In China, this knowledge vacuum is more acute because profit-oriented commerce has been in limited practice here only over the past decade, and IT professionals haven't had time to absorb the concept, nor have they been exposed to Western business practices and models, Tseng explains. The lack of business knowledge shows up in a number of ways, including problem solving. When Ford's Shanghai Fudian Automotive Electronics Co. Ltd. factory opened earlier this year, the mass bootup of PCs at the start of the day caused a power surge and a protracted system freeze. The local IT staff's inclination was to prevent the freeze rather than find and fix the root of the problem. Their solution was to phase in users' bootups throughout the early morning to avoid a surge.
Project management is another skill that is still developing in the East.
Even IBM, with its American IT cachet, has positions for project leaders it can't fill. Training your own staff in such disciplines is one way to fill the knowledge gap, Chow says, but he worries that this takes time and could delay IT and business initiatives. In comparison, line workers and office support employees are required to receive only 40 hours of training. For its Chinese IT staffers, the company's Motorola University training program can include trips to Singapore, Australia and sometimes the United States, a strong recruiting incentive. The downside of such incentives is that a company risks government displeasure if it sways from established guidelines for training employees abroad.