Gopalakrishnan was speaking at the inauguration of Symbiosis Institute of Business Management's (SIBM) HR Meet `People Factor -- Perform or Perish' in Mumbai, on Friday.

While laying stress on the uniqueness of the Indian manager with regards to its emphasis to Anglo-American literature and his/her social moorings, he said: "He/she is a unique ball in the international area -- very often proving to be a success."

According to Gopalakrishnan, significant trends that are affecting the business today are: Dispersion of markets due to the nature of our population, tremendous growth rate of the service sector, and cross-cultural churning, especially with regards to the blue-collared and unorganised labour.

As perestimates, there will be 430 million people in the unorganised and 30 million in the organised sector in 2011.

At the seminar, HR heads and other distinguished executives from the industry discussed and shared their views on defining the HR philosophy, how it plays a major role in corporate performance, on competence based HR systems and processes, and as to why Indian firms should wake up to `empowerment' as a major HR tool to growth.

Talking on "HR Philosophy and Corporate Performance", Oberoi Hotels vice president (HR) Sunil Kishore said: "While we are entering an era of corporate opportunity, there is a need for organisational transformation. The biggest piece of activity is human resource."

He said that HR is the fulcrum of an organisation's growth. "There is a lot of changes happening but within change, the most important factor is people -- the only permanent factor," he said.

Speaking on the subject, LG Electronics vice chairman (HR) YV Verma said that for better corporate performance theorganisation needs to inculcate the HR philosophy of vision, trust, team work, speed, training, innovation and welfare.

With regards to "Empowerment: Strategies and Processes", Marico Industries chief HR office Rakesh Pandey dwelt on the Marico experience. "Empowerment is not a feel good factor, but it is an important business imperative. This belief is a key driver to the journey of empowerment in a business organisation," he said.

It was concluded that even as empowerment may be perceived to have certain negative aspects attached to it like insecurity and a bleak chance of failures, it is by and large the most important HR tool to successful management and increase in productivity in turbulent times like these.

"Having people with the right competencies shall be the competitive edge that the organisations will have in the future," said Gillette India HR head Arun Sehgal on "Competence based HR Systems and Process"

ITC Agrotech vice president (HR) Raju Vir reasoned that the whole `competencemovement' was essentially an effort to address the million dollar question: "Why some people are more successful than others?", that has baffled quite a few organisations.