While the British management tradition is apparently to ruthlessly exploit workers whose only pathetic protection is a militant trade union, some Indain companies see things differently:

[...] Large [US] corporations do offer some employee training programs, but managers often discourage their workers from participating in them. Why invest in workers when there is no clear payback? After all, training requires time off, and costs the department money. And bosses fear that once their subordinates gain new skills, they will be more likely to jump ship — to a better-paying competitor. That’s the common belief.

But as lessons from the unlikeliest of places show, these assumptions are wrong. Workforce education increases productivity, decreases turnover, and leads to greater corporate growth. I was myself surprised to see this correlation when I researched the secrets of the success of Indian industry.[...]

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Japanese achieved major advances in manufacturing management, which led to their rise as an economic power. The Japanese economic miracle and the country’s new manufacturing skills and methods surprised western firms; but the Japanese had done this by studying, adopting, and eventually perfecting the best practices of the West itself.

My research team (at Harvard and Duke) found that India is achieving similar feats in workforce development by learning from the best practices of the western companies that have outsourced their computer systems and call centers there. It has adopted these practices and perfected them. Faced with severe talent shortages; escalating salaries; and a lagging education system, Indian industry had to adapt and has built innovative and comprehensive approaches to workforce training and management. Their initial focus was on training new recruits and filling entry-level skill gaps. Now, they are investing in constantly improving the skills and management abilities of their workers and in providing incentives for them to stay and to grow with the company.

We published a report titled “How the Disciple Became the Guru”, which details the workforce-development practices of 24 leading companies in India [...]

Where is the proof that these policies work?

The myth is that Indian IT companies have high turnover that is and getting worse. As the graph below shows, at a time when the Indian IT industry’s growth rates averaged a dizzying 40%, attrition rates at top Indian companies fell, or stayed in the low-teen percentages. Compare this with Silicon Valley, where a typical recruit works for a new employer for three to five years at best — which translates to a 20–33% attrition rate. (Indian IT company rates dropped even further in 2009 — not reflected in the chart).


Most interestingly: Indian companies learned that with better education, employees became more productive so they could afford to pay higher salaries without hurting corporate profit margins.

Additionally, the Indian R&D industry has been moving into the higher realms of innovation. In the aerospace industry, Indian companies are designing the interiors of luxury jets, in-flight entertainment systems, collision-control / navigation-control systems, fuel-inverting controls, and other key components of jetliners for American and European corporations. In pharmaceuticals, Indian scientists are discovering drugs and performing clinical research for nearly all of the largest multinational drug companies. In the automotive industry, Indian engineers are helping to design bodies, dashboards, and power trains for Detroit vehicle manufacturers — and creating their own innovations, such at the Tata Nano car. In telecommunications and computer networking, Indians are developing next-generation infrastructure for tomorrow’s intelligent cities. There are over a hundred thousand people in India doing this type of advanced R&D.

The Indian experience highlights what can be achieved by investing in upgrading the skills of the workforce. If workforce training can take the output of an education system as weak as India’s and turn its graduates into world-class engineers and scientists, imagine what could be done with a worker base that has received amongst the best education in the world, as is the case in the United States.

U.S. companies have long played the guru, developing and disseminating many widely adopted management and workforce practices. The time has come for the guru to learn from one of its disciples: India.

Never mind. British Aerospace and Rolls Royce will probably survive, as subcontractors making parts for Indian companies. I'm not so sure about firms like Hardcastle PLC though:

Originally Posted by roadkill

If workforce training can take the output of an education system as weak as India’s and turn its graduates into world-class engineers and scientists....

Erm. I hope the rest of the article is better researched and the evidence more solid than that one sentence.

Indian education system, when it comes to sciences, is gruesomely hard and has produced a true engineering elite... Mostly to feed its nuclear program but still... The funny thing is that talented indian engineers would try and escape to the Sillicon Valley and it has been said that it was ex-expats who started the Indian tech boom...

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Quote:

I hope the rest of the article is better researched and the evidence more solid than that one sentence.

Perhaps you missed the point of the article.

Many Indian higher education institutions are still not very good but as the cited article indicates, Indian companies see it as their job to ensure that talented employees become skilled employees.

Quote:

it has been said that it was ex-expats who started the Indian tech boom...

True indeed. Back in the 1980s I worked with several Indians who were in Australia on contract assignments. In those times, their key to success was to get a first degree from one of the better Indian universities, then a second one from Europe, or preferably the US. These were the true engineering elite back then, although Indian universities have surely improved to some degree.

One of the people I worked with moved to the US 15 years ago and is now the chairman and CEO of a successful software company. Another elected to start his company in Australia, developing a payment service competing with PayPal. In the last few months he has uprooted his team and moved to Silicon Valley because he does not see how he can build a global business from Sydney.

Originally Posted by roadkill

Perhaps you missed the point of the article.

No...

Quote:

Many Indian higher education institutions are still not very good ...

And my reply is that they are fucking fantastic. The IIT is well-renowed, and justly so, even outside of the subcontinent... So, ok, these guys are not entry-level clerks but I find it strange that the article seemed to have miss these types of institutions altogether...

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I like how it's accepted as being impossible that these ethnics could possibly develop systems of their own.

Quote:

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Japanese achieved major advances in manufacturing management, which led to their rise as an economic power. The Japanese economic miracle and the country’s new manufacturing skills and methods surprised western firms; but the Japanese had done this by studying, adopting, and eventually perfecting the best practices of the West itself.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

I like how it's accepted as being impossible that these ethnics could possibly develop systems of their own.

It depends how you look at it. You can say that the Japanese system is really totally different from the West or you can say that it is rather similar. Both comments are true, it just depends how sensitive to differences you are...

As to the criticism you make, I would disagree (i.e. agree with the article). Simply said, the West came up with capitalistic societies first. The others did not develop ones organically but usually had it imposed via colonisation. Therefore, they really had little choice but copying our systems.

Same with warfare. I would point out the obvious and say that we (the West/Europe) was very inferior to Arab/muslim culture at the times of the Crusades. And we were rather inferior to the Mayas/Incas in sciences at the time of the Conquistadores. However, we were better at warfare. And, eventually, through colonisation and decolonisation, most ethnics around the world adopted our tools and even techniques. Indians and Chinese developed nukes just like ours, not laser guns...

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I don't think Japan is capitalist, not in any way that'd mean anything to an American economics professor. But then most people don't bother to pay attention to the details "Ooh! Look at their little free market economy and democratic institutions! They've finally got rid of their backwards, ethnic ways and started following the true, white path to success. Well done there, chaps."

Remember the whole nihonteki thing in the 80s, all about how Japan was so different that you needed different socio-economic ideas to study the processes? And Bayart on Africa? They've taken a lot of stick, but really they make a good point. You can't just look at the similarities and presume that they're copying us. They breathe air too and eat food.

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Quote:

The IIT is well-renowed, and justly so, even outside of the subcontinent... So, ok, these guys are not entry-level clerks but I find it strange that the article seemed to have miss these types of institutions altogether...

Nobody denies the international standing of IIT including writer Vivek Wadhwa. He wrote:

[...] Industry pundits often tout India’s engineering-graduation rates as India’s advantage. As far back as 2002, “experts” claimed that India graduates 350,000 engineers every year. The reality is that India has a weak education system and produces far fewer engineers than is commonly believed. In 2002, it graduated 102,000 engineers. By 2006, this number had increased to 222,000 (and will be double that again, by 2011). India does have some excellent engineering schools, but at best, only half of the output of India’s engineering colleges are employable upon graduation. Yet in 2007, India’s five largest IT services companies added 120,000 engineering jobs. IBM and Accenture added 14,000 engineers each in India in the same year. That’s only seven of the hundreds of companies that hired engineers that year. Where did these engineers come from, and how is it that India’s R&D industry is booming?

My team made several trips to India during 2007 and 2008 and met the executives of dozens of leading companies to solve this puzzle. We also interviewed workers in R&D labs and reviewed the types of work they were doing. We were astonished at what we learned. [...]

Emphasis added.

I'm not sure that this problem is unique to India. In Australia I often hear executives complaining about university graduates here, that they don't know enough to be employable, and that they will only employ graduates with a couple of years experience. Australia currently suffers a severe shortage of geologists, and mining and mechanical engineers. Comparing local practice with that in India it is not hard to see why.

Originally Posted by Zichao

I don't think Japan is capitalist, not in any way that'd mean anything to an American economics professor.

I disagree but, as i said, it is just a matter of emphasis. If you decide that every difference is "a huge deal", then, sure, you can say that their form is totally different from us. If you decide that every difference is non-critical, then, it is not...

Quote:

But then most people don't bother to pay attention to the details "Ooh! Look at their little free market economy and democratic institutions! They've finally got rid of their backwards, ethnic ways and started following the true, white path to success. Well done there, chaps."

But you see? You even use the word "details". Which would me my prefered point. These differences are mere details. As to being "the true, white path to success", I get the europeano-centric criticism and OK, it might be valid in some cases but, in general, the "whites" have managed to find quite a few paths to success on their own. You could just as easily say: "I don't think Sweden is capitalist, not in any way that'd mean anything to an American economic professor". And you could replace Sweden by Germany, France or Italy and get a fairly similar result...

As you said, they eat, they sleep, they breathe air. They're sensitive to fear and greed. They really can't be that different...

Quote:

Remember the whole nihonteki thing in the 80s, all about how Japan was so different that you needed different socio-economic ideas to study the processes? And Bayart on Africa? They've taken a lot of stick, but really they make a good point. You can't just look at the similarities and presume that they're copying us.

I would be with the one giving them stick, I suspect. I just knew of the name "Bayard" so I had a quick Google and "La Politique du Ventre" doesn't describe anything massively different from what France had during the Ancient Regime. A minority occupying and/or vying for power in order to get personal rewards rather than achieve anything we now recognise as a "political objective"...

Where I would give grounds is that I am not sure they're "copying". In the case of Japan etc, they might have when it comes to technology (i.e. they were justly famed for their industrial espionage/copying techniques). When it comes to organisations, very few times in history do you find someone in position to lead the charge of changing institutions deliberately. In Japan, that's the Meiji Emperor and I don't think anyone else can say they were that deliberate since... Then, if it is not deliberate, it is just in the "shit happens" category - A mixture of what they had, what they integrated (willingly or otherwise) from abroad and the autonomous historical evolution of social forms...

But I don't think the end result is so different as to require "new theories". Supply and demand still work in Japan... It's just that they might constrain/entice them differently than we do...

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Originally Posted by roadkill

Nobody denies the international standing of IIT including writer Vivek Wadhwa. He wrote [...] Emphasis added.

I missed that bit. I stand corrected.

Quote:

I'm not sure that this problem is unique to India. In Australia I often hear executives complaining about university graduates here, that they don't know enough to be employable, and that they will only employ graduates with a couple of years experience. Australia currently suffers a severe shortage of geologists, and mining and mechanical engineers. Comparing local practice with that in India it is not hard to see why.

Yep. French companies proceed like Australian ones. It's not like we got shortage or that graduates are unemployable but, well, a graduate is always going to be a bit green and naive around the edges. Two years experience can only help. So French companies like their new employees to have 2 years experience in the same job they want you to do. But not more. Coz, after, you start having to pay them more for experience...

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