Category Archive: Outsourcing

Private security

Posted on December 20, 2008 in: Current Affairs, Europe, Outsourcing|Post Comment

What news
item in France this past week most deserves your attention?

Explosives
planted in a Paris department store? Yet another financial scandal? Renault’s
outlook for the first quarter of 2009? Parliamentary debate on shops opening on
Sunday? High school students demonstrating in the streets?

No. The
event in France this past week that most deserves attention was: the European
Summit on Private Security. The French Interior Ministry hosted the summit,
which was organized by the Confederation of European Security Services and the
Institut National des Hautes Etudes de Sécurité. The organizers have published
an informative white paper (introduced by the French Interior minister and prefaced by the French president, for whom the subject matters).

The event
merits attentions because it offers a comparative snapshot and presents a
policy question on the scope of the public sector.

Throughout
the European Union today, private security employs 1.7 million in some 50 000
firms that together generate 15 billion euros in revenue. In some EU member
states, there are now more private security agents than there are police
officers: Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and
the United Kingdom. This is a diverse group, including countries both rich and
poor, large and small.

These
numbers suggest more than hypothetical cost savings between civil service
police and private security guards. A broader policy evolution is underway.
Increasingly, private security not only guards building or transports
valuables, but also handles traffic offenses and deals with transporting
prisoners. 

Why France?

Posted on December 16, 2008 in: Europe, Outsourcing|Post Comment

I met with a project team on Monday. The team included representatives from France, China, Russia, Tunisia, and Brazil. English was the working language.
None of the companies or products involved are high-profile household names, or thought of as especially international in scope. The meeting was held in a provincial town, removed from the Paris area.
Being able to work with cosmopolitan project teams is a major draw for me. It's something that I've found in France. It's something that I hadn't expected but that I welcome.

A Thomas Friedman moment

Posted on November 22, 2008 in: Outsourcing|Post Comment

Thomas Friedman writes a column at the New York Times and a stream of engaging books. Those I've enjoyed include The Lexus and the Olive Tree and The World is Flat. I'm a keen reader of Friedman's views on globalization, and I envy Friedman's easy access to readers: the New York Times is a great platform. But I'm not alone in finding Friedman long on impressions but short on data.

In this spirit, I had my own Thomas Friedman moment recently. Only one anecdote, with only one or two (or four, depending on how you count) data points.

What I saw, here in France, was a meeting, in France, between co-workers in their 20s. Two were French, and two were Chinese.

The Chinese guy had an iPhone, with Chinese characters. He was completely at ease using it to look up a phone number in the French yellow pages, and he checked his messages politely, without disruption, during a break.

His Chinese colleague, a woman in her twenties, corrected my mispronunciation of her name. I had more or less invited her to do so, but I could sense how, for her, it was important to learn the others' names and for them to learn hers.

The energy and enthusiasm of the Chinese colleagues stood in contrast to that of their French co-workers. Everyone has a bad days (even a string of them!), but the French duo gave an unmistakable impression of fatigue (at 10:00 in the morning) and ennui (I really don't know what they would rather have been doing, but meeting with Chinese colleagues didn't engage them). The French guy checked his cell phone several during the meeting, on the lookout for messages.

The meeting took place among equals, all working on the same team. English was the working language. All seemed to have comparable technical merit in their field.

I'm a steadfast friend of France and have an overflowing reserve of goodwill towards younger Europeans. But in light of scenes like the one I've witnessed make me wonder: if it doesn't matter where work is done, what would motivate a global organization to site workers in France instead of in China? Granted, it often does matter where work is done. And one anecdote does not ground an economic policy. But I'm left with the conclusion that, when measured against comparable workers elsewhere, the French workers have catching up to do.

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