In capitalist system a company works for profit and that too for very few of those working for it. However, it is is a poor and short-term strategy. Most of the big companies and business houses in good old days focused on developing human resources in many ways by establishing schools in the residential complexes of their factories, by having a separate and well-equipped training centres. Many such as Birlas used to provide full and free education for the children and even relatives of the employees at Pilani and employ them too if they so wished. Over the years, the new management found it unnecessary burden and cost affecting the profit and thus margin. Newers one joining the business community didn’t appreciate that expenditure and gradually even the old ones found it logical to go out of that.
I can only say that the management of the manufacturing company where I worked or that of Tata’s TELCO, Jamshedpur of our days that I knew we’ll, could have created tens if not hundreds of entrepreneurs in manufacturing as well as service sector that would have benefitted both those companies as well as other companies in the sector as well as the country in general.
Both the factories -one near Kolkata and the other in Jamshedpur, used to manufacture almost all small and big components. Later on they outsourced many of its components discarding or cutting down many manufacturing sections and units and sold its manufacturing equipment. It would have encouraged its willing, skilled and capable employees to buy these equipment on book value. It would have made many entrepreneurs who could have supplied to the parent companies and used the excess capacity to supply to other auto manufacturers.
Both these factories had a lot of very highly skilled persons in various service departments. Many could have set up companies to provide those services such as production engineering, plant services, industrial engineering, etc to the industry. Unfortunately, the management lacked that farsightedness.
Even today, the CEOs hardly take pride in encouraging even those who can’t be accommodated in the organisation and can easily be released for getting into business with the experiences earned.
One of the task of the CEO must also be to find out the talent and encourage them for entrepreneurship. Every big company can produce many entrepreneurs in the same sector or related ones, if the management widens the horizon of the mission of the business without any material loss to the company.
Indian entrepreneurship gets its due respect even in US. In India too, time and again, I come across many stories of successful start ups. However, one hardly find any story related to the entrepreneurs in manufacturing. India can get into manufacturing entrepreneurship if existing units both in private as well as public sectors take some initiative suggested above.