6 posts tagged “international”

American Small Business linked me to CSM, the ezine for Customer Service Professionals. They have an international look at customer complaints. Among the information covered is that the Swedish are the most likely to complain and the Taiwanese the least likely. Another point made is ". . . across the world those who make customer service complaints tend to be wealthier and better educated. This is probably because they consume more, they know what they want, and they aren’t prepared to settle for second rate service." 

Some of the major concerns businesses face in a developing nation have to include these elements. Malnutrition, in addition to the huge costs it has on society from a medical standpoint, cascades throughout the society in terms of people who will not be able to hold a job in a country depending on manual labor for its economic base - and that is what developing countries require. They do not need massive factories using CAD/CAM systems, they need to put people, a lot of them, to work. The cascading effects adds to the physical problems because some have had so little brain nutrition that they may be untrainable for relatively simple tasks. Here is a good look at this topic from the New York Times. I recollect a WHO study on the stunting effects of sugar on mental development from a long time ago concerning the poor children of Mexico saying, essntially, that after so many years of sugar-based diets, the children's lack of mental development would make them untrainable except for the lowest of low-skilled jobs. Need to find that one again. 

AdPulp has a short bit based on a five-page rant at Network World on IBM's handling of remote workers and the problems that occurred because of the lack of socialization and communications that naturally occur in such situations.  I replied thusly: Funny, International Business 101 has taught for years and years that the more remote a site and the more disparate the local culture is from the worker's norm, the more essential it is that communications between units be amped up. Not only that, if it cannot be accomplished asynchronously, then you should do a good part of that communications in their time frame, not just the HQs.  

Harvard's Working Knowledge publishes an interview with global strategist Pankaj Ghemawat who said, "It is widely believed that globally standardized product varieties are displacing locally customized ones in many product categories. But there is actually no systematic evidence on this subject." Later, he said, "Overall, the analysis suggests that the global standardization hypothesis has considerably less momentum than the juggernaut that it is sometimes portrayed as." Goes right into the face of common wisdom. 

The US dollar has tumbled against the Euro and the British pound and that can hurt. The Washington Post (via MSNBC) says cokes have hit $6.50 and more, $25 for a dessert, $5 for an espresso (ouch). The painful read is here. 

This project which should get underway with computer distribution in mid-2007 has its pros and cons. The concept was to get computers into the hands of children in developing countries to better educate them as a better educated population is supposedly good for the economy (let's not go to the old joke about PhDs in India pumping gas, okay?).  The New York Times writes about both sides of the issue, one says detractors are focusing on the tool rather than the outcomes; the other that because something works here is not necessarily proof that it will work there. Here's a summary of the quotes:

Nicholas Negroponte, a prominent computer researcher: “It’s as if people spent all of their attention focusing on Columbus’s boat and not on where he was going,” he said in an interview here. “You have to remember that what this is about is education.”

Seymour Papert, a computer scientist and educator who is an adviser to the project, has argued that if young people are given computers and allowed to explore, they will “learn how to learn.” That, Mr. Papert argues, is a more valuable skill than traditional teaching strategies that focus on memorization and testing.

“We believe you have to leverage the kids themselves,” Ms. (Mary Lou)  Jepsen (project engineer) said. “They’re learning machines.”

Larry Cuban, Stanford University, said in an interview. “However, if part of their rationale is that it will revolutionize education in various countries, I don’t think it will happen, and they are naïve and innocent about the reality of formal schooling.”

Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman and a leading philanthropist for the third world, has questioned whether the concept is “just taking what we do in the rich world” and assuming that that is something good for the developing world, too.

Okay, what do you think?