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Blending of Indian cultures and values with international management principles

Alexandrina Maria PAUCEANU, PhD


Department of Marketing and Management
College of Commerce and Business Administration
Dhofar University, Salalah, Oman
E-mail: mariapauceanu@gmail.com
apauceanu@du.edu.om
The concept of management is nearly a hundred years old but the relics of its origin
can be dated back to the ancient times. In the context of Indian management, the book on
Arthashastra lists down the key ideas of management in the context of a kingdom. The
modern times have been largely affected by the western world in terms of management of the
corporate world. The Japanese culture of management has affected the global management in
terms of enhancing productivity and quality of products being produced. The Japanese
culture has reduced. These concepts have blended well with the Western concepts of
management. In this age of information and technology, India has not exactly got a strong
foothold as the Japanese in the management techniques and system. However, it will not be
wrong to state that values and ethics in business have started to gain importance in the global
scenario and much of these cultures have been inspired through the Indian context.

Business Ethics
The establishment if management institutes in India was initiated with a view to study
the management principles in India. The profession in Management was historically based on
the idea of technology transfer. The tools and techniques applied in management of Indian
companies were applied with neutrality on grounds of ethics, values and culture. Scholars
have argued that within the cultural context of management, the global managers today face
the risk of managing people and workforce across countries while the Indian history of being
ruled by multiple dynasties leaves them with a rich history and systems of cultural
management.
Much of the global management systems are directed towards a very narrow line of
thought. The Western school of thought into management of the corporate systems is
primarily and mostly directed towards the stock market and its movements. This vision needs
to be more comprehensive in the globalised world and it is believed that the Indian
Management systems will fill in the intellectual gap in the vision of the organisation. The
higher vision will now be based on the attainment of higher order purpose and the Indian

Management system can help in attaining the same by boosting entrepreneurship and
bringing in ethics and care for human value within the system. The western management
culture has been of the faith that their systems of management are all inclusive while the
Indian management systems adopt the western systems but deal with people in India based on
the ethics and value systems developed within the Vedas. The inner soul of Indian managers
and the people is still based on Vedic principles of trust, calmness and cooperation. The
dictum from the ancient texts that the earth provides enough to feed every being but fails to
satisfy his greed still holds valid. This philosophy was seen to hold true in the case of
Lehman brothers and is still valued well in the day to day operations in Indian businesses
(Bercovitch & Foulkes, 2012). Hence, one can safely assume that the entre management
though in India is guided under self-regulation, calmness, ethics, integrity and mutual trust.

Indian Spirituality and Modern Business


Chanakya was an ancient economist and political scientist and his book on
Arthashastra contains some of the ancient Indian spiritual thoughts. He justified that in
management of large teams, each person has to work towards proving his self-worth and
similarly, in management of a large group or a company, one needs to establish his personal
worth to gain name in a new environment. The second lesson on fearlessness state that a
leader needs to have patience, lack fear and persevere to set and achieve lofty goals based on
a well charted out plan. A leader is also responsible for picking up great talents in order to
support his goal and groom them to work towards the same. The third lesson of Indian
spirituality on modern management is that each new hire requires and extensive background
check. This is critical for new hires in high positions because they have company critical
information and hence the company has to assure its steps in order to protect its business and
competitiveness (Allen, 2011). Chanakya also summarises the ideal qualities of a healthy
organisation. He believed that a successful organisation can have divergent and diversified
views when strong teams and correct work divisions can assure higher results. He also stated
that peer pressure was actually beneficial for extraction of the best from the people. It was the
responsibility of the leader to find out roles that are based on strengths and avoid conflict.
From this discussion, one can safely conclude that ancient spiritual thought of management
was much in line with the modern approach to management across the globe. Indian ethos has
filled in the gaps within existing paradigms of management and leadership.

Current Trends in Management Thought


The present management scenario is based on the ideals of gracing the east while
keeping pace with western management cultures. Personalities that have earlier been driven
based on profitability are now being run on principles of moral values. The current trends in
management that have blended with Indian systems have made a paradigm shift from the Icentred approach of producing results to a non-egoistic other centred approach of producing
performers (Priya & Misra, 2011). The western approach of organisation of men, materials
and money has undergone Indianisation of mobilisation of money alone. The motivation
principles of praising, reprimanding, pushing and punishing have been replaced by inspiring,
empowering, supporting and celebrating. Control procedures and reporting mechanisms have
developed into an approach that commands always moving on and setting examples (Alfons,
2011).
The recent downfall of the European Union owing to the great financial crisis has
been a result of huge management failure. The European Financial crisis has followed the US
financial crisis where the downfall of large corporates was seen to have complete absence of
managerial control and lack of trust (Singh, 2013). The corporate failures were guided by
lack of transparency and weak reporting systems that had made the very roots of the
corporate culture very weak (Gao, 2010). The key pointers that drive managerial success in
India is the thought of looking beyond the interest of the shareholders and taking active
participation in the larger public mission and national purpose. This is germinated the seeds
for corporate social responsibility in the modern management era. Indian managers try to
overcome the hurdles they face in their day to day business activities by way of resilience,
adaptation ad improvisation upon the problems (Pandey, 2011). They systems believe in
responding rather than reacting. Indian management systems propagate identification of
products and services that are capable of providing some value to the customers rather than
marketing what may have short-lived perceived usage. Indian culture strives to invest in
talent and building a culture which would help in growth of such talent. Western management
concepts are now embracing the thought of talent retention activities over new talent
acquisition policies that were held through age old traditions (Nandy, 2011; Parrish & LinderVanBerschot, 2010). Indian management systems have been far less concerned with the
interest of the shareholders in particular. They believe in sustenance of the long term business
of the company and this itself is the larger aim of the shareholders. Indian executives try to
motivate employees towards large social goals and the sustainable business principles springs
well-formed Indian management thought at large (Fernanda, 2011).

Indian management systems have undergone a huge number of phases when it comes
to eastern and western management cultures. Indian management thought has eventually
come to a point where it has absorbed western principles of management but in proper
alignment with Indian cultures and blending of Indian conditions (Misra, 2011). If such a
combination would not have occurred, conflict was inevitable based on management role
dualisms.

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