Knowledge work: Where Singaporeans fall short

Over the past two decades, the relative importance of knowledge work to Singapore’s economy has continued to grow. However, companies seeking to fill knowledge-based jobs have often had to recruit workers from abroad due to domestic talent shortages.

This is partly because Singapore’s overall “knowledge environment”—including schooling, cultural attitudes and the country’s broader socio-political climate—may not be conducive to producing workers who can perform at the highest level in knowledge-based jobs.

Knowledge work—what exactly is it?

Peter Drucker, a management consultant and author, coined the term “knowledge work” in 1959 to refer to work that involved the use and manipulation of knowledge and information.[i] He was partly seeking to draw a distinction between knowledge and manual work.

(Source: Reinvent Your Enterprise, Jack Bergstrand, 2009)[ii]

Singaporeans and knowledge work—where do we fall short?

There are two ways to assess Singaporeans’ ability to perform knowledge work. The first is to look at traditional measures of a knowledge economy’s potential.

For instance, The World Bank’s Knowledge Economy Index (KEI) ranks countries around the world based on four different categories: “Economic Incentive Regime”; “Innovation”; “Education”, and “ICT”.

In the 2012 KEI, Singapore ranked 23rd out of 145 countries. The main reason for Singapore’s somewhat mediocre performance is a poor “Education” score. Compared to many other developed countries, Singapore has low rates of secondary and tertiary enrolment.

The methodological approach typified by the KEI is one that attempts to predict a country’s potential for knowledge work based on some fixed national qualitative and quantitative indicators—a macro analysis of national ability.

This article will instead use a second approach: actual evaluations and opinions from managers regarding Singaporeans’ workplace behaviours, characteristics and performance—a micro analysis of individual ability.

It is worth stressing that these are not absolute but rather relative criticisms—in that the average worker falls short in performing knowledge work relative to his/her own paper credentials.

With all this in mind, these are some of the main performance critiques of Singaporean workers in a knowledge-based environment.

• Less willing to challenge convention or question authority

Arguably the most common criticism is that the average Singaporean worker is less willing to speak up—either to challenge his/her superiors intellectually or to point out potential flaws in established corporate processes.

While this attribute serves the worker well in a “manual work” environment, with its emphasis on strict standards and consistency, it handicaps the worker in a “knowledge work” environment, where innovation and change are valued.

For R&D work, this implies that a Singaporean worker might excel more in the development than the research, says Steve Wilson, director of R&D Asia-Pacific at Welch Allyn International, a medical device manufacturer. Welch Allyn had set up a development centre in Singapore in 2004 to focus on new product development for emerging markets like Brazil, Russia, India and China.

“Singaporeans are academically brilliant and they have a tremendous respect for authority. They rarely revisit and question the purpose of a task. They just get it done.”

But, as Steve pointed out, that very strength also presents one of the biggest challenges to performing R&D in Singapore. “Our teams are very focused on their tasks and as a result do not think much outside of what they have to do. Ideas are seldom generated, as no incentives for creativity exist in the Singaporean education system. In three years of operation, our facility has not produced a single patent, and there is no record of new ideas.”

• Afraid to take risks and move out of comfort zone

Singaporeans’ well-established risk aversion affects their performance in knowledge work, where work is “invisible” and holistic. Roles are often ill-defined and fluid, requiring workers to adapt and “step up to the plate” as the situation demands.

In a discussion with Heng Swee Keat, Singapore’s education minister, in January 2012, one CEO compared the responses of a European worker and a Singaporean worker when given a different role with new responsibilities. “What sort of training will I get, how will you help me succeed, what will I do, and so on,” the European worker responded, as reported in The Straits Times. [iii] By contrast, the Singaporeans focussed on the risks. “What if I fail? Do I still have a job? Is there a support system, and do I get retrenchment benefits?”

Singaporeans can thus appear more concerned with guarding and nurturing their own turf rather than being adventurous and exploring other opportunities. The common caricature is of the Singaporean worker’s “shield”, which is tucked close to the body, and raised instinctively to deflect new “arrows”, or responsibilities, which are outside our regular mandate.

• Silo mentality and poor cross-collaboration skills

On a related note, the average Singaporean worker often does not have the full ability to collaborate across the organisation, and draw on a range of multi-disciplinary skills. Instead, workers are much more comfortable working on set tasks and processes, often in silos.

Singaporeans may be more comfortable with individual tasks than group projects because they lack the necessary public communication skills and/or the emotional dexterity required to balance different personalities.

Another reason could be that Singaporeans tend to have a narrow, individualistic view of job performance and reward, not a holistic one that encompasses a team or an entire organisation. From this perspective the primary professional objective is simply working within the bounds of a strictly defined job scope.

Please carry on and read the second half of this piece, “The Singapore model—why it struggles to produce knowledge workers”

This Op-ed is an excerpt from a longer essay that you can read here.

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This essay will be part of a compilation, "A better Singapore? Reframing debates in the New Normal", edited by Donald Low and Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh, which will be published later this year.

Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh is an author, most recently of “Floating on a Malayan Breeze: Travels in Malaysia and Singapore”. He blogs at sudhirtv.com

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[1] Landmarks of tomorrow, Drucker, Peter, 1959

[1] The graphical presentation of Bergrstand’s work is taken from “Peter Drucker’s view of knowledge-based work”, Applitude. http://www.applitude.se/2011/02/peter-drucker’s-view-of-knowledge-based-work/

[1] “What CEOS told the Education Minister”, The Straits Times, Feb 2nd 2012