Asia Times: China


	June 4, 2002	atimes.com

China

Motorola University scores high grades in China
By James Borton

Motorola University scores high grades in China By James Borton The New Economy may have suffered some serious setbacks during the past year, but don't mention that to Motorola University (MU), the education arm of the US behemoth technology solutions corporation. Management plans to move 50 percent of its employee education services online by 2003, with a major focus on increased investment in China.

On the streets in Beijing, shiny black Audi 100 sedans, driven by Chinese entrepreneurs and government officials, steadily navigate through rivers of remarkably calm bicyclists and hordes of pedestrians. Neon signs - Goldstar TVs, Motorola cell phones, the Hard Rock Cafe - flash brightly above the bicyclists at night, even on the Dongchang'an Avenue leading to historic Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, where Mao's large portrait alone presides. It is against this daily background that Cho Mijin, the young director of Motorola University's North Asia operations, witnesses the impact of Motorola University.

In Chinese huo liang wang combines the characters for "connect," "each other" and "network". This connectedness is achieved through MU's corporate curriculum culture and also derived from the company's commercialization of Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) cell phone consumer services, bringing an increasing number of Chinese into the expanding knowledge economy.

During the past decade, the ranks of corporate universities have swelled from 400 to over 2,000. Of course, this trend for corporations to establish their own university branding just happened to coincide with the longest tech bull market run in the US's history. Now many corporate universities are faced with the dilemma of stemming the flow of corporate losses without sacrificing key customer and employee training.

What happens to corporate training when the economy slows down? One of the world's leading corporate universities is coping with the current soft market by partnering with offshore universities that can help it create custom programs and with application service providers that can deliver content at reduced costs. The goal: to let the company keep expanding in a vital Asian market.

The company: Motorola, since the 1980s a pioneer multinational leader in firm-wide training and corporate training investment policies. The company's acclaimed Motorola University, with administrative offices in Phoenix, has established comprehensive services such as online learning systems, translation and cultural training, and an expanded portfolio of executive education programs.

The country: China, where Motorola has more than 12,000 employees and now more than US$4 billion in sales, representing almost 13 percent of the company's entire global sales. Motorola's pagers, cell phones, semiconductors and other mobile communications equipment have accelerated China's rising technology parity with the West.

As the largest foreign investor in China's electronic industry and one of the most successful foreign companies in China, Motorola knows that China is a new economic frontier where the rules remain uncertain, but the opportunities are boundless. There are more than 50 million Chinese on line, and some analysts claim that the number is doubling every six months. By 2005, industry observers project that China will have the largest concentrated pool of Internet surfers in the world. With China's entry in the World Trade Organization (WTO) last year, the government realizes that information-technology (IT) literacy is essential and many multinationals have long recognized this fact.

"China is one of our most important crucial markets and we are still the first and largest US business in operation there," says Fred Harburg, the ebullient president of Motorola University.

Although Motorola's senior management have been nervously attentive to the electronics company's balance sheet, they still remain bullish about its commitments to China and the training of its employees there. The embattled chief executive and primary cheerleader for China, Chris Galvin, has dramatically declared a 10-10-10 commitment to China. By 2006 Motorola intends to have a total investment in the country of $10 billion, a total production of $10 billion and a total procurement base of $10 billion.

Motorola University China was established in 1988 to train its employees. It was largely created in direct response to China's emerging market driven economy, and by the early 1990s, MU reached an agreement with the Chinese government to provide education initiatives in exchange for business privileges. With centers in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Tianjin, MU has developed many programs targeting senior and midlevel managers from the company's suppliers, strategic partners, state-owned enterprises and customers.

MU's senior management readily admits that as part of their agreement with the Chinese government there is a tacit understanding. In exchange for access to the market, the MU will provide value-added services, the key one of which is delivering educational technology and know-how to China, not only to Motorola's own employees, but also to many of the state owned universities and the state owned enterprises.

Motorola University files a yearly "report card" with the government stating what they've accomplished in China from a market point of view, as well as what the company has added to Chinese society through government approved projects in universities and communities.

With thousands of local Chinese employees, there is ample need for MU's services inside and outside the company. In addition to educating its own employees, MU works with higher education institutions to provide training in how to deliver different types of technology training. Now more than ever, China needs more Western trained managers to fill the country's WTO entry requirements.

According to Lois Webster, former director of MU's China operations from 1996-1998 and now CEO of LearnShare, "Motorola University-China has played a very significant business development role for Motorola operations in China."

Major projects
The Asia-Pacific market, and particularly China, is singularly important, and the economic downturn has made multinational corporations realize that to stay competitive in a shrinking global market, their China workforce must possess relevant knowledge and IT skills.

With most Chinese local state owned enterprises lacking the vision and resources to invest in training, Motorola continues to boost its e-learning developments. Its strategy: to partner on programs that provide focused management development opportunities for customers. In China alone, Motorola has instructor agreements with 21 colleges, including the prestigious Peking, Tsinghua, and Nankai universities. Tsinghua and Renmin universities, for example, have been partnering with MU to develop a curriculum focusing on advanced management. Around 800 participants took part in the program last year and about 850 the year before.

"Make no mistake about it, corporate universities are here to stay and are a long term initiative for most enterprises. Turnover, changes in processes and technology, shifting of people in jobs, new customer demands and partnerships will continue to drive the demand for training and competency development," according to Kathy Harris, vice president and research area director at the internationally focused Gartner Group.

Some other key MU recent projects

An in-house MBA program developed with Arizona State University and Tsinghua University will provide an opportunity for local key talents to obtain advanced degrees. Motorola China realized that many of these local managers had a strong desire to go abroad for further education. To prevent this migration of management abroad and to replace expatriate managers within a short period of time, Motorola China instructed MU to develop an in-house MBA program that could be completed in China in the workplace. The first phase of this program was launched in 1999, and 34 students completed their studies in May 2001. The second phase commenced in October 2001, with more than 40 Chinese managers enrolled.

The Advanced Manufacturing Training (AMT), a special six-month program with Thunderbird International Management School.

An executive MBA in cooperation with the management school of the University of Buffalo, State University of New York.

With more than half of Motorola's 140,000 worldwide employees located outside the United States, it's no wonder that MU remains an integral knowledge platform aimed at lifting the company to its former global competitive advantage.

"Yes, we are proud of our commitments in the training of local management and we are even developing our own technology MBA," remarked, Cho Mijin, director, Motorola University, North Asia from their Beijing office.

Training and a strong learning ethic are embedded parts of Motorola's culture and it appears that MU's China experiment is paying off. The corporation learned some time ago that dollars spent on training programs not only empowered their employees but provided the necessary skills for the company's marketplace dominance.

E-learning will play a significant role in Motorola's future. At the end of 2001, Motorola's employees received almost 35 percent of their educational solutions via web-based learning. Motorola University Asia-Pacific selected the Boston-based software company, Centra, to provide virtual classroom support, including audio conferencing, live application-sharing whiteboards and breakout rooms for MU in 14 Asian countries.

"The Chinese people are somewhat like the people in the US when it comes to distance learning. It's the younger professionals who are most eager to embrace online learning," added Harburg.

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