‘IMD business school is located in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is one of the world’s premier business and management institutions. It offers the world’s best MBA program according to Forbes ranking in 2011, 2013. In 2014, it was ranked first in open programs worldwide by the Financial Times.’
(Singapore Business Times.)
In its World Talent Report, Malaysia was ranked 5th, ahead of Singapore at 16th. The ranking was based on three key factors of the country:
1. Its investment and development in home-grown talent
2. Its ability to retain local talent and attract those from overseas
3. Its readiness to fulfil market demands with the available talent pool
It is understandable that Malaysia ranked very high in (1) while Singapore took a rubbing here. Malaysia is very focused about investing and developing its very own talents. Singapore likely lost 20% of its best talents when their places were given to foreigners in the universities. The IMD must have noticed this flaw in developing own local talents versus developing other countries’ talent.
As for factor (2), Malaysia definitely scored better in retaining its own talents while Singapore lost out as it encouraged its local talents to go overseas, maybe due to poor job offers at home. Also, many local talents, especially the middle age PMEs were displaced and ended up unemployed or under employed. This must count strongly against Singapore. But it scored very high in attracting talents from overseas to replace its displaced local talents while Malaysia might lose out in this area. So, for factor (2) the score is likely to be even.
In factor (3), Malaysia was likely to fill its market demands from local talents while Singapore would be filling them up with foreign talents. On paper should also be fairly even. The only questionable factor may be that IMD knew that the foreign talents Singapore was attracting were craps or fake talents. As an European institution, it would probably look at those so called talents employed by Singapore and measured them against their own standards. Simply put, if they would not think they are good enough and unemployable in their standards, they would rule them out as rubbish talents. They might have a good laugh at the stupidity of these talents and so did not give Singapore any marks for it.
This could explain why Malaysia is at 5th spot and Singapore at 16th spot. But that is just my guess. Maybe there are far more serious reasons for downgrading Singapore to 16th place. The IMD is filled with real talents and would not be fooled by fools and fakes. They are outsiders and could see the picture very clearly and objectively. While the fools are happily deceiving themselves, the IMDs must be having a good laugh.
I really cannot find any good reason other than the above to justify Malaysia ranking higher than Singapore. Singapore has been the champion, the pipe piper in recruiting foreign talents. It constantly go for a world wide search when a CEO position is vacant. The first choice seems to be foreign talents and a local talent is considered only after the foreign talent search failed.
And I trust that this IMD ranking system is credible compares to those demolished and unrecognised university rankings. Anyone got a better idea why Singapore is so far below Malaysia?
Chua Chin Leng aka redbean
*The author blogs at mysingaporenews.blogspot.com