LEARNING TO MANAGE THE FACTORY FLOOR IN ETHIOPIA: SKILLS, WORK CULTURES AND ORGANIZATIONAL CAPABILITIES IN ETHIOPIA'S LIGHT MANUFACTURING

在埃塞俄比亚等非洲国家，通过发展外国直接投资带动的轻工业实现工业化的前景在过去十年中有了很大改善。埃塞俄比亚已经建立了许多工业园和新的外国投资者，以实现雄心勃勃的工业化目标。这一发展需要在基础设施、政策激励和劳动力技能方面提出一些关键要求。尽管埃塞俄比亚因劳动力成本低和劳动力充足而被认为在轻工业制造方面具有相对优势，但过去几年的现实情况是，吸引、培训和留住合适的工业劳动力并不像看起来那么简单。矛盾的是，劳动力限制可能会损害埃塞俄比亚和其他非洲国家雄心勃勃的工业化目标的实现。劳动成果和劳资关系在很大程度上取决于工作场所安排以及每个部门和国家的更广泛的劳动力市场背景。在这方面，组织和管理能力对于了解公司面临的一些劳工挑战至关重要，特别是在新的外国公司在新的采购国投资的情况下，例如在埃塞俄比亚的纺织和服装部门。这些公司受到来自它们被整合或愿意加入的全球生产网络的激烈竞争压力。从埃塞俄比亚开始的工厂面临着双重挑战：在工业发展有限的背景下吸引可培训和有积极性的劳动力，以及满足全球生产网络对生产率和质量的要求。在链条的这些节点中，中低级管理人员的作用似乎至关重要，因为他们构成了来自最高管理层的紧张需求与来自生产工人的回应和要求之间的接口。事实上，新投资者面临的一些关键劳工问题，如劳动力周转率高、员工保留率相对低于预期和劳资冲突，与在不同工厂管理层吸收适当的当地管理力量方面进展有限有关，也与外籍管理人员不得不管理/监督当地工人时的劳资关系困难有关。大多数利益攸关方，特别是埃塞俄比亚政府(特别是EIC和IPDC)以及私人投资者团体都认为这是一项重大挑战，需要采取一些补救行动。最初的2015-2019年项目主要侧重于非熟练和半熟练工人的经验和工作条件，即建筑和制造部门公司雇用的大部分工人。然而，我们的定性研究和对工厂经理的采访强调，熟练劳动力和管理劳动力对这些行业的成功同等重要。这些面谈证实了在寻找和留住高素质的当地管理人员用于工厂车间运营方面的重要性和制约因素。这与其他发展中国家工业化研究和劳工组织在埃塞俄比亚的诊断性研究得出的类似结论是一致的。我们建议扩大目前的研究，以加深对现有工业公司，特别是新兴工业公司在寻找、培养和留住技术和管理劳动力方面的当前和过去经验的理解，以改善公司在该国的可持续性和工作场所的劳资关系。我们将就雇用和留住埃塞俄比亚管理人员的制约因素以及最有效地将这一劳动力纳入工厂基层的技能转让进程提出问题并进行定性研究。我们还将从埃塞俄比亚过去5年进行的其他研究中产生的现有数据集汇编相关数据。

In African countries like Ethiopia, the prospects for industrialization through the development of light manufacturing led by foreign direct investment have substantially improved in the past ten years. Many industrial parks and new foreign investors have been established to meet the ambitious industrialization goals of Ethiopia. This development entails a number of critical requirements in terms of infrastructure, policy incentives and workforce skills. Although Ethiopia is supposed to have a comparative advantage in light manufacturing because of low labour costs and the plentiful availability of labour, the reality in the last few years is that attracting, training and retaining a suitable industrial labour force is not as simple as it would seem. Paradoxically, labour constraints may impair the achievement of the ambitious industrialization goals of Ethiopia and other African countries. Labour outcomes and industrial relations depend much on workplace arrangements and the broader labour market context of each sector and country. Organizational and managerial capabilities are, in this regard, critical to understanding some of the labour challenges that firms face, especially in the case of new foreign firms investing in new sourcing countries as in the textile and garment (T&G) sector in Ethiopia. These are firms that are subject to tight competitive pressures from the global production networks in which they are integrated or willing to join. The factories starting in Ethiopia face the twin challenge of attracting a trainable and motivated workforce in a context of limited industrial development and meeting the productivity and quality imperatives of global production networks. The role of low and middle-level managers seems to be critical in these nodes of the chain as they constitute the interface between the tight demands coming from top management and the responses and demands from production workers. Indeed, some of the key labour problems confronted by new investors, such as high labour turnover, relatively lower than expected staff retention and labour conflict, were linked to the limited progress in incorporating a suitable local managerial force at different levels of factory management and to the difficulties in labour relations when expat managers had to manage/supervise local workers. This was considered by most stakeholders, especially the Ethiopian government (particularly the EIC and the IPDC) as well as private investors' groups, a significant challenge that required some remedy action. The initial 2015-2019 project focused primarily on the experiences and working conditions of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, i.e. the bulk of workers employed by companies in the construction and manufacturing sectors. However, our qualitative research and interviews with factory managers stressed the equal importance of skilled and management labour force for the success of these industries. These interviews corroborated the importance of and constraints in finding and retaining high-quality local managers for factory floor operations. This is consistent with similar findings from other studies of industrialization in developing countries and diagnostic research by ILO in Ethiopia. We there propose to extend our current research to deepen the understanding of the current and past experiences of existing and especially new emerging industrial firms in finding, developing and retaining a skilled and managerial workforce, in order to improve the sustainability of the firm in the country and labour relations at the workplace. We will ask questions and do qualitative research about the constraints on hiring and retaining Ethiopian managers and the processes of skill transfer that have worked best to incorporate this labour force at the factory floor level. We will also compile relevant data from existing datasets emerging from other studies that have been conducted in the last 5 years in Ethiopia.