Skill formation in Southeast Asia
The Groundwork Has Been Laid
It compares Japanese companies in Japan with indigenous Thai and Malaysian firm and with Japanese companies in those countries and is thus a rarity. Its strength is that it compares the workshop practices of non-Japanese companies not influenced by Japanese methods with workshop practices in Japan.
The workshop of an indigenous Thai battery maker is the basis for a discussion of the study’s research findings. Trends revealed there were mostly shared with the other case studies. It was assumed that long-term job attachment was needed for intellectual skill formation. Workers’ responses to questions about length of service revealed astonishingly stable tenure. A Malaysian case study suggested at first glance that Malaysian workers were more mobile, but this proved true only during the first two years of employment; thereafter, Malaysian workers too, showed considerable stability.
In that most important area—dealing with change and with problems—perhaps only 1 or 2 out of 10 of the Thai workshops’ blue-collar workers could handle unusual operations. A separated system existed, but so did a recognizable trend toward an integrated system. Both blue-collar workers and quality control specialists, for example, conducted tests and dealt with defect. Moreover, workers in Thai workshops pass their expertise on to other workers in their groups. Their solutions were self-taught, not something learned in a training course. Indeed, what they knew cannot be learned in courses, especially courses run outside the company.