Impact of culture on the style and process of management and leadership in India

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,0 (A), University of Teesside (Teesside Business School), course: International Management Styles, 50 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Since the liberalisation of India many international players have entered the Indian market either on joint ventures with some Indian companies or independently. India has emerged as a major participant in the global market. For example, in the field of information technology it has become an important force in the world. Given this kind of development, management researchers in the recent past have also started showing interest in the Indian business environment and in finding out effective ways of doing business as well as managing people in their Indian operations. They have realised that many of the management practices and managerial styles as applied in the west can not be transplanted exactly in the same manner in the Indian context. The role of culture as it relates to norms, values and behaviour patterns has become increasingly important in the field of management issues. There is considerable evidence (e.g. of Hofstede and Trompenaars/Hampden-Turner) that people of different regions hold different work-related values. Such knowledge is important for international as well as national companies. Norms and values create assumptions and expectations. If they are not the same for people working together, troubles may arise. Such mismatches of perception are of special interest in the field of leadership, particularly regarding the relationship between leaders and subordinates. The ability to understand and interpret such situations is the basic prerequisite for being able to behave and communicate in an effective manner. After giving basic social-demographic features about the country, this paper examines the impact of culture on the style and process of management and leadership in India. The characteristics of the Indian culture are identified, analysed and interpreted. Culture is described from the general to the specific. Starting with national culture, the cultural dimensions of India are appraised using the models of Hofstede, Trompenaars/Hamden-Turner, Hall, Lewis and Fukuyama, moving on to the business culture and then family culture. The second part of the paper defines and discusses the different leadership styles and their effectiveness in the Indian environment in order to reach a conclusion as to how managers should actually do their job.