There is no alternative but to proceed with liberalization, and not only
to proceed, but to proceed faster. Because the faster an economy goes on shore, so as to
speak, “??”, the faster that it would be out of the economic turmoil. What is
really needed in Asia is institution building. Having a strong lead in this area, Hong
Kong should have an unadulterated self-interest to push liberalisation as hard as it can.
- Hong Kong as the world's most open economy has no choice but to be
at the forefront of liberalization, and to take up the challenge of global competition. It
should adopt pro-competition regulations and back away from unnecessary regulations which
hurt Hong Kong's competitiveness.
- Although liberalisation is important, attention should also be
paid to domestic stability. It is a legitimate concern especially for developing countries
which do not have sufficiently strong institutional infrastructure to withstand the full
impact of liberalization. What is needed is not a slogan about liberalization but an
optimum time-table of liberalization, taken into consideration domestic stability.
- Hong Kong should not blindly follow liberalization without due
regard to stability. Non-intervention is not the excuse for not providing strategic
thinking, vision, and guidance.
- The biggest threat at the moment is portfolio investment around
the world, giving rise to highly volatile financial and foreign exchange markets. This is
very detrimental to foreign direct investment, and very hard for the honest traders to
make a profit.
- While it is agreed that too rapid liberalization can cause
instability, the ultimate protection that one has to the forces of financial flows is a
very strong institution and domestic market that must be built. While one should not push
too fast, one also does not want to see short term arguments of stability being used to
slow down liberalization. The question is the time line. There should be a very carefully
thought-out time line.
- Any sign of turning back the liberalization process will be
totally disastrous.
- While the need for stability is acknowledge, the practical reality
is that the GATT and the WTO has never moved too quickly on trade liberalization to the
detriment of domestic stability.
- Continual liberalization in the opening up of markets for trade
and investment is crucial to the development of competition both in Hong Kong and the rest
of the region.
Multilateral negotiations
- Hong Kong government has been advocating in the WTO the
examination of the inter-relationship between trade policies and investment policies
because it sees the two impinging upon each other. Being an observer of the negotiating
group, Hong Kong government will actively monitor the progress of the multilateral
investment agreement currently being negotiated in the OECD.
- The financial practitioners, the financial houses, the banks, the
insurance companies and the security companies in Hong Kong should take advantage of the
WTO agreement on financial services to go overseas to crack open the market, and to tap
the huge market potential that exists in many of the other economies in the world.
- The WTO would commence another round of negotiations for trade and
services in the year 2000. Hong Kong will continue to participate extremely actively in
that round of negotiations. Government needs the business sector to tell them how business
wants government to negotiate in the WTO and in APEC. Government does not have the market
information at their fingertips. The private sector should tell the government what
problems they are encountering in trade, what sort of market barriers are being put in
front of them, whether these market barriers are tariff-related or non-tariff-related.
- Government will consult with the relevant trade associations,
chambers of commerce, sectoral organizations in Hong Kong on multilateral trade policy,
including through such bodies as the APEC Business Advisory Council, the ABAC, the
committee on Hong Kong Pacific Economic Conference, the Hong Kong committee of the Pacific
Basin Economic Council.
- With the WTO Agreement on liberalization of financial services,
Hong Kong Government would probably come under pressure to review the one branch policy
for the banks.
- China provides the largest potential market for the distributive
trades. This is the time to ask China to open up their market to Hong Kong companies by
allowing Hong Kong companies to import and distribute products made in China and from
abroad.
Competition
- The world is entering very intense global competition which is
pushing down profit rates and as a result, interest rates as well.
- There will be less room for discrimination for gender and age, the
gap between male and female in terms of income having actually come down globally.
Competition is making it less viable for firms to discriminate.
- The greatest threat against liberalization and competition lies
with misguided policies of government, such as equal opportunity regulation and the recent
initiative to enforce teaching in the mother-tongue language. There is thus no need for
example for government to enforce so called equal opportunity, based on gender and age.
The Equal Opportunities Commission should be disbanded. We should allow competition and
the market to discipline those firms which discriminate.
- Effective competition policy must allow free entry into markets.
Market participants must be free to advertise factual information. This means that the
current ban against the medical and legal professions, advertising prices and scope of
service is anit-competition and should be lifted.
- Government is inconsistent in that the VTC is a fully funded
training institution yet the HKPC which is also subsidised by government competes with the
private service providers unfairly. The government should be aware that many activities of
the HKPC and the VTC (in competing with the private sector training service providers for
government service contracts and training budgets from private sector companies) have
exactly the opposite effect to the stated policy of offering support to the service
industries.
- Liberalisation should not be restricted to external competition
and trade. In order to ensure Hong Kong will provide the best and the most efficient
services, internal competition should be encouraged. Services such as performing arts,
entertainment events, conventions and exhibitions have great potential in the generation
of additional business receipts and value-added contribution to Hong Kong. Any barriers to
the growth of these growing sectors should be eliminated to encourage internal
competition. This is particularly relevant in terms of the access to, provision, ownership
and management of venues and facilities. The Government should review the current policies
on the provision of these facilities and the access to them, and to assess if a market
based competitive environment is in place.
Non-traded sectors
- A number of the non-tradeable service sectors are very
monopolistic in nature. The suppliers tend to have some sort of advantages such as
location advantages or consumer preferences. This may be anti-competition as prices may be
increased regardless of what's really happening.
- For most non-tradable sectors in the commercial world today, there
is little difficulty in terms of market accessibility or market contestability, thus it is
difficult to argue that they are enjoying monopolistic profits.
- The education sector is also a non-traded sector in Hong Kong, but
there is no reason why it should be so. Why should the education sector be dominated by
either the Government or by subvented organizations? Why can't there be more private
quality institutions in Hong Kong? The same goes for the medical sector in Hong Kong where
some 95% of all the medical services provided rest in the public sector. More thoughts
should be given to these areas.
- Community, personal and domestic services account for a
substantial part of the local services sector and they grow consistently over time in a
very stable manner. And yet the government's part is domineering, such as in education,
medical and health services where market forces don't play a lot. As Hong Kong moves more
and more towards a services center, it would want more and more company headquarters to be
established in Hong Kong to manage their business empires in the world. To keep the
entrepreneurs here, Hong Kong should ensure that it has a good quality of life, in terms
of schools, medical services, cultural life, environment and so on. These are the sectors
that still has to reap the benefits of liberalisation. More attention should be paid to
liberalization in these sectors rather than just in business or financial services.
- The non-traded sectors of education and healthcare are mostly in
the hand of the government. But established practices can be challenged and there should
be a debate on how to make these sectors more productive, how to make the community wholly
competitive in every aspect of life.
- Government subsidises education but the question is where the
subsidy should go. Instead of going to the teachers, it could be given to the parents so
that the latter could decide where and how their children are to be educated – thus
letting market forces work.
Competitiveness
- Two key ingredients of Hong Kong's competitiveness which require
more attention and which TDC is focusing its attention on are, respectively, the small and
medium sized enterprises and China. On the latter point, a great potential exists
especially in the modernization of state owned enterprises.
- Hong Kong is not ready for delinking the peg, but it does not mean
the fixed exchange rate would be maintained forever. The currency system should be
adjusted at a certain time.
- Competitive devaluation of the Hong Kong currency is not the
solution to competitiveness. Hong Kong's competitiveness lies ultimately in a better
quality workforce. At the end of the day, competitiveness is determined by the quality of
human capital, by their ability to add value.
- Costs should be controlled but that's not enough. Given that cost
is relatively high, Hong Kong has to find ways to compete and those who are looking
creatively at ways to provide value added will be the more competitive. As a high cost
economy Hong Kong needs to think about how it can provide a package of products and
services which contain factors other than price that allows Hong Kong to be competitive -
something that defines Hong Kong as offering a service and product which cannot be
compared on a direct basis in a price comparison.
- There should be a re-linking to a basket of currencies rather than
just linking with the US dollar, in the fullness of time. Let the interest rate come down
to a reasonable level and then let the currency depreciate as much as the market would
carry.
- Hong Kong based Indian businessmen are concerned about
government's assurance and re-assurance of maintaining the peg. They want to know how
serious is the government's promise and how long the peg will be sustained.
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The
Information Revolution
Applications
- There is considerable progress in increasing the stock of physical
information infrastructure, but the reverse is true for applications. There will be very
real possibilities of there being several orders of magnitude expansion of computing power
in the next decade or so. Hong Kong needs to have some coordinated thinking on how to take
advantage of this explosion of computer power.
- Information technology should be properly utilized to deliver
pertinent – not irrelevant - information to users. It is important to know people's
needs in order to respond to them in a direct way.
- We have a large computerized sea port and air cargo handling port.
However, computer does not control our land transport. To make the cargo delivery more
efficient, a land-sea-air transport integrated control system should be developed.
- Companies are competing not just by price and quality but also
speed and efficiency. The latter depends critically on IT, e.g. the application of IT in
EDI, bar-coding and scanning to enable speed sourcing and replenishment sourcing in supply
chain management.
- The telecom business is dominated by big players but SMEs should
be encouraged to play a greater role.
- The area where the exploitation of IT in Hong Kong is weakest is
in the government itself. There is practically zero automation among government
departments and government services. Government should be properly automated. This will
reduce the number of employees, probably by about 30%. There would inevitably be
resistance from civil servants but government must face up to this challenge.
- Information technology will bring about fundamental revolution in
the ways services are provided in the tourism industries. This is particularly significant
in view of the recent global trend of the product providers (hotels, airlines and
entertainment business) adopting a direct customer-oriented marketing approach to obtain
business, as against the traditional dependence on intermediaries (travel agents). IT will
play a critical role in the structural changes in the tourism industry. In the development
of an IT strategy for the industry, these issues should be considered in full.
Infrastructure and standards
- Instead of the traditional PC, the television could be used as the
access device. To achieve this, the telecom network operator would need to move the
computing power from the home device to the network, thereby avoiding complicated and
costly electronics owned by the users.
- The telecom operators would have to develop and to provide an
intelligent and high speed and uncongested networking infrastructure for the IT market.
The telecom industry therefore needs to urgently accelerate the development of an
alternate network for IT.
- Equally important is standardization interconnection between
equipment and network as well as among various public networks.
- The government should carry out deregulation in terms of forcing
all networks to be inter-connectable and inter-operable.
- Automatic language recognition enables us to talk to the computer
or the television without using the keyboard for entry. Such innovation has to be tailored
for our bilingual requirement here in Hong Kong. This is a great opportunity for us to
find solutions there.
- Although the telecom network is very advanced, IT means more than
telecom. When one looks at other areas such as software, quite a lot of works need to be
done.
Computer and IT education
- For Hong Kong to develop into a world class information society,
Hong Kong's education system must be geared to the demands of an information society. More
school students should have IT exposure and basic computer training. Students should be
required to learn and adopt a curriculum which adapts them towards being fully functioning
participants of an emerging new societal order.
- A lot of education and promotion is required to get people to be
ready to use computers. The building of network to support the schools from primary all
the way to tertiary is of absolute importance.
- What Hong Kong needs is to develop a culture of kids who will play
around with computers, who will just mess around.
- The key in IT education is to integrate IT into everything. The
computer should be treated merely as a tool, like a pencil, rather than as a curriculum
itself.
- Schools would need to be supported by broadband information
infrastructure to enable students to widen their perspectives and develop an attitude
towards life-long learning.
- Greater use of software should be employed to speed up the
education process and to foster a change of attitude.
- There is a great demand for better-trained generalists in IT and
telecommunications, yet the universities are not training people in these areas. This is
in part due to a slow an inefficient process of allocation of resources by the University
Grants Committee. The UGC should have fast track allocation of funds for fast-track
technology in IT and telecom.
- The UGC should respond to industry needs in a more effective way
by granting extra quotas to universities.
- It is important to develop Chinese software and software written
in simple English that is understandable by secondary school students.
- The role of the teachers should be changed because at the moment
education is highly fragmented; primary schools, secondary schools and universities are
running on their own. The education system should be restructured and the teachers' role
should be shifted from information to knowledge manager because what is lacking is
knowledge management rather than information management.
- In schools there should be a bigger focus on getting not just an
IT curriculum for teachers to teach, but building it into the entire curriculum.
Culture and attitude change
- A major challenge for the community is how to get middle-aged
teachers and decision makers to face up to IT, something which they are probably less
knowledgeable about than their younger counterparts.
- Middle-aged decision makers tend just to throw money at IT without
actually being a practitioner. It is important to target this group and get them to
appreciate and to be committed to IT applications.
- Besides the under 25, the second most knowledgeable community are
the people over 60, because they have got their time to sit down and work their way
through it.
Dissemination
- A lot of data information relevant to the service industry is
still not put onto the Internet for public use, for example, the information processed by
the Census and Statistics Department, Trade Department, Customs Department, as well as
many quantitative information produced by research academics in University.
- Hong Kong is well behind most western countries with respect to
the dissemination of census and other government data.
- The government should consider developing policies to archive such
information, to develop databases, and to encourage public sharing of information and
databases.
- The Census and Statistics Department is now progressively
extending the means of disseminating statistics by electronic means and will continue to
do so to cater for the public demand in accessing government information.
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Impact of Economic
Restructuring on Human resources
The human resources challenge
- The structural economic changes have brought a two-pronged
challenge: to upgrade the education and training so as to produce an adaptable and
flexible workforce especially in information technology, and to assist those who are
affected or displaced by the evolving economy to update their skills and knowledge.
- The human resources challenge for Hong Kong is that it is the
highest wage economy in Asia. The private sector is exercising wage restraint and
reduction of manpower. If the civil service does not follow, there will be an increasing
gap in the next two or three years between the private sector and the government in terms
of costs and wage levels.
- If the private sector cuts its pay, the government will follow
suit because it follows the pay-trend survey. Unfortunately, despite professed wage
restraint by the private sector, what firms often do in practice is to award much bigger
wage increase.
- Hong Kong has to compete on wage. It should be more liberal and
perhaps lift the border up to allow foreign nationals and professionals to come in to fill
in the gaps.
- Government should send a message from the highest levels (i.e. the
Chief Executive and the Financial Secretary) about the need to promote training and skills
upgrade. The perceptions amongst the general public should be changed from that of Hong
Kong people being the most hardworking and best workforce in Asia to one which recognises
that a lot of work still needs to be done to meet the challenge of the future.
- The planning and implementation skills within the government
itself need to be improved in order to further the effectiveness of government.
- For the customer-oriented services sectors such as retail,
restaurants, hotels and entertainment, which are delivered directly to the consumers as
the first and the last clients, the qualities of the employees in terms of courtesy,
language skills, pride, and dedication are particularly important as they will affect the
level of services provided and in turn the competitiveness of the sectors. Appropriate
service culture should be developed and fostered for these customer-oriented sectors and
be incorporated into any human resource development strategy for Hong Kong.
Government monopoly over education
- With the government controlling all major initiatives, schools and
teachers finding greater security in a non-competitive environment, market forces are
rarely allowed to play a role in the allocation of educational resources. A problem with
such a monolithic and homogeneous environment of the educational system is that there are
few alternatives for the parents, so there are mistakes with policies.
- What is needed is not better directives from the government, but a
break up of the government's monopolistic grip on the educational system. Government's
role should be confined to financing to ensure efficiency in investment in education. It
has also a loose monitoring role to ensure the integrity of the educational system. Beyond
that, schools and school administration should be allowed greater freedom in the deciding
of the programmes and the delivery of the services. And parents should be allowed greater
freedom in the choice of schools for their children.
- In order to inject more market incentives in the educational
system, the government should change its subsidizing approach. Instead of directly
subsidizing the schools, it should subsidize the parents for the education of their
children, so that schools and teachers would have to shore up their standards in order to
remain competitive.
- As to government's monopoly over education, a blue print for
reforming our education system is already being mapped out. A lot will be happening in the
next few years in the areas of devolution to schools, parents, etc.
Educational structure and resources
- In terms of government investments. 18% of the resources go to
universities, while sub-degree programmes receive only a meagre 6%. These proportions
should be reviewed so that Hong Kong could have a better workforce for the future.
- A big inhibitor for executives with young children to receive
education and training overseas is the education system. Children of the returnees in two
to three years time would be compelled to enter Cantonese-speaking schools; the only
alternative is international schools which are very expensive. This is inhibiting people
from going abroad or from coming back after they have gone.
- The existing education structure does not recognize the importance
of continuing education, which is a key factor to maintain Hong Kong's competitiveness.
The Education Commission should consist of representatives from the continuing and
professional education sector, apart from existing representatives from the schools,
university and the VTC.
- IT skills, service skills and language skills education are
lacking in the traditional education system.
- Our education system should be benchmarked against that of other
countries and economies.
- To help foster cooperation between the private sector and
academia, UGC could consider binding universities to do at least 50% of the research on
local economy.
- Students should not be taught to shy away from competition and
from difficulties such as changing the format of examinations to make them easier.
- The Government should encourage universities to work more closely
with the private sector. Pumping money into “hardware” such as the Science Park
is not the end of this process.
- The importance of IT is indisputable but there should be a balance
in developing our youngsters other communication and social skills.
Language of instruction
- The recent government policy to impose Chinese or Cantonese as the
language of instruction in most schools is not helpful in maintaining and furthering the
role of Hong Kong as an international financial and service centre. The adverse effects
are going to come back and haunt us in the years to come.
- Students and schools should be allowed to choose the medium of
instruction because that in itself is educational. In this way, they can learn to respond
to competition.
- Hong Kong should investigate the merits of multi-lingual training,
not only English but Dutch, German, French etc. This could be done jointly with the Consul
Generals of various major countries present in Hong Kong, through bringing in foreign
teachers or setting up a student and teacher exchange programme.
- Hong Kong could consider the need for a foreign language institute
as it is trading with over a hundred countries.
- The need for foreign language expertise should be subject to
market demand. May be it is cheaper to hire foreign language expertise than to train them.
- In international forums, the language of decision making is always
English. Hong Kong businessman and entrepreneurs should speak and master the language very
well to continue to succeed internationally.
Business education and training
- People are increasingly looking beyond IQ-related training
programmes into training on emotional maturity and social capability. Companies are
refocusing on balance of job skills versus the work life skills, i.e. the sort of
emotional maturity and self-improvement type of training.
- In the longer term, the focus should be on the concept of
life-long learning – not training which is given by somebody else, but learning which
is more generated within the individual.
- Management education is critical. Hong Kong should have a
post-experience business school for management education. That should be a business school
beyond degree level where only people experienced in business are taught – not the
MBA programmes as such. As a starting point towards developing such a business school, the
MDC (private sector) and Civil Service Training & Development Institute (civil
service) could run programmes jointly thus facilitating a better understanding among, the
civil servants and the private sector.
- There is a crisis of managerial education, of inadequate managers
in the next ten years to tackle global competition and global standards.
- As in other countries companies should be given a subsidy for the
money they spend on training their workforce, particularly at the managerial level.
- Government encourages training but will not tell the private
sector what to study. A tax deduction has already been introduced for training courses.
- There is no shortage of management training services from the
private sector, hence there is really no need to have a government funded agency, i.e. the
Management Development Centre of the VTC, to deliver management training to end-users.
Retraining
- It may not in fact be socially efficient to invest in re-training
of the displaced workers such as housewives and home-makers. They do not have strong
incentive to invest in new skills because the cost is high and the return may be low. The
problem with the current approach is that there is too much emphasis on time intensive and
full-time skills training. From foreign experience, this is shown to be the least cost
efficient approach. Also, such courses carry a relatively general stipend, and such
stipend would tend to encourage over-utilization.
- The ERB should re-focus its effort on shorter courses which can
brush up the job search skills and communication skills of workers. It should also try to
offer and finance more part-time courses on basic occupational skills, so that the
re-trainees can continue to look for jobs in the market as well as to take up employment
as opportunities arise even as they are receiving re-training.
- Government is providing a wage incentive for potential employers
to employ the re-trainees and to provide on-the-job training. This is right and should be
continued.
- The stipends for course participation should be eliminated or at
least reduced. Retraining should not be tied to immediate financial reward. If re-trainees
are in financial difficulties, they should be subsidized through the welfare system rather
than through the re-training programme.
- The best way to soak up the unskilled labour force is to expand
the economy, upgrade those who are already employed, so that there will be more services
skilled work around to absorb those unemployed. Yet government has been ignoring those
employed and doing little to upgrade the skills of those who are already employed.
- Both ERB and VTC provide skills training courses also for those in
employment. Besides, some 20,000 in employment are being enrolled into the Open
University. Close to 10% of the workforce are already engaged in school upgrading in one
sort or another, e.g. through continuing education offered by the universities. In
addition, government also offers a tax incentive allowing people tax exemption for
self-educational courses.
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Quality and
Productivity
Quality culture and awareness
- Concepts of TQM and ISO 9000 originate from manufacturing systems.
The challenge is in making them relevant to the service sector, especially SMEs, through
raising awareness and in the process improving their productivity and quality.
- People is a major concern. In software product development, people
with technical expertise and the ability to work with global customers are lacking.
- Besides people, it is also very important to develop an overall
quality culture within an organization as a whole, to foster and cultivate a sense of
quality service.
- Government should give strong support to the Hong Kong Tourist
Association because the quality of service especially among the SMEs will be crucial to
the tourism industry. Hong Kong needs a strong sense of tourism service such as in places
like Vienna or Amsterdam.
- Raising quality among SMEs would not be easy. It would be a
difficult task to raise awareness and to disseminate about the concrete, tangible benefits
of quality.
- Small businesses often do not have the awareness to start with,
nor the financial muscles to embark on a full journey. But if they are helped to get over
the first hurdles, they could be in a better position to reap the most out of quality
programmes. If industry is left to run quality programmes by themselves, not all companies
are equipped to do that and it may not be easy to raise quality standards overall.
- It is very difficult to train adults with all the established
mind-sets. There should be an effort to change attitudes of very young people, to make
them see a different future that is oriented to quality of service.
- People in Hong Kong are demanding, and this should be channeled to
a demand towards quality.
- It is important to focus on quality not just for senior management
but for entry level practitioners. This should start at the beginning of the career
development of practitioners. It could be achieved through greater cooperation between
academic, regulators and industry, e.g. universities working closely with the major
companies, having experienced practitioners from the private sector doing some of the
teaching and training, and vice versa.
- A major problem in promoting quality awareness and quality
education is related to the lack of correlation between adoption of best practice and
profits. (D: Francis Ho)
- TQM and ISO9000 are relevant to service industry in Hong Kong. One
may refer to the quality activities organised by MTRC. KCRC, Island Shangri-La, OOCL, etc.
Hong Kong will lose its competitiveness if our quality image or quality of service is
lowered.
Cost/benefits of quality systems
- Embarking on the quality journey is a very expensive exercise. For
large organisations, this will be complicated by the scale and the large number of people
with different mentality. To pass the awareness stage is difficult enough, to achieve
quality management and quality improvement with cost saving would be even harder.
- It is difficult to properly value the extra gain from quality
improvement programmes. It remains to be seen whether people actually do pay for quality.
- There is no doubt people will pay for quality. A lot of SMEs to a
certain degree are short sighted and do not pay much attention to quality, but some SMEs
are also well aware that they do need quality and to take a longer view.
- We should not simply assume that all qualities are good things and
that if SMEs are not adopting it, there must be something wrong with them. If they are not
doing it it may be simply because it is not profitable.
- Profit is a key consideration. It is often difficult to see the
financial reward derived from TQM practices. The reason may not be short-sightedness of
the firm but rather lack of profit incentive. Awareness and promotion is not enough; there
should be some solid benefits.
- Apart from self-improvement, a motivation for SME to adopt ISO is
that it may get it more business.
- There should be more emphasis on localization and local
environment when one embarks upon the quality journey.
- Financial models would come in useful. If investment in quality
journey pays off, it should be done, otherwise it would not.
- Quality is ultimately market driven. Industry – through
customers and suppliers - should determine what sort of quality would be required. It is
not a matter of doing quality for its own sake, but of letting the market determine what
kind of quality the market demands.
- There is no direct equation between quality and profit. Yet in
most developed economies and in today's competitive environment, quality has actually been
built in as a matter of fact and as a matter of survival. In some cases, quality has
become a matter of customer compliance in international business.
- Quality should not be totally determined by the market. The
Government should play an active role in promoting quality. A better quality culture will
not only benefit citizens in Hong Kong, but also raise the standard of services we provide
because everyone of us are both receiver and provider of services.
Quality and business opportunities
- Hong Kong has now emerged a unique service culture of a certain
attitude and professionalism which has a very unique competitive advantage, that has a
potential to be globalized.
- It is important to reach customers and provide individualized
service in the global customer base: mass individualisation. It is also important to
understand the consumers more: customerization. Information technology such as the
Internet and its applications are making this possible, for example, offering on the web
site product ratings to reduce the buyers' risks, shipping details, and financial
services, going further to even financial guarantees.
- Some examples of export opportunities created by the global market
in services include credit rating systems, quality time share programmes, and property
management systems. But the key initiative must be taken up by the private sector itself,
although the apparatus that have been set up by government and HKPC would be helpful in
playing a facilitating role.
Standards and the role of government
- The retail and tourist trades are losing business because of lower
quality. Government could do more by enforcing quality standards.
- Government and trade associations such as the Tourist Association
can only raise the awareness to highlight the importance and significance of quality to
business development but in the final analysis, it would be up to the private sector to
see fit to adopt and to apply whatever standard or practices are relevant. Government
enforcement would not be the answer. There should not be any so-called minimum quality
standard to be enforced by the government. Government's role should be that of promotion
and assistance, e.g. to SMEs, but not enforcement of quality standards.
- Although Hong Kong government is non-interventionist, it should
have a role in creating cultural norms for mass activity that is conducive to the service
industries, such as a clean and tidy place and cooperative attitude. The SMEs cannot be
reached one by one so this should be something that is part of the culture.
- Government should not set minimum standards with regard to private
interest, but public interests is a different matter, e.g. standards against food
poisoning, safety standards.
- The issue of regulation of standards for the service industries is
important. Apart from the need to ensure the development of an appropriate service culture
amongst the workforce, it is also important to monitor and compare the standards of our
service industries against our competitors in the global marketplace. Indicators of
satisfaction from our clients and appropriate standard classification systems for relevant
sectors should be established and monitored.
- A special case is needed for the hotel industry. Customers always
make reference to hotel standards in terms of perceived rating. In fact, international
rating systems have been in operation worldwide and the level of services (relative price
ranges, locations, etc.) to be expected are reflected by the rating system. These systems
are also widely publicised to the customers. Such a system which itself is a user-friendly
tool for our customers from overseas should be considered to be set up in Hong Kong.
Fostering quality through tripartite
cooperation
- Many companies and government departments have their own training
schools. This is a reflection that universities have failed in least business and
management training. They should modify their programmes to suit the needs of industry in
terms of service attitude and quality.
- Business and academics could also cooperation by relating
university students closer to the business sector, such as encouraging more companies to
hire students during summer.
- Academics, business, and the government should pull their
resources together and develop some sort of training school or institution. There should
be a perspective on training that does not see it purely in a selfish light, but for the
benefit of the industry and for Hong Kong as a whole. There is much that Hong Kong can
offer to make education an industry that can be exported.
- Universities may offer training to the private sector but this
will bode ill for the prospects of the academics involved. If the universities really
attach great importance to interface with industry then they need to change their attitude
towards faculty staff who practices industry training and those who conduct policy based
(rather than academic based) research.
- Government does assist by providing some research funds but it
seems interested only in big research projects. The funding for services research is
welcomed but it should also encourage smaller-scale research studies. It should not make
the application procedure more burdensome than necessary. In this regard the current
requirement on providing information and filling forms seems quite excessive.
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Other remarks
arising from the tripartite forum
- The segregation of the economy into manufacturing and services is
increasingly artificial. Convergence is a buzzword of the times. Organisations in the
so-called service sector must use the best available technology, including computer
systems, databases, communications, IT, etc. At the same time, the high-tech &
manufacturing companies must become more service oriented and all sectors will need the
value-added of innovative human resources to be competitive in the 21st
century. Service and technology go hand-in-hand, and both must be promoted to sustain and
enhance Hong Kong's economy and quality of life.
- University faculty is not just willing but keen to apply the
intellectual and physical resources of the University towards regional economic
development. One action item emerging from the Forum might be to find better ways and
means to apply this willing expertise to work with industry.
- A lot of resources had been wasted with our academic trying to
climb up their career ladder with thesis and research without relevance to the application
and the need of the real world. Match making programme should be arranged so the needs of
our industries and business can be made known to them so they can channel their resources
to meet the need of the business in Hong Kong.
- This has been a useful and worthwhile forum and we should
re-assemble again sometime in the future.