Adjusting to Globalization Through Skills Development Strategies

Abstract

[Excerpt] The aim of this chapter is to describe and analyze the efforts at skills development in Singapore and in India's booming outsourcing sector. Singapore is an important case because it started its skills development efforts in the early 1980s at a time when outsourcing of manufacturing was just beginning, and it has become one of the best-known examples of a nation that has successfully and continuously upskilled its workforce over the past twenty-five years. India, on the other hand, is just beginning to focus on skills development, stimulated by the growth in outsourcing of high-end services such as software development and business process outsourcing (BPO) of financial and medical research and low-end services such as call centers.