Global Personnel Skills: A Dilemma for the Karpin Committee and Others

The Karpin Committee's review of Australian management concluded that Australia's predominantly Anglo-Celtic senior management group has significant shortcomings that are retarding Australian enterprise in its desire to meet the challenges of the 'Asia-Pacific' century (Page xv). This paper reviews the recent progress of Australian business activity in Asia and observes that while some advances have been made, the level of activity remains below potential. A lack of 'globalisation' skills has been identified by Karpin and others as being the problem, but there is no consensus as to what these are, or how they can be achieved. 'International' knowledge and skills have been shown to be directly related to success in international business but this relationship is not well accepted among Australian managers. Tests confirm that levels of international knowledge in Australia are biased in favour of Europe. The paper concludes that language and cultural ignorance is retarding Australian business penetration of Asian markets and recommends a more strategic approach to human resource management in this area.