Stress and Asian Managers: Biggest Performance Crack

STRESS and Asian Managers: Biggest Performance crack

1.0 Centennial Shift towards Asian Market:

It is a vital fact that by the turn of 20th century the corporate world came across a drastic shift with reference to the placement of their Research products in Asian Market. China emerged towering from centuries old sleep and started capturing the niche markets all available and full of price conscious and Quality Non conscious customers and till date the success saga of Chinese products in specific area has been continuing with the same pace. Most of the worldwide renowned giant brand names drew quick strategies to counter this situation and there was no other way out to counter flood of Chinese products rather than reduce the shelf price of the same category products and it was next to impossible without reducing the operating cost involved in Manufacturing of these items.

It was the time when most of the big names turned their back towards their mother countries and started huge financial investments in Asian countries, especially, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. There were some branded manufactures of Sports, Garments, Toys, Shoes and other products in these countries but the true sense of making these countries as a manufacturing hub appeared well in the very beginning of 20th century. Not to hold here, big Multinational food chains like McDonalds, Kentucky, Subway, Pizza Hut etc started their broad operations in these countries and shared the profitable pie.

2.0 Reasons and Perspective:

There were two core reasons of this very strategy as:

[1] To reduce the manufacturing cost of the widely in-demand brands

[2] To increase the sales in volumes by decreasing the products price

The strategy was well received as shift of industrial technology not only provided extensive job openings to local technocrats but also opened the opportunity to customers of many medium to low income classed customers to buy reputed brands without paying the premium cost.

The direct foreign investment (DFI) gave a sigh of relief to the governments of these countries vis-à-vis a white face to establish their political footings by proclaiming that they were the ones who brought these chances to the soil for dear natives and till now, most of the Asian Governments use the same as the most powerful slogans for their election campaigns.

3.0 Service Industry's Initiatives:

In the very right perspective of the moves taken by the manufacturing industry, the service industry even came up with a wide brand and bunch of new ideas that were all virgin for these markets as Call Centres, Huge Departmental Stores, 24 Hours Convenience Stores etc. The notion was quiet old for established European Markets but it was a whole new world for Asians and these ventures were well received with definite success stories. They even created wide spread opportunities for employment of hundreds of thousands of youth and provide up front openings to the customers to enjoy the new concept of shopping in a cozy, comfortable and close ambience without adding any cost on their part.

4.0 In the Line of Fire:

All that have been explained earlier seems like a fairy tale, the tale which possesses blushing colors and charming characters BUT the tragic turn appeared so fast, especially for those who were brought forward to face the band of bullets without anything in their hands to save themselves.

What exactly happened that every new manufacturing plant installed with the help of Foreign investment by joining hands with local partners was installed, erected, managed and operated [trial production] by the qualified Engineers and technicians who were brought to play their part by the investors. They did the job by keeping their local [Asian] counterparts with them and once they were finished the job was handed over to the said counterparts who started functioning the same on the same given lines without any problem and every such operation appeared successful.

Same was the story with the service industry, as the concept moved in, the experts dropped in and did the job and once they were over the same handed over to the local counter parts and everything has been going on the same smooth track since then.

It was a good fix for technical Asian brigade as they not only learned the new technology and enhanced their operational visions but also felt pleased to work on these assignment with a great sense of job satisfaction.

5.0 The Poor Fellows:

There was a big question mark could be seen on the forehead of every such new project [ manufacturing and services] and that was the continuous MANAGEMENT of the same, soon after the departures of God Fathers. Here came, the Asian Managers, these fellows were the breed of those individuals who gained their due Managerial and Administrative qualification in local graduate schools, { some of them were graduated from the Foreign schools but very few as most of them accommodated themselves in those countries from where they passed } and the prima fascia of the received knowledge was theoretical most of the time. The focused mode of teaching is lectures and listening, they are taught by those who have had been teaching intricate and complex Management theories without even taking the pain of having these theories practiced ever by themselves. The teachers have no exposure to the corporate world and they are all unaware of the setting and change in the price policy of a newly launched product/service and about the factors should be/should not be considered in this course but they have been teaching Marketing for decades. " It came to me as a surprise when I saw that most of these teachers at Graduate schools in Prime Pakistani and Asian Universities are full time faculty members and have no experience of ever working in any corporate setup, what they were teaching was nothing but mere theories and they were all busy in graduating hundred and hundred of students every years, in most of the Asian countries, the situation is same and if you find any shining young Manager then mark him as an exception but exception cannot make the rules" (1)

It was and is a reality that cannot be overlooked and the result of this is that the outcome of these graduate schools is highly unaccepted for Top slots as they are not good decision makers and above all seemed under immense stress owing to lack