Indonesia not producing world-class executives, says research
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Indonesia still lags behind its peers in Asia in producing talented people to fill top executive positions at multinational companies, a representative of global executive search firm SpencerStuart said.
The number of internationally trained or educated talent in Indonesia was still below that of other Asian countries, such as China, Hong Kong, India, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, Fabrice Desmarescaux, a member of the firm’s financial services practice, said yesterday.
“The output of Indonesia’s educational system has also not matched other Asian countries,” Desmarescaux said at a presentation in Jakarta.
“According to the Program for International Student Assessment [PISA] in 2009, Indonesia scored the lowest when compared to South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan,” he said.
The leadership gap could also be attributed to the limited international footprint of Indonesian companies and difficulties in finding Indonesians who want to work overseas or are qualified for jobs outside the country, Desmarescaux added.
“This shortage will be further exacerbated by fast growth in the country’s economy and the need to send some of its best talent abroad, both for training and for the development of domestic groups,” he continued.
RJ Lino, president of the Indonesian Port Corporation, disagreed with Desmarescaux, saying that the problem lay elsewhere and that many Indonesian students outperformed their counterparts from other countries, even western countries.
“Companies in Indonesia have to be more aggressive in looking for the best talent and develop these talents to become world-class executives in the future,” Lino said.
Lino said his agency had conducted a recruitment programme to identify 25 talented people from the eastern region of Indonesia.
The company would also invest around US$15 million (Bt472 million) in the next three years to develop human resources by sending its employees to universities abroad or for international training, he said.
Harold Koh, chief executive officer of Indonesia-based PT Great Giant Pineapple, said that Indonesians had great operational skills in his experience.
“However, to become a world-class corporate executive, you need people who are not only good in functional skills but also in leading and managing teams as well as making decisions,” he said.
To develop human resources at PT Great Giant Pineapple, Koh said the company had spent $2 million to build a training centre in Lampung to create talent who could someday take over his position.
