The Organisation man

As the corporate world turns increasingly multinational,businesses find themselves in a large global village. In this new address,people of various nationalities are thrown together and suddenly traditional cultures begin to collide headlong with one another. “How does a country’s culture influence its work or organisational culture,and how does a foreign manager fit in?” asks Prof Jagdeep Chhokar,former dean of IIMA,whose book Culture and Leadership Across the World: The GLOBE Book of In-Depth Studies of 25 Societies,co-edited with Felix C. Brodbeck and Robert J. House,has recently won the prestigious 2008 Ursula Gielen Global Psychology Book Award. The award is given every year by the International Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association to the authors of the book that makes “the most significant contribution to psychology as a global discipline”.

“On the face of it,all organisations look similar but when you interact with organisations across countries,you begin to see glaring differences,” says Chhokar. For instance,the acute focus on punctuality shared by the Swedes and the Japanese is a sharp contrast to the flexibility with which Indian view time. “In France,a manager will interrupt a conversation to answer his cellphone,but never so in Germany. These minor differences when extrapolated into the work life take on a major dimension,” he says. “It was fine in closed economies when one had to interact only with one’s own type. In an open market,it’s important for a businessman,a manager or a corporate to be in tune with the work culture of the foreign land,” he adds.

The book has experts in 62 countries documenting the societal cultures in their organisations. The India chapter,written by Chhokar,was based on research by four focus groups,media analysis,interviews,unobstrusive observations and 212 questionnaires distributed among private and public sector companies. Added to these was Chhokar’s own curiosity about human and organisational behaviour. He had his task cut out because in India,there’s no one-size fits all. The backslapping,friendly banter which makes up office culture in North and East India isn’t as strong in the South. “India is also a traditionally collectivist society because we have a strong joint family culture. The chapter offers helpful tips to a foreign manager in India—time and lots of patience.

News of the award left Chhokar “shocked,and them quietly satisfied”. “Being management people,we expected recognition from a management body. But,an award for psychology…that blew my mind,” he says. But before he travels to Toronto in August to receive his award,Chhokar,who part of the Association for Democratic Reforms,is trying to understand “the organisational behaviour of political parties. They do not fit into any of the standard descriptions of organisation as explained in management books”. Another book,perhaps?