ABSTRACT
Malaysian organizations suffer from high staff-turnover rates. In the case of blue-collar workers, this reflects a tradition of autocratic management, with little room for dissent, coupled with a high demand for labor within specific geographic areas. On the one hand, managers find such turnover helpful as it enables staffing levels to be easily adjusted to match fluctuations in demand (Elger and Smith 2001: 461). On the other hand, this limits the effectiveness of in-firm training and development initiatives. Firms are unlikely to break with autocratic Fordism if they lack the human capacity to do so, official policies notwithstanding. There is some evidence to suggest that the reluctance of a significant number of firms to devote too many resources to development, and to advance women, has resulted in intense competition for a relatively small pool of highly skilled bumiputras (Morris et al., 2001; Jayansankaran, 1999). Again, this mitigates against the attainment of a predominantly high value-added production paradigm.
