Indian Bureacracy - HR perspective .

Today I read the news about worst south Asian bureaucracy - India.

Those who area aware of Indian bureaucracy should know that majority of them come through the most grueling and difficult selection process of UPSC. Many bright and brilliant student spend years studying as this brings prestige ,salary ,power and unparalleled benefits. Many view it as kind of dream service with life-time employment and almost negligible performance accountability.

Moreover constitution of India protects these bureaucrats from fear of persecution ( mainly from politicians ) and financial insecurity. ( Details here. )

Prima facie bright employees and excellent career opportunities should result into high performing change agents , but Indian case is proving it wrong.

One of major reason may be the environment in which they work ,reminding me of article titiled " why good people do bad things ? " making a case for impact of system on individual behavior.

Though it is true that system in which these people work is practically difficult to change - but from HR perspective how about providing means ,practices and expert advice about how to cope with this system and remain efficient and high performing individuals ?

Any thoughts ?

Japanese adopting western Bonus culture !

Financial times dated 1-jun says "Nomura's 1600 staff- more than 50% of its investment arm adopted western style contracts" .

This will cut basic salaries , provide higher performance bonus and it will be easier to fire them in case of downturn.

Though the firm maintains that it is essential for integrating Japan and European acquisitions of Lehman , still it is in stark contrast with Japanese employer outlook of "stable Jobs" as well as against the government and regulators efforts all over world to curb executive compensation and golden parachutes.

So is Japanese embracing western culture in pay-packages ? It is difficult to comment with one such example.

More-over news article no where comments about employee reaction .One may doubt about the negotiating power with employees given recessionary trend and downturn in job-market .

Lets keep watching how other Japanese firm are responding ...