Today we visited Carsten from Excitor who Finn connected us to yesterday. Carsten is the CTO and general manager of the captive outsourced department in Manila. The department is not as big as the other companies we have visited here in Manila. It was exiting to hear what challenges a smaller firm was facing compared to a larger firm. Corruption and acquiring the needed competences was some of the issues mentioned. We also discussed the difference about work attitudes. We learned that the Filipinos are more focused on the individual task and that Danes are more focused on the context of the task. This results in some misunderstandings and not fully completed tasks. We also learned that newly graduated Filipinos from the university lack competences. We were told that they are immature and need more training compared to Danish graduates. But they are also younger when they graduate, around 20 years old is typical. Carsten also mentioned that he faced a lot of corruption although the resources needed to cope with it were affordable. The issue for a smaller company regarding corruption is the time perspective. It is a protracted process to get new initiatives approved when dealing with/paying seven different “subcontractors”. Fiscal corruption is only a big issue for larger manufacturing companies.
(Small talk)
We were amused by an interesting thought, that there might be a cultural difference based on the climate. There is a saying that the Filipinos took the urgency out of Mañana. J The discussion is related to issues regarding whether mentality in different work cultures are affected by the climate. In the north we have a historical awareness that winter is coming and therefore we plan long termed in contrary to cultures in tropical climates.
We were amused by an interesting thought, that there might be a cultural difference based on the climate. There is a saying that the Filipinos took the urgency out of Mañana. J The discussion is related to issues regarding whether mentality in different work cultures are affected by the climate. In the north we have a historical awareness that winter is coming and therefore we plan long termed in contrary to cultures in tropical climates.
After visiting Exitor we paid the Manila hub a final visit. We wanted to give some presents as a token for our gratitude and to say goodbye to everyone. Here ends the educational part of our trip to the Philippines.
Goodbye and thanks for reading
