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Learning Objectives:
 Understand the Concept of National Cultures using
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Prominent Frameworks
Explain the Impact of National Culture on Behaviour
within Organisations
Observe the Cultural Context for the Indian
Organisations
Understand what Challenges can the Cultural
Differences Pose for a Manager
Evaluate how Managers can Deal with the
Differences in National Culture for Effective
Performance
“Collective programming of the mind which distinguishes members
of one [social group] from another”.
This ‘software’ emerges as a group learns how to solve survival
related problems, over a period of time, in an external environment
and its problems of internal integration
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Cultures of nations evolve as all societies face
the same basic questions, issues or problems,
but they differ in their answers
Factors like climate, natural resources,
historical events shape how people view
themselves, others, and their relationship
with the world around them, their orientation
to time and space and other views using
which people deal with their lives
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The cultures are studied across nations rather than by
homogeneous regional, ethnic or linguistic groups
because research is more practical that way
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But a general view is that all cultures can be understood
if we could compare them in terms of:
 How people view themselves and the world round them
 How people view Time
 How people view Space
 How people view relationship with other people, and how
do they communicate … among other parameters
Understanding Cultures Through
Cultural Frameworks
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Most senior managers in Indian organisations still have
direct experience of the agricultural, caste-based society
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For the younger generation also, the experience of
growing up in Indian tradition and cultural pattern does
have a deep-rooted influence on a wide range of issues
including the behaviour within the organisation
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Under the British rule, India was modernized, but its social
values remained
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It is important for us to realize that even common values
are manifested differently in behaviour across cultures.
Important challenges arise out of cultural differences for
managers who deal with multi-cultural business
environment
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Strong hierarchy, personalized relationships
 Indian social system is steeply hierarchical and highly conscious
of status differences
 Powerful, senior and elderly people command special respect
 Subordinates are expected to show unquestioned loyalty and
trust (Sra[d]dha) and in return, complete protection and care
flows from the superior
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Family/social group centered
 Employees tend to be Collectivist, not Individualistic in
organisations in India. The basic unit of society is thought to be
family, rather than an individual. The primary commitment of
an individual is to family, not work
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Visibly influenced by religious / spiritual beliefs
 These attitudes and practices are regularly reinforced
by frequent religious festivals and rituals, rites and
specific menus associated with those festivals
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Coexistence of Contrasts
 Realizing detachment from the “Maya” (Illusion) of
the material world
 Transcend it for achieving un-ending union with the
supreme being,
 the ‘popular’ religious are more ritualistic
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Desire to be embedded in a Group
 Indians feel comfortable if they are with other members of
preferred in-groups, who are usually their families, friends,
colleagues and members of their own caste
 At work, informal networks are formed along these lines
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Context sensitive or Situational Behaviour
 Most people in India perceive a situation and the responses
to it as one episode in an on-going flow of interactive
relationships between situations and responses. That means
that behaviour can be different on the basis of three
situational elements generally known as the Place, Time and
the Person (Desha, Kaala and Paatra)
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Our exposure to western influences is very unlikely to be
stronger than the influence of our cultural values received
during the formative years
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The orientation of ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’, along with high
power distance may hamper effective teamwork and
acceptance of self-managing teams as a work form
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When Indians come together, consensus and cooperation
become very difficult to achieve, and arguments stretch on,
‘outsiders’ are not trusted
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Proneness for dependency, and educational system that is
still along the British line of thinking and fails to acknowledge
and develop many subtle aspects of the ‘Indian-ness’, makes
Indians better subordinates than leaders
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Insensitivity to cultural causes of behaviour
difference can cause managers:
 Not to recognize the other person, but to judge only on
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the basis of narrowly defined, only skill-based criteria
Ignore the reality of why a person is the way he/she is
Assume that all people are same (essentially like me)
Judge that if they are not same as I am, they are inept (or
whatever else): this can lead to racist, sexist, ethnocentric
behaviours
To Choose not to see the cultural differences and thereby
limit managerial choices
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Encourage employees to focus the suitability of the values
to organisation’s survival and growth, rather than rigidly
focusing on values as ends in themselves
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Create a sense of belonging among Employees
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Remember that some individuals may differ in their values
from the values of their national culture
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Select rewards in a way that they are in harmony with the
cultural values, not against them
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Discern which cultural values are most deeply held and
unlikely to change