Empowering Employees for the Digital Age

AI is changing the world of business as fast, if not more so, as the world of education. In Episode #205 of Silver Lining for Learning, Dr. Shameem Farouk will discuss how AI is being used at Maybank in Malaysia to reskill and upskill the workforce. There is a growing need to reconceptualize and recontextualize understandings of how employees engage in the learning process to keep up with the ever-increasing demands on their skill sets and expertise. We will discuss how Generative AI tools and platforms like ChatGPT are now being employed such as with rich cases and simulations for the business world. The conversation may also move to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in building an inclusive future ready organizational culture and workforce.

Shameem Farouk graduated Indiana University with a Ph.D. in Instructional Systems Technology (IST) and an MBA from Kelly SoB, in 2010. From 2013-2016, she was a Senior Talent Specialist at Axiata in Malaysia in change of group-wide talent management accountability which involved the identification and development of high potential leaders. She is now the Executive Vice-President and Head of Digital Skills Development, Malayan Banking Berhad, Malaysia. In this role, she is responsible for the development and implementation of the Group's FutureReady programme which was the first Digital mass up-skilling programme launched among financial institutions in Malaysia. In August 2022, Shameem presented in the first Global and International Engagement webinar at Indiana University of 2022-2023 in August, entitled, “Empowering Malaysian women in the FutureReady Workforce.” She is currently conducting research on innovative methods to accelerate Workforce Learning and Development in the U.S. as part of the U.S. State Department's Fulbright Research Programme. See video on Empowering Malaysia Women in the Future of Work (with Shameem Farouk and Curt Bonk; 1:01:54: https://youtu.be/z5QRT_XTeh0

Dr. Farouk is an organizational development practitioner-researcher in the Banking industry based in Malaysia with a regional leadership role in the Southeast Asian region. She has been conducting a variety of professional development (PD) programs for Human Resource and Organizational Development practitioners in the areas of organizational change management, organizational culture development, and instructional development training in Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Philippines, Singapore, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. Additionally, with the advent of digitalization she has implemented and trained human resource professionals on the adoption of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in the Human Resources and Learning functions. For more on Shameem, see https://www.linkedin.com/in/shameemfarouk/

Philip M. Parker is a Professor of Marketing at INSEAD and the INSEAD Chaired Professor of Management Science. Before joining INSEAD, he was a Professor of International Strategy and Economics at the University of California, San Diego. He has taught at Harvard University, MIT, Stanford University, and UCLA, and delivered courses in various countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, North America, and Europe. He has degrees in Finance and Economics, and a PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

He is an economist and his research explores why existing theories governing macroeconomic growth and firm level competition yield unreliable forecasts of actual market outcomes. He introduced the idea that physical sciences (physics and physiology) should be directly integrated into macroeconomics. His contrarian research concludes that certain economic development measures, such as income per capita, can dramatically exaggerate the levels of poverty in a country, but also be poor indicators of future economic growth. Some of his work was published in his book Marketing Management: A Strategic Decision-Making Approach and Physioeconomics: The Basis for Long-Run Economic Growth (MIT Press, 2000) in which he forecasts global economic and demographic trends to the year 2100. He argues that critical economic axioms violate laws of physics and shows that convergence across nations is unlikely, if not impossible, in the long run. Free markets will, however, allow countries to converge to similar levels of well-being across individuals, but at dramatically different levels of income-based consumption (i.e. low-income countries may remain so, but will not be “poorer” than high-income countries) provided that citizens are given economic liberty. Wealth redistribution, from “richer” countries to “poorer” countries, in these cases, is not justified for the sake of “poverty reduction”, and may actually increase poverty.

He has also studied how firms generate market inefficiencies by relying on common forms of information asymmetry (creating markets for “sweet lemons” where low-quality products drive higher-quality products from the market, at higher prices). His work also debunks the notion that allowing more competitors in regulated markets (e.g. telecommunications) will lead to competition if remaining firms are allowed to cross-own or vertically integrate. His work has appeared in the leading journals including Rand Journal of Economics and the International Journal of Industrial Organization. For more details on Phillip Parker, see https://www.insead.edu/faculty/philip-m-parker