天马行空的Jussi

 Abstract: IPOs are playing increasingly important roles to SECL’s development, betterment advices can be many if we look at this issue from different perspectives.  From the human resource management point of view, the question of “how to maximize IPOs’ roles and effectiveness?” can be simply translated into ‘how to motivate the local staff and make them work in the most efficient way?” After studying the motivation cases in some China based MNC IPOs, I suggest Samsung strengthen the motivation to IPO foreign staff as follows:

1.      Empowerment to local staff to increase their sense of self-actualization

2.      Enrich the nature of their job to increase their sense of achievements.

3.      Consolidate the connections constructively to increase their sense of belonging.

     International Procurement Offices(hereinafter refers to as IPOs) are mushrooming around the world in recent years, which is especially a case with those Multi-National Corporations(MNCs).  Strategically speaking, to make full use of comparative advantages,  most of IPOs are located among those newly emerged economies such as China, India, Brazil, and Russia etc, one common characteristic in these regions is low cost, either in terms of labor rate or in terms of raw material and public utility cost. Another reason for setting up IPOs lies in seeking for advantaged geographical convenience to secure the delivery efficiency, where most of projects are under execution, say, the Middle East Region.

     Let’s take a look at IPOs’ roles, the major sphere of duties of IPOs consists of market trend study, material cost analysis, competitor development intelligence collection,  vendor sourcing, capability assessment, quality audit, contract negotiation and contract performing etc… Therefore these features call for a localization of IPOs staffing, undoubtedly, these local staff are much more familiar with local culture, custom, environment and business practices than any foreigners. So, from the human resource management point of view, the question of “how to maximize IPOs’ roles and effectiveness?” can be simply translated into ‘how to motivate the local staff and make them work in the most efficient way?”.

     Given that my Chinese background, I would like to take those China based MNCs’ IPOs to exemplify how motivation of local staff works.

     Empowerment has been commonalized among the Chinese offices of Foster Wheeler, Linde, Bechtel, Amec, CTCI and  Air Product etc, after 2-3 years knowledge transfer, on average, 90% of staffing localization(even including the IPOs managers in some cases such as AP) has been achieved, most of local IPOs are delegated to full degree to make their own decisions when dealing with local vendors, Bechtel for instance,  home office normally provides assistance when at request and thus allow the IPO people to exert their expertise within their own territory. Despite that the home office can’t afford giving up the overlooking function, very often they play down their own roles to show their respect and trust to the local staff leadership, which, in my opinion, is a major driver of boosting the confidence and efficiency for local staff.

     Job enrichment is another influential factor with these big names, for example, in FW and CTCI, local staff normally are allowed to get involved into a project execution from the very beginning stage, thus to get a clear picture of the whole plan, not just partial, by doing so, local staff can better understand where their IPOs can come into this project and how. Their duties have been diversified by including developing market intelligence and eligible vendors for a specific project, PQ evaluation, inquiry, bid evaluation, P.O. placement, expediting, in-process inspection, acceptance test, shipment and till final P.O. close-out. On one hand, this has reduced their monotonity feeling that would have generated from a monotonous function, and on other hand, when going through all these process, people just feel their values being utilized to the biggest extent, this is conducive to satisfying their sense of achievement.

     Last but not least, sense of belonging plays a vital role as well. Organizational behavior theory tells us that not only the needs of safety can be met but also when the team member believes himself or herself well belonged to the organization, he or she can even generate higher productivity than normal level. As we know, administratively, IPOs are attached to the procurement department at home offices, but geographical distance and time difference often make local staff inconvenient to conduct sufficient communication with home partners. To increase the cognization of corporate identity, in the above mentioned Linde China Office, online team building via efficient intranet work is a required step, periodic teleconference has outplayed the risk of psychological alienation that would have arisen from lack of mutual cares and concerns.  Apart from this, its Chinese staff are frequently invited either to attend some big events or to receive some training programs held at German headquarter. In Amec, there is also an international supply chain management team serving as the major institution and channel pulling and distributing relevant information between its IPOs and home office. So, routine and real time communication is really an effective way to keep its Chinese IPO staff feel belonged to the home office. Still in Linde, a Chinese culture education to home staff at IPO has been said to increase Chinese staff’s affinity to home organization.

     Back to the question- how to motivate the IPO staff and make them work in the most efficient way? To sum up, I would like to suggest our company-Samsung Engineering strengthen the motivation to our people from the following three aspects:

1.      Empowerment to local staff to increase their sense of self-actualization

2.      Enrich the nature of their job to increase their sense of achievements.

3.      Consolidate the connections constructively to increase their sense of belonging.