The Hindu Business Line : Will the rise of India and China spur US?

There is one thing impossible for any company to move overseas, and difficult for other nations to duplicate, writes Robyn Meredith in The Elephant and the Dragon.

For the professionals’ shelf — R. Shivaji Rao

India and China are transforming the globe, as stunningly as the US did when it emerged onto the world economic stage, writes Robyn Meredith in The Elephant and the Dragon ( www.vivagroupindia.com ). She sees the impact of the transformation in varied places: The falling prices on Wal-Mart’s shelves, the rising gas prices, the shrinking paycheques in the developed world, the voices on the end of tech-support phone calls, and even in the air we breathe. Also, “It is noticeable from the way freighters float low in the waters of the South China Sea because they are so heavily loaded with goods flowing out of new Chinese factories.”

The two countries are as opposite as Gandhi and Mao, observes the author. “India’s slow-but-steady approach contrasts with China’s rocketlike rise.” While China’s strengths are in full display, many of India’s are less visible, she notes. “When China closed its colleges during the Cultural Revolution, India nurtured its universities, educating a generation of doctors, scholars, scientists, and engineers. While China persecuted capitalists, Indian managers gained experience by battling it out in local markets, and its businesses are better run than China’s today.”

Most importantly, India’s invisible human infrastructure is the nation’s mighty resource now that it has reconnected to the global economy, says Meredith. She finds ‘private jets landing in dusty Indian airports, carrying powerful CEOs and corporate board members from some of the world’s biggest companies,’ on a visit to check out the offices already opened to tackle offshored work.

“Offshored work is cheap and, as ossified back-office processes are taken over by hyperefficient back-office specialists, also more effective… Sometimes big companies don’t even know where their phones are answered or their computers are programmed. As long as the work is high in quality and low in cost, why should companies care?”

So, what’s next for Americans, wonders the author in the concluding chapter. She cites Alan Binder’s view that the US should now concentrate on careers that cannot be moved offshore — ‘on jobs that require one to be in the same city as one’s work’.

There is one thing impossible for any company to move overseas, and difficult for other nations to duplicate, declares Meredith: “America’s essentially scrappy culture of thinking of, funding, and bringing to market new ideas and ventures — its people’s inventive, can-do mind-set.”

Let the rise of India and China be a catalyst to re-establish America’s competitiveness, she wishes, extolling the US as ‘the world’s largest, strongest, most resilient economy by a good measure’.

Fond wishes?
Cultural globalisation

Marwan M. Kraidy captures ‘the spirit of the times with its obligatory celebration of cultural difference and fusion’ in Hybridity ( www.pearsoned.co.in), a book that resonates with ‘the globalisation mantra of unfettered economic exchanges’.

Trend to blend is upon us, what with hybridity present everywhere — ‘multipurpose electronic gadgets, designer agricultural seeds, environment-friendly cars with dual combustion and electrical engines, companies that blend American and Japanese management practices, multiracial people, dual citizens, and postcolonial cultures’.

The author explains how hybridity is at the centre of notions such as: “that cultural homogeneity and Western cultural dominance are myths, that there is a cultural counterflow from the non-West to the West, that global free trade is beneficial to all participants in it, and that individual creativity and freedom explain global cultural success.”

The well-researched book takes one through scholarly thoughts such as this ‘cardinal argument’: “The congregation of postcultural imperialism approaches to international communication and culture, which first emerged under the banner of audience activity and can now be identified by the cultural pluralism or cultural globalisation rubrics, have been either unwilling or unable to focus at once on the discursive and textual aspects of international communication while at the same time emphasising material structure…”
Neglect, the first trap

If you are feeling trapped, Robert J. Herbold offers help in Seduced by Success ( www.tatamcgrawhill.com). Success is a serious business vulnerability, he cautions. “It can destroy an organisation’s or an individual’s ability to understand the need for change and can also destroy the motivation to creatively attack the status quo.”

Herbold, a former COO of Microsoft, identifies nine traps of winning, beginning with ‘neglect, caused by sticking with yesterday’s business model’.

Look, therefore, at what you did and how you did things to locate weak areas that need overhauling; areas that are ‘out of date, too costly, too slow or not flexible’.

The second trap is pride, which leads to your products becoming outdated. “You may be super proud of your product or service today, but you have to assume that it is going to become inferior to the competition very soon.”

Beware: “the amasing thing about success is that it leads to a subconscious entitlement mentality that causes you to believe that you no longer need to do all the dirty work of getting out and studying consumer behaviour in detail, analysing different sales approaches, jumping on the latest technology to generate improved products, and everything else that is required to stay ahead.”

A must-read, if you want to stay ahead!
Paradoxes aplenty

Can global citizenship and the effects of root cultures exist simultaneously? Can cultures change quickly? How can knowing the language of another culture be a disadvantage? Is the Internet integrating the world or creating wide differences? How can the expat manager resolve the conflict between contradictory demands of the home office and the host-culture subsidiary? Why do veteran international negotiators from one national culture frequently complain that their counterparts from a dissimilar national culture are simultaneously very sincere and very deceptive? Is China a very large or a very small market? Can accounting and financial systems of companies and financial institutions be standardised throughout the world? Is it possible to create and operate an airplane-based metropolis (the aerotropolis) for efficient global logistics and transportation?

To these and more questions find answers in the crisp discussions that Martin J. Gannon provides in Paradoxes of Culture and Globalization ( www.sagepublications.com).
From red to green

The old idea was that supply chain is red ink to business, a necessary evil that cost in dead storage.

“The supply chain is now seen as a strategic advantage when practised well. In fact, IBM and a host of other successful companies see logistics and the supply chain as the core means of competition in the twenty-first century,” writes Robert A. Malone in Chain Reaction ( www.kaplanpublishing.com).

“It is no longer a competition between companies — the true competition is between their supply chains,” declares the book’s dust jacket.

But how does supply chain turn into green ink? By seeing the customer as the driving force, explains the author.

“Customers are fickle. They change their buying habits. They want options. Rather than simply wanting an item, they want better treatment, and they want things delivered on time and in good condition.” Recognising this, the coordination of logistics now takes a turn toward ‘information systems, EDI, faxing, and dedicated phones’. We need, therefore, to move away from a reactive response to need, toward an interactive and continuously intelligent response to need, urges Malone. “Our best bet is an organic model that is capable of immediate and intelligent feedback and correction or enhancement.”

Compelling and coherent.
Shifting services

With the Internet as a natural delivery platform for consumer products and business services, the edge between what is a personal service for a consumer and what is a business service is starting to blur, state Mark Kobayashi-Hillary and Richard Sykes in Global Services ( www.bcs.org ). “With KPO the possibilities are endless. Once highly valuable skilled tasks requiring domain knowledge and decision making are outsourced then we will know that almost anything can be.”

Harking back to good old times, the authors narrate how the cobbler of yore who made and repaired shoes for others in the village could never have imagined that anyone would travel elsewhere to buy shoes. “Now the Internet offers you access to shoe producers in Milan, Maine or Mancheter (and Madras?) — at no additional cost. If you need a document translated, if you need a report to be written, if you need some research or analysis to be undertaken, if you need a patent to be written and filed, then you can now find the best person or company in the world to perform the service…”

Life moves pretty fast, reminds the book. “Enjoy what you are doing now, because tomorrow the rules will change.”

D. MURALI
http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

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