RI lacks world-class executives: Search firm

Indonesia still lags behind its peers in Asia in producing talented people to fill the top executive positions at world-class companies, a representative of global executive search firm SpencerStuart has 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 on Thursday.

“The output of Indonesia’s educational system has also not matched other Asian countries,” Desmarescaux said at a presentation during a business luncheon held by consulting firm AT Kearney 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.”

The leadership gap could also be attributed to the limited international footprint of Indonesian companies and difficulties in finding Indonesians who wanted to work abroad or were qualified to work aboard, 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,” Desmarescaux argued.

Indonesian Port Corporation’s (IPC) president director RJ Lino 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 talents and develop the talents to become world-class executives in the future,” Lino said.

Lino said that the IPC conducted a recruitment program to identify 25 talented people from the eastern region of Indonesia.

The company would also invest around US$15 million in the next three years to develop human resources by sending its employees to the best universities abroad or for international training, he said.

Harold Koh, the chief executive officer of Indonesia-based PT Great Giant Pineapple that Indonesians had fantastic 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,” Koh said.

To develop human resources at PT Great Giant Pineapple, Koh said that the company had spent $2 million to build a training center in Lampung to create world-class talent who someday could take over his position.

— JP/Rangga D. Fadillah