Archive for March, 2008

Management in Developing Countries

March 25, 2008 at 3:06 pm · Filed under General, Manufacturing Managment

Which is easier management in developed countries or in developing countries.

 Management in Developed countries

  • There is a common style of management and people are used to that style
  • Information about the market, competitors, labor market..etc are available
  • Highly qualified labor are available
  • Qualified suppliers
  • Very strong infrastructure (roads, transportation, …)
  • Very tough environmental requirements
  • Building trust and long term relationship based on mutual benefit is common behavior
  • Laying off is accepted to some extent
  • Competition is very high
  • It is understood that companies and their employees should do everything to satisy the customer
  • People are used to obey the law and so it is expected that they will follow the organization’s systems
  • Salaries and wages are very high
  • The effect of personal relationships and personal attitude is minor
  • Labor are encouraged to innovate
  • Most of the research on management is based on developed countries
  • e-business is used in most organizations

Management in developing countries:

  • Very different styles of management: Local which may not match the modern styles, and many foriegn styles applied in the foreign companies
  • Information are rare
  • Labor are not well trained
  • Suppliers are not aware of quality systems and delivery reliability
  • Easier environmental requirements
  • Long term relations based on trust and mutual benefit is difficult to convey
  • Firing people is not usual and thus people may feel they will never get fired regardless of what they do
  • Competition is not high
  • Since competition is not high, the customer does not get very high priority
  • People are not used to obey rules and so it is hard to get employees follow a company system of work
  • Salaries and wages are low
  • Personal relationships and personal attitude comes before organization rules
  • Labor is expected to work hard only and is not expected to innovate
  • Research on management in the developing countries is very limited
  • e-business is just starting

What does that mean?

Management in developed countries seems easier except that the environmental requirements are very tough and the competition is very high.

If you are a manger in a developing countries then have a positive thinking!

From my point of view, you should do the following: 

First, think about what you have:

  • It is easy to gain competitive advantage
  • You have access to non-expensive labor
  • competitors are not a big headache for you
  • You don’t have information and your competitor does not have information too. So, you have the same information.
  • The environmental requirements are not very expensive
  • You are not expected to be fired easily
  • Labor are not used to get respect and to be encouraged to innovate. So, think what will happen if you show them respect and encouraged them to innovate
  • There is a lot of waste in the processes so it is easy to decrease the waste
  • You and your competitors are using the same infrastructure

Second, think what you have to do differently from managers in developed countries

  • Invest in training. Trian the labor and let them train each other. Give them opportunities to training and let the trained people train the others.  You may find them after a while similar to or better than the labor in developed countries. But remember it is an investment so you have to spend on this investment.
  • Build a culture of following the organization system and be an example for that
  • Develop your supplier. Why not train your supplier? Give them free training opportunities
  • Show your supplier that they can trust you. Cooperate with them, keep your word with them
  • Cooperate with good competitors to have vertical integration if you cannot have a supplier satisfy your needs
  • Put the customer first and build a culture of customer satisfaction
  • Make sure that the salaries are reasonable compared with living expenses 
  • Think about effective ways of using e-business
  • Let yourself and your people get exposure to the best practices in the world
  • Do not compare yourself with local competitors. Compare yourself with world class competitors
  • Give your people every support and build your personal relationship with them
  • Do not believe those who says that no management practices can be conveyed from developed countries because people here are different
  • Build a culture of ethical business

Third, there are still some difficult points:

  • There are cost and effort needed for each “build, train, make” word mentioned in the previous paragraph: build culture, make relationship, train… 
  • What to do if the employees are not well paid and you can do nothing for them?
  • How to compete with companies in developed countries where infrastructure is better?
  • It is difficult to know when to change the local culture and when to follow the local culture
  • It is not easy to fire employees and so it is not so easy to control them
  • Having a boss that does not believe in new management practices may make your task impossible

Fourth, cooperate with successful organizations in your home country and try to transfer your knowledge and applications. Tell them what you did and what you couldn’t do. Tell them how you managed to apply new systems, how did you change the culture…and listen to their experiences. Talk with them about the difficult points mentioned in the previous paragraph. You will be building the “successful” style of management for this country.

Fifth, stop complaining and start doing.

Sixth, keep trying…kepp trying…at least you have done your best and you may succeed.

Leave a Comment

See what others see!

March 6, 2008 at 11:21 am · Filed under General

You cannot eyesight is limited. You cannot see a building from inside and outside at the same time. You cannot see a building from the front and the back at the same time. You cannot see the details of things that are far away from you. So what?….As a manager you see things from one side and in many cases you need to see the other sides. You need to see what they see.

Departments (islands) of the same organizations

Every manager or employee in one department of af a big organization knows aht he is doing and what others are doing around him in the same department. But when it comes to other departments, he does not know much. He knows they are doing so and so but he does not know their capabilities, their problems, their challenges, what they can do in few minutes and what they can do in hours.days …

The result is that the departments are islands and population in those islands really need some tourism in other departments. We need to understand each other. The design department should know the capabilities of the manufacturing so that the design department will not ask for impossible or very difficult/expensive processing. The IT department needs to know what other departments need and they need to know what the IT can do and cannot do. The maintenance people should see the plant from the operation view and the operation people should see it from the maintenance view. We need to see what other see.

Managers and their decisions

Managers see their decisions from their sides while employees see it from a different side. The manager takes the decision based on certain information and obviously he is biased towards his decision. The employees may not the information the manager knows and may know other information that he does not know. The employees see the decision from their side. They see the results and may feel it themselves.

The point is that the manager needs to see what employees see and sometimes need to show them what he sees. Managers need to do that before and after taking the decision. Obviously, it is not the same case for every decision but it is important for the decisions that affects the employees and the way of doing work.

The produce and the customer

The producer likes his product, of course, and he knows the details of the manufacturing and the financial data. The customer is using the product and he sees it differently. The customer knows nothing about the manufacturing and the financial data. He likes and hates certain things in the product.

The producer needs to know what the customer sees in his product. He needs these information in order to imporve the product. All the managers in the producing company needs to get information about the customer view of the product. 

The trainer and the trainees

The training knows the training material and thus he feels it is so easy. The trainer may have never heard about the training topic and so he thinks it is so difficult. The trainer may not feel tired quickly because he is talking about something he knows but the trainer gets tired because he is trying to understand new things.

The trainer needs to see things from the trainers view. He needs to know when they are tired, how do they feel, whether they understand or not.

Simply, we need to communicate, to visit each other, to listen to each other. We need to realize that we can’t see from all sides and that we need to get help from the others to see what they see.

Leave a Comment