Five To One
Daniel, my Korean friend who works for Samsung, picked me up at the airport last week and we talked about doing business in India. He made an interesting observation on the differences of the two countries.
“In Korea,” he said, “employees do everything as it relates to a service project. If it’s a television or washing machine, the employee writes the contract, sets up the operation of the product, receives the payment and writes the receipt. Here it seems that it takes five people to do the same the work.”
I told him I thought that part of the reason is a throwback from the caste system. I remember many years ago a director of school was building a dormitory. Pressed for time, he asked the carpenters who were hanging the doors, to paint them as well and he would gladly pay them extra.
“Oh we can’t possibly do that,” they replied. “You will have to find painters to do that job.”
I realize that caste is not all of the reasons why it takes five people to do a job that one person in Korea does. However, in societies where it is highly bureaucratic, such as Communism in the days of the Soviet Union, the distribution of labor is indeed community based. Family businesses in India, labor unions in France, are all systems to “guarantee” employment. It’s not an issue of efficiency as much as it is a social responsibility. Older people in Bulgaria pine for the days of Communistic rule where everybody was assured employment and the all-important pension when they retired. It didn’t matter that the economy was in shambles, community shared equally, even though under that system everyone was equally poor.
Individualism, free-market economy, is the survival of the fittest system. Competition is the name of the game, even in the corporate world. India is changing and those companies that are emerging as leaders are those who are throwing off the structures of hierarchy for a more collective but competitive approach. Can a company become efficient without destroying the community consciousness as well? Time will tell. But until that time comes, those working in countries that are emerging must learn the rules of the culture and not be too critical of those who see the TASK secondary to the RELATIONSHIP of the community.
“In Korea,” he said, “employees do everything as it relates to a service project. If it’s a television or washing machine, the employee writes the contract, sets up the operation of the product, receives the payment and writes the receipt. Here it seems that it takes five people to do the same the work.”
I told him I thought that part of the reason is a throwback from the caste system. I remember many years ago a director of school was building a dormitory. Pressed for time, he asked the carpenters who were hanging the doors, to paint them as well and he would gladly pay them extra.
“Oh we can’t possibly do that,” they replied. “You will have to find painters to do that job.”
I realize that caste is not all of the reasons why it takes five people to do a job that one person in Korea does. However, in societies where it is highly bureaucratic, such as Communism in the days of the Soviet Union, the distribution of labor is indeed community based. Family businesses in India, labor unions in France, are all systems to “guarantee” employment. It’s not an issue of efficiency as much as it is a social responsibility. Older people in Bulgaria pine for the days of Communistic rule where everybody was assured employment and the all-important pension when they retired. It didn’t matter that the economy was in shambles, community shared equally, even though under that system everyone was equally poor.
Individualism, free-market economy, is the survival of the fittest system. Competition is the name of the game, even in the corporate world. India is changing and those companies that are emerging as leaders are those who are throwing off the structures of hierarchy for a more collective but competitive approach. Can a company become efficient without destroying the community consciousness as well? Time will tell. But until that time comes, those working in countries that are emerging must learn the rules of the culture and not be too critical of those who see the TASK secondary to the RELATIONSHIP of the community.
posted by RG Lewis at 12:05 PM
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