aging society as mentioned earlier is developing
which requires new business opportunities, new products or services. Urbanization is also oneof the main changes happened during the pandemic. For example, in Bangkok during the
COVID-19, most people worked from home, living outside of Bangkok. When they get used
to living outside of the big city or big town while feeling more comfortable, people start tomove out and that caused a development of urbanization which is new in Thai society. Last but
not the least, people need to cope up with the technology disruption. A lot of Thai MSMEs,
especially those run by the younger generation people have learnt quickly about how to adapt
themselves using the online payment.
In conclusion (Figure 8), we can see that regardless of companies’ age and size, both large and
MSME firms with innovation, technology transfer or upgrade could sustain and have foreign
direct investment potential. But companies with no intangible assets or no potential to pick up
the technology, whether which could survive could still be questionable. We can see that it
doesn’t really matter whether the firm is younger or older as long as they could have theinnovative ideas or they can find creative business opportunity, or to upgrade their technologies,
then they would not have problems to survive. Apart being survival with the intangible assets,technology transfer, innovation, and creative ideas, in addition the ability to adapt and beflexible because MSMEs sometimes, they operate by their real owners. The problem is it’s very
difficult for them to adapt and be flexible, so they are quite rigid in terms of being able to adapt
to the new normal or to the new trend that is going on.
Inequality appears when it comes to the problems MSMEs face and the support they need.
Compared with large firms, MSMEs need to improve management and marketing skills, to be
more creative and innovative. They also need to be able to access to financial resources orfunding. This is something that I believe MSME will need to do a lot more in terms ofadaptability and be more flexible to survive.

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Figure 8

Review (by Prof. Hikari Ishido)
Dr. Benjalux Sakunasingha talked about inequality or disparity among Thai companies.
Younger company would have a higher chance of attracting foreign direct investment. But if
the size is smaller, then they have less chance of attracting investment, and then that would
translate into lower chance of being involved in international activities like exporting, importing,so less of innovation, and then human resource remains limited. After COVID recovery, it
might become difficult for those MSME companies where fairness is much needed.
The impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on overseas production activities: empirical evidenceof Japanese MNEs (Presented by Mr. Richard Licheng Liang)*This part is invisible due to copyright reasons.
Review (by Prof. Hikari Ishido)
Mr. Liang’s detailed presentation focused on the impact of government stringent policy on the
total sales of business companies in each country of his concern. Then also, he highlighted thatcasualty, the number of people sacrificed by the COVID 19. If the impact is higher, then ofcourse the impact on the total sales of the business company is also very high. Then there is nointernational coordination. There was of course no coordination at the beginning because thatwas our first time to experience this pandemic on a global scale. No international travel scheme
coordination or everything could recover, so that also deteriorated the potential recovery fromthe negative impact of COVID-19.
Initiation of Discussion:
Well-being, Fairness and Political Economy (Presented by prof. Masaya Kobayashi)First, I would like to make introductory remarks of our projects. My comments are about
wellbeing, fairness, and political economy. Professor Ishido introduced our framework on
fairness earlier. This is my own framework as well. I study political philosophy and positive
psychology, so I try to combine between the two. I push forward the idea of positive politicalor economic psychology (Figure 9). The theme of the conference today is more about economy,
I will introduce my own research on the point. This is own theoretical framework (Figure 10).
There is a human or a person system and social system. Social system consists of politicalsystem, cultural system and economic system. And person system was constituted from humanbody and mind. From the perspective of health, human body is about physical health, andhuman personal system is concerned with psychological self, and there is a mind-body liaison
between the two, which I call health as psychosomatic health. Actually, this is the theme of ourpaper which not only my partnership with Ishido and Mizushima is concerned with.

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Figure 9

Figure 10

There is a danger, and we found out there is a decline of wellbeing under COVID-19 by ourthree studies that are conducted in 2020 May and 2021 March and 2021 October, we can see acontinual decline of wellbeing, that’s also a very serious problem (Figure 11).And with thecomparison between average values of health by household income, we can see greater income
corresponds to better physical, psychological, and psychosomatic health, and we measure thishealth by a subjective perception of a person (Figure 12).

Figure 11

Figure 12

When it comes to the relation between justice and citizenship and subjective wellbeing, simply
our conclusion is that justice and citizenship is associated with subjective wellbeing. Then we
can see the relation between fairness or injustice and wellbeing. Next, Figure 13 shows justiceand fairness positively correlated with brightness increase and also negatively correlated with
the increase of darkness, anxiety, and depression. It shows the change of mood or a change offeel and the relation of that and justice and fairness. Justice and fairness is related to the changeof feeling of mood under COVID-19.
Survey 2

Survey 1

Figure 13

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The conclusion of previous research is that justice and fairness and wellbeing and justice andfairness and change of mood, the correlation between citizenship or justice and fairness andwellbeing are substantial. Also, justice and fairness are related to the mitigation of negativity
increase in coronal calamity. And correlation between these is small but robust. Therefore,
justice and fairness contribute to wellbeing under COVID-19 and less negative change of mood.
Then we conclude that justice issue or fairness issue is quite important under COVID-19.
The theme for today’s conference is political economy, the issue of political economy. I haveintroduced our research that horizontal dimension on research that is equality or equity is related
to health equity. Also, a subjective perception of fairness and justice is related to wellbeing andthe mitigation of negative mood in crisis of COVID-19. In short, fairness is associated withwell-being. Then the question is how about political economy, and relation between fairness
and justice and political economy or economy in each country? Professor Martin Seligman fromthe United States pushed forward the PERMA model of wellbeing. He thinks that wellbeing
can be measured by five elements, positive emotions, engagement, relationship, meaning, andachievement. These elements are influenced by virtue or personal strength that is humancharacter. Influenced by such research, the Positive Organization Scholarship of University ofMichigan represented by Professor Kim Cameron carried out research into remarkablesuccessful companies, especially lively and generative with performance improves. Professor
Cameron pushed forward the idea of organizational virtues that is positive human inspiration,
moral goodness, and social improvement. And he found out that in hospitals and multi-industry
companies, despite restructuring, virtue had led to a recovery in performance. His main research
was done before COVID-19, so I would like to supplement this idea with my own research later.
Professor Cameron pushed forward the idea of positive leadership that is positive atmosphere,
including compassion, forgiveness, gratitude. And the second element is relationship, whichmeans positive energy stimulator, leveraging our strength. The third element is communication,
positive ratio between positive feeling and negative feeling, which is important even when
making corrections from the superior persons and supportive communication such as
descriptive or suggestive choices. The last element is meaning, which means vocational
consciousness and meaningful sense in work and labor.
My own research of Japanese Big Food Company could be summarized as follows. It is noteasy to prove that psychological factors are not related to performance but also the codes ofgood performance. Therefore, this study examines the correlation and causality between
wellbeing and employees’ traits and performance in a sizable Japanese food company withmore than 200 shops (Figure 14). It also summarizes the primary feature of the participants andquestions here. The participants were all employees of the highest or the lowest 30 shops interms of annual sales and two factory workers. They could lead self-report measures regarding
their wellbeing as extracted from PERMA questioners and personal traits such as optimism,
virtues, satisfaction, and happiness.

Figure 14

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Next, Figure 15 illustrates the difference in the average of wellbeing and personal traits between
the top 5 shops and lowest 5 shops and demonstrates the positive relationship between general
wellbeing based on the PERMA indicator and the ratio of sales change. It shows various
indicators, such as PERMA and virtues, traits, and optimism, and we can see there is somepositive and significant relation between these indicators and performance of the shop, that isshown in red.

Figure 15

Figure 16 shows the positive relationship between wellbeing of employees and performance ofshops. It addresses that the higher the general wellbeing, the greater the rate of increase in sales.
And in Figure 17, we can summarize that the statistical comparison of the employees’ answer
from the top two groups, the correlation and regulation analysis between the rate of change ofsales of the shops at the time of the surveys and the psychological positivity. The life wellbeing
saturates as a positive emotion, accomplishment, satisfaction was most clearly related
positively with the shops’ performance while some traits were moderately associated with it.
However, there was negative relation between workplace wellbeing and performance.

Figure 16

Figure 17

Furthermore, time series analysis around the two surveys indicated that the relations of the mostfeatures mentioned above during a few months after the survey tended to be higher than those
before. Based on these findings, it is highly possible that the causal inference of thepsychological factors of the performance is more than in opposite directions. It proves that there
may be a correlation and causal relationship between the psychological features and theperformance. And Figure 18 shows there is a positive relationship from two factors, life
wellbeing and engagement or pro-sociality to performance, which is measured by an increasein annual sales. This brief introduction of my own research shows that wellbeing of store
managers and employees is related to store performance. Employee autonomy is also relevant
here. Engagement and pro-sociality of work are also relevant. Life wellbeing is more related tostore performance than the workplace wellbeing and pro-sociality. Therefore, it is important toPage 12 of 20

enable a workstyle that enhances the general wellbeing in life, including personal life in orderto improve performance.

Figure 18

We began to think of new way of working after COVID-19 calamity. Everyone knows that
there is a tendency for online and teleworking during the pandemic. We can find out theboundaries between organizations and those between organization and homes are loosening,
and the possibility of crossing boundaries increases, especially in Japan. So physical changes
such as moving to the suburbs, changes in the concentration began in Japan. We could also seethat increase of marginal people or borderline people. So does this phenomenon lead tocreativity, which is the problem? And we can find out value polarization because some people’svalues are beginning to shift to the mind and spirituality. Then I began to think, is there a new
way of life and work? Or is there a new positive work style? This is a research question for
could be discussed later.
There can be loose physical organizational and life boundaries. So political philosopher Hannah
Arendt distinguished between labor for a living, work for people and society. We can recognize
a loose boundary way of working rather than labor. Because there are top-down orders, that isvertical and slave-like labor. Now obviously, this was a major work style before corona
calamity in various countries. Obviously, such kind of work style survives, but there can be a
new work style, that is equal cooperation, that is horizontal, and ideas/meanings in works(spirituality). Such kind of working style began before corona calamity, but there can be apossibility that these three kinds of work styles combine soon, so this can be a threedimensional way of working. This can become a positive way of working with a higher levelof wellbeing, and creativity and performance may increase. With positive work style at thecenter, not only in conventional works but also the entire life, such as family and social
contribution activities may change, and a flourishing society will be realized. That’s apossibility as we must see how things are going wrong in the future.
This is the vision for post-corona society, that is I call flourishing society. So far, principle,
technology, organizational, lifestyle and values, political philosophy, and societal community
is like this. So post-corona age principle can be priority on life and health and moral economy.
Technology is centered on digital that is internet and AI. Now organization will be horizontality
and variety. Lifestyle and values are more shifted towards spirituality that is Eudaimonia in
ancient Greece concept, ethical flourishing, or ethical happiness. And political philosophy shifts
from utilitarianism, libertarianism towards communitarianism, which I study now. And societal
community moves from closed and oppressive towards transboundary, and autonomy andcooperative association will be respected in that societal community. However, the fundamental
issue is, is there a fair work or economy after the coronal calamity? Organizational virtue andemployee’s wellbeing is related to high performance in organizations just as psychologicalPage 13 of 20

wellbeing is associated with physical health. This is what previous studies, also my study
indicates, which also leaves space for further thinking and discussion. First, how about fairness
concerning organizations? Second, Professor Ishido shows the four-dimensional understandingof fairness that is compliance, equality or equity, ethicality, reciprocity. Is this concept effective
for considering future economy? Particularly, fairness can be linked to organizational
performance or success, and we can consider a fair work, a fair organization, or fair economy.
Is this possible? Moreover, there is a word called fair trade, then is fair work, organization, or
political economy is possible after the corona calamity? All these questions and issues need to
be furtherly studied in the future.
Q&A
Prof. Masaya Kobayashi
The first question is how to count intangible assets in your research?
The second question is, were there any differences between large-sized companies and MSMEs
regarding their reactions to COVID-19 or its influence on them? Your research deals withmainly MSMEs, so my question here is not only MSMEs but also large-sized company.
The third question is, is there a trend towards loose boundary in Thailand because my study isconcerned with loose society in the future. That reminds me of the classical anthropology studyon Thailand. JF Embree characterized Thailand as loose structured social system. I’m not surewhether the description is relevant today or not, but anyway, this concept can be somehow
linked with the loose society in the future.
The fourth question is, how the “Next Normal” will be? We discuss whether Japanesecompanies will return to the old normal or going to something new. So my question to you isthat Thailand’s large companies and MSMEs are returning to the old normal or it’s something
new?
The fifth question, is there any other relevant disparities than young or old age and scale ofcompanies, and that your research is concerned with? How about psychological aspects?
Because my own interest is more psychological aspects so I would like to ask you about these
aspects in Thailand. The fifth question is any comment on the issue, on my brief presentation,that is wellbeing and fairness, especially in Japanese companies. So wellbeing and fairness inThailand or the national, regional, the world political economy. This fifth question is not only
for Professor Sakunasingha, but also to the second speaker that is Mr. Liang.
I understand that stringent policies of government on workplace have damaged to Japanesecompany, as we have imagined. I am very grateful for your empirical research for proving thisimagination. So I would like to ask you the first point is that can you see any special feature on
Japanese policies of those companies in comparison with other countries and areas? I supposethat you know tremendously about not only Japan but also the other countries situation. So thatis my first question.
My second question is that can you suggest some policy suggestions about Japan based on yourresearch because there is severe controversy how governments should manage COVID-19? So
I would like to ask you about your suggestion on this issue.
The third issue is concerned with moral dilemma between economy and COVID-19 policy.
Now obviously, it is important to maintain the companies’ performance under COVID-19, butthere is a severe dilemma between the governmental restrictions or stringency and economic
performance. As a political philosopher, I usually ask questions about such moral dilemmas.
Can you suggest something about such dilemma?

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Dr. Benjalux Sakunasingha
To answer the first question of how to count the intangible assets from the research, based on
the data collected from the database mainly, therefore the intangible assets are from the onbalance sheet items. of course, according to what I have learned from Professor Ishido and havebeen discussing with him over the years, I have learnt that there are a lot of items that could
also be considered as the intangible asset, but it is off-balance sheet. For example, connection,
learning about how to do the procedures of work. Those are something that are not on thebalance sheet, but it is also intangible, and it is valuable for a company, especially connection
and network.
Regarding what you mentioned, if there are any differences between a large-sized firm andMSME in terms of the reaction to the COVID-19, I would say that large-sized firm has higher
potential because I am looking from the economic size, from the financial size, of course they
have more funding to survive, but still some of the main – some of the big companies cut down
their spending, like reducing of the proportion of the salary cut down, some of the fixed
expenses like rental of the office space and things like that, so they need to be utilizing theirfunding. But in terms of the smaller-sized firms, I think they had more problems during the
COVID-19 time, especially during the first year of COVID-19 in order to survive because of
the cash problems, liquidity problems put it this way. Even though they participate with thesame problems, but the way they try to survive might be slightly different.
Smaller-sized firm tend to be able to survive mainly because of cash and they need to survive
because they need to have enough cash. However, a lot of the MSMEs failed because they don’t
have enough cash to survive in terms of operation. Unlike the larger size firm, they might havemore of the internal source of funding at least you know they have a larger size, but of course,
they may have another problem like they have employees to think about, they have more of thehigher – of the operating expenses that they have to think about or higher cost that they have tothink about compared to the smaller sizes’ firm. But looking from my point of view on the first
agenda, that is about funding for liquidity or for cash reserve, I’m looking from the MSME
point, they have more problems. They participate with severe problems comparing to the largersized firm in order to survive due to the cash.
Second issue talking about employment, of course with a larger size firm, they are hiring moreskilled labor, or they are hiring more employees with more knowledge. They have highpotential to maintain their employment even though some companies may have to reduce thesalary in some proportion as you probably have seen. For the smaller size scale companies, they
don’t have that much of the potential. To begin with, the labor or the employee of MSMEs, theknowledge or the education they have are not – what do you call it, not as high or not as goodcompared to the bigger size employees’ education, put it this way. Because they have the cash
problems, so when COVID-19 came in, and the problem has been prolonged. More likely, theytend to reduce the number of employees in terms of the MSME company. You can see that thesecond point come with the employment and unemployment, I don’t know whether you cancall it unemployment or employment, to maintain the status of the employment of thecompanies, MSME participates with more problems and therefore, employees themselves havemore problems because they might be out of job any time. A very common state might go fromreducing the employee salary and then the discussion about the relocation of the work or therepositioning of the work, you move this person from this department to go to the otherdepartment or to do more work but pay less, and then later, out of job. I don’t know which one
that MSMEs really use in terms of managing their employee. But looking from my perspective,
MSME participates with more of the problem to manage the employee at this level. Now I

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believe with the next normal here, they are going to participate when the economy is goingback into the operations, because now they don’t have enough number of people to work. They
need to be hiring back the people. But those people that are already out of work 18 months ago,
they might find another job already. With the MSME, they need to find new labor, they needto find new staff, and then train again, right, waste of the time. This is the time to run fast, but
now they will be struggling to train the new staff.
Comparing to the larger size firm which has higher potential to maintain their employees right,
so when the business is going back on track, hopefully in the next 6 to 9 months, because they
are not firing the people, they don’t let the people to go out, so they keep the current employees,
so they can run faster to catch up with the operation. I’m looking from that point of view when
you ask the difference between large size and MSME to react to the COVID-19. I hope I haveanswered your question.
On question number 3, I really would like to ask for your explanation, what do you mean byloose boundaries; I’m not clear about that.
Prof. Masaya Kobayashi
There are strict boundaries in Japan for example, the companies or various organizations,
including the universities, people of course should work within that company. And people livein one area but telework enabled people to work in their homes for example. In that case, people
can easily go to work and home more frequently or more easily than the usual or before corona
calamity. We can think that such kind of flexibility can continue after the corona calamity,
that’s the point which I would like to ask you.
Dr. Benjalux Sakunasingha
I think it is related to the next question about “Next Normal”, I shall combine the answers.
Since COVID-19, we have come up with the new wording. We talk about social distancing, wetalk about a lot of things, work-from-home, study-from-home and things like that. This issomething that has never happened before, at least in my life. This thing, even though now it
becomes “New Normal” during the COVID-19, some company they move to the “Next Normal”
right now. Let me share with you, I don’t see the picture here yet to myself because it’s at theuniversity level, but we are going back to campus fully. But in my friends’ offices in downtown
Bangkok, even though today is the first day that we go back to office, but some of the companies
like some of the local banks here in Thailand, they provide what you call the flexibility for work
as what you mentioned it might call – what do you call it, the loose boundary. We call it thework life balance. They said in 5 days, each week, we have the 5 working days each week,
Monday through Friday, employees can select 2 days to go to work at the office. They can
select their own 2 days. This week I might want to select Tuesday and Thursday, and thefollowing week, I might want to select Thursday and Friday. But this has to be scheduled one
month ahead because now they have to – we call it coworking space. It has happened
everywhere now globally, including in Japan, we do coworking space. You don’t have yourown tiny little office to sit in like we are the professors, we have a lot of books and things towork on our research and our students’ paper right. We’re going to have our own private office.
Not anymore in Bangkok. Many offices are coworking spaces, and I would call it horizontal
because even though you are the big boss, you also share the same coworking space. It’s notthat in the old days you sit like a hierarchical – if you are the big boss, you sit in a bigger room,and then, later you’re going to have a subordinate to sit right here and there, here and there.
Not anymore. We don’t have a private room unless you are a very big boss like executives andstuff, we share the coworking space. The advantage, looking from economical side is that the

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rental of the building per company has been reduced in size. Say it’s like one of my friends
working for a credit card company, they normally rent five floors in one building, now they
have reduced to only three floors, and try to utilize those floors for coworking space, and ofcourse, they have the flexibility of working hours, which now happens at every places. I think
it saves a lot of cost for the company. It also provides a work-life balance for us as a worker. I
could stay home working from home three times a week, and on the day that I feel that I needto go to the office, then I sign some paper that I need to go to the office. I think it provides moreof the comfort in terms of – I am having my life back. Before COVID-19, people – especiallypeople who work in downtown Bangkok, we have a lot of stress not just from work, but also
from traffic. It’s very heavy traffic in the morning and in the evening. We spend a lot of timeoutside of our house, outside of our residence. We probably leave our old senior citizens behind,come back home at 8 o’clock, leave home at 5 a.m. in the morning. Now I think the life is more
lifeful, fruitful because I can manage my time. People of the working age they can manage theirtime more to have – we keep talking about work life balance for so long, but it hasn’t happened.
During COVID-19, we participated with another problem. You probably understand theconcept of productivities. Looking from the companies’ point of view, they still want us to
produce the same level or even higher level every year, that’s why we have the performance
agreement and things like that. But when we work from home, it’s very difficult to contributethe same, I accept that. You have your parents at home, you have your children at home. All ofthem study from home and work from home as well, and you will be distracted with your home
activities such as you have to cook for your children, you have to fix up your house and things
like that, at the same time, you have to be in front of the computer to do your work, which isvery difficult during COVID-19. But we have construed that for 2 years, almost 3 years rightnow.
I believe we are moving now to the next normal that is at those time we miss to go back to theoffice, now I believe that we can balance work and life a bit more because we have 2 days or 3days to go to work, and we can also stay at home and still do some work at home some days. I
think with the “Next Normal”, I think Thailand is moving towards that “Next Normal”, eventhough we now allow people to go back to the office fully, but they are more flexible than
before. With the help of the technology, I would say because in the old days, we had a lot of
paperwork. Nowadays, the paperwork has been on the cloud, what do you call it, cloudprogramming, so we can work from anywhere. I think this is what I am looking for.
Another issue is that with the “Next Normal”, it allows the people who came from the suburbs
to go back and live in their hometown as well. And that would let the growing of the suburb
area, that create the jobs around that area as well, besides every people before COVID-19, they
always came to Bangkok to get the jobs, I think this is going to be something new that a lot of
people are moving, even though slowly, are moving out of Bangkok and be in the suburb, beback in their hometown, and they still can maintain their good life with family and also do thework. I think this would meet the work life balance that a lot of people at my working age aretalking about. Myself, I don’t feel much because as a career, as a professor’s career, we havemore flexibility in terms of working hours. But in terms of the office worker, this is something
new for them. This is something that they are looking for.
Questions number 4, I think whether you are talking about younger and older age, scales of thecompany in terms of psychological aspect, I think the human resource department of many
companies maybe also considering this as well because this is something that we all want inlife. We want to make work and life balance. We don’t want to lose the job because if we lose
the jobs, we are not happy as well because there is no money to feed the family. But at the sametime, we want to have more time for family, for private life. I think with this new normal, inPage 17 of 20

terms of flexibility, in terms of – I am not talking about the adaptability of the life of the people
because we already adapt to fit with whatever has come in during the COVID-19 or right now
is around the beginning of the post COVID recovery. A lot of people already adapt theirlifestyles. But in terms of flexibility, I think we have to be flexible because we never know what
will come next, so we’ll have to be more flexible. It is not a promise that we will have to be
100% go back to office or we’re going to be more flexible as is right now. We don’t know what
will come, and we don’t even know what will be the new disease that we probably have to comeback and work from home again. No one knows. I think working people have to be more
flexible to adapt to change, and technology is something that we need to cope on and to learn
quickly.
In terms of psychological aspect, I’m not so sure whether I could answer that to you because I
am more on the finance and economic side, but I believe that that would be very important interms of looking from the corporate point of view or a managerial point of view, thatpsychological aspect will be something that plays an important role to keep the employees
happy.
Mr. Richard Licheng Liang
I will try to answer your questions one by one. First question is about the case for other countries
there are some previous slides also use other country as an example. So as far as I know, there
is one study on the firms from Bangladesh, and they used the data of Bangladesh companies,
and they showed us that – they used the Bangladesh firms in the agri industries and test data is
to find out the demand shock brought by the COVID-19 in destination countries account forthe most decline in the sales from those firms. This empirical analysis includes both the supply
and demand shock, but impacts induced by the supply side are just manageable compared to be
those found at later channel. That means the demand from the destination countries will affectthe production of those suppliers in the home country. They suggest that the firms more
dependent on Chinese imports didn’t suffer a sharp decline compared to those less dependent
on Chinese imports. So that’s to say that the firms are no matter wherever it is located, if thefirm is deeply embedded in the global value chain, then the supplier, consumer linkages will
help them to get rid of the trouble.
Another study also shows us that in international firms, they will suffer less than those domestic
firms. So international firms they can – the worldwide production network can be seen as abuffer for this shock. If the firm is located or positioned in a specific place in the whole global
value chain, then I think taking the advantage of the value chains, they can make their loss
become less. It is one channel for them to get rid of the shocks.
Another case study is from the Philippines, so actually the Philippines, they implemented very
strict lockdown policies during the COVID pandemic, but studies found that the imposition of
lockdown policies by companies will lead to a decline of the firms in the home country,
compared – so comparing to the domestic lockdown policing, the partners lockdown policies
would make more significant effects on the sales. So that’s to say the coordination of lockdown
policies is very important for the economic recovery.
Regarding your second question about any policy suggestions about how to let our community
get recovered soon. I also got my answer. In my opinion, I think the regional policy coordinationis very critical to mitigate and isolate the pandemic shock. It is important to identify the
pandemic events as early as possible so that to plan to flatten the pandemic curve at the nationaland regional level. This evidence is supported by a recent study by World Bank, whichhighlights the importance of early mitigation policies to end the pandemic shock. Because of
the pandemic and economic shocks increased significantly, several countries in the region

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experienced pandemic shocks concurrently. In that case, flattening the regional pandemic curve
becomes very important. So that’s to say, so every country they will do their best to detect the
pandemic as early as possible and then they can coordinate with each other and use someprecautionary measures to further forbid the situation becomes worse. This could be firstsuggestion from me.
Regarding your third question, it is about the tradeoff between economic recovery andlockdown policies. Let us rethink this issue. The current production networks worldwide arevery resilient. It is more resilient and stronger than we expected. So just after two quarters, all
the sales, all the production had already returned to the pre-COVID-19 level. So, you can see,
if we don’t have such kind of a strong production network, we can’t get our medical products
like mask or other medical products very soon after the hospital cost of COVID-19. So,
enhanced global production network is the necessary channel to make people healthy. Also, weneed to rely on some scientific tools like it’s better for us to boost the vaccines as much as
possible and to make people get rid of the infections. Also, governmental income supports
programs that relief programs showed they are helpful for the firms. It is nice see all thesegovernments they should – there must be some synergy between the health policies and theeconomic policies, especially during the post-COVID period. Rather to say it is a dilemma,
there is still some place a point for us to find to balance the lockdown policies and the economic
issues.
Assoc. Prof. Takyuki Kawase
My question is to anybody, Dr. Sakunasingha, Mr. Liang or Professor Kobayashi. My questionis that did COVID-19 pandemic bring about irreversible, so non-reversible change to oursociety and our sense of fairness? In my opinion, COVID-19 is just a superficial phenomenon
and never touch our deeper part of our fundamental ideas. We have never changed our basic
philosophy such as the rule of law or with the democracy, but this is my very personal opinion.
So how about your opinions?
Prof. Masaya Kobayashi
My impression is that we are moving the next stage by way of impact of pandemic. Not only
pandemic but also the recent foreign affairs including Russia-Ukraine conflict and so on, that’s
a very serious issue. So, these various impacts can or may change our original society. The
answer by the first speaker, I learned much about Thailand situation. My feeling on the matter
was a strong sense by her answer because I found out there is similarity between Japanesesituation and Thailand situation, which I might be familiar with. My feeling that if we ask thesame question to other countries – there can be similar answers. So, we can find out there is asimilar change in all the world by the impact of the corona calamity. I suppose that there canbe similar change in the future world. Obviously, this is only assumptions. I would like toexamine the change by my own research and impression by the other countries. In that sense, I
am very grateful for today’s conference now. From the second speaker’s answers, I am very
impressed by the similarity between my own opinion and the Mr. Liang’s opinion. Because I
found that his empirical research shows that Japanese stringent policy damaged the Japanese
economy. Obviously, that’s true, but until that there can be a dilemma, moral dilemma between
the two so I am impressed by his answer on foreign countries and his own opinion. In that sense,
I think that such kind of solution of the moral dilemma can have an impact in the future society
and political economy. That’s also my impression today.

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Prof. Hikari Ishido
My research topic is international economics, and then today’s topic is economy. So just briefly,
I did this kind of calculation, so export price versus import price, and then there was thisdisparity, APEC economies, African Union countries, and then EU member countries. Eachcountry is gaining or losing, and then the gap is widening. So, oil exporters are fine, mineral
resource exporters are fine, but when we have to import oils or mineral then we lose out oftrade. There is now some kind of a widening gap. Then liberal nationalism, Dr. Kawase thankyou so much for your intervention, and then I really count on your liberal nationalism because
not only nation states, but also regional or supernational institutions should contribute,intervention. Then, insight from information economics by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize
Laureate information, asymmetry, and inequality are linked up with each other. Market, ingeneral, is imperfect since the necessary information for using the market itself entails somecost. So smaller companies, disadvantage groups have to pay extra fixed cost. That’s why there
is widening inequality. So maybe information, asymmetry and inequality persist under suchcondition, so fairness concept should be important because fairness can at least secure or atleast stop increasing unnecessary cost. So, compliance, equity, ethicality, and reciprocity ifthese are observed, then unnecessary information cost will be cut back. We might be able toachieve a fairer society, if not a perfectly fair society. So that’s my final remark. Thank you somuch, I have learned greatly from today’s presenters and discussions. I would like to thank allof you. Then, I would like to ask Professor Mizushima to make closing remarks
Closing Remark (by Prof. Jiro Mizushima)
Thank you very much for our two presentations, and they are very insightful and impressive.
After hearing the lectures, I am now convinced that the world is entering a new phase. It is notclear, as we discussed, whether it is totally new or is irreversible or not. But anyway, I think in
my opinion, the history goes on as a spiral well. It is new, but it is based on the past. So, we
have to see the connection with the new and the old. It is interesting to hear that in Thailand
today is the first day of the return to normalcy. Congratulations, and probably people get happy.
I think we hope to see in the whole world the people can get together. Also, in the academic
world, I hope to see you too in person in the future. In that sense, return to normalcy is quite
nice.
But on the other hand, something has happened irreversibly so work life balance people get tothink about it. And 5 days busy commuters that will be the thing of the past, I hope. Anyway,
as Professor Sakunasingha added, life is fruitful, and life should be fruitful, I think. Thank youvery much

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