Research & Development and papers written by Dr. Uday Salunkhe, Group Director, Welingkar
Unraveling the mystical Indian organization culture Co-authored by Prof Dr. Uday Salunkhe
Introduction
The culture origins of the Indian subcontinent can be tracked back to the Indus valley civilizations, the remains of which are cherished today as archeological treasures. Today, the culture diversity is marked by 25 states and 7 union territories and 24 chief Indian languages.
Culture and the Individual
Culture is created by the interactions between individuals. Individuals are affected by the culture. The relationship between the two needs careful study. Personality Traits and Workplace Culture by Mark Mallinger and Ileana Rizescu offers some thoughts on the relationship between the individual and organizational culture. They describe the Integrated Cultural Framework, which contains six dimensions.
Organizational culture
To decipher the organization culture, Dr. Uday Salunkhe, Group Director, Welingkar conducted his study in the following manner:
- Read about the Company through their literature; brochures, advertising messages, Annual Reports, Press Reports
- Study the physical settings of the Company
- Interview Company people/employees
- Observe how people spend their time
- Test how the company greets strangers and attend telephone calls
International Culture Issues
Differing national cultures can have a big effect on international mergers or joint ventures. Organization culture is the way business owners and managers structure and organize the company to obtain their objectives.
In this paper Dr. Uday Salunkhe made an attempt to study organizational culture by segmenting the sample of the companies into
- Family -managed Companies
Salient features:
- They prefer a multi-purpose person- an employee who will be an accountant, administrator, sales person etc. This is because they like to limit the number of employees on roll
- The person is bound to the organization and is extremely devoted, subservient to the owner and spends his lifetime there
- Employee Turnover is kept minimum
Salient features:
- Goals and objectives of the company are clearly defined
- Cost and Financial data is utilized for rewards and guidance
- Considerable emphasis on training and self-development
- Involvement of subordinates is high
- Structured relationship amongst employees
- Achievement is recognized
- Public sector companies
Salient Features:
- Overstaffing
- Limited Vision, for the Chief Executive’s tenure is for two years
- Major decisions influenced by Ministry
- Good emphasis on training & development
- Work climate does not encourage employees to do their best and perform well
- Organization does not reward personnel on the basis of merit
- Multinational companies
Salient Features:
- The emphasis is on quantitative budgets and task-oriented
- Well-defined Goals & Objectives which are reviewed periodically
- Performance Evaluation based on results
- Openness/ Candidness professed but not practiced
- Downward Communication
- Power in the hands of few
Dr. Uday Salunkhe, Group Director, WeSchool says “This paper is a culmination of a research study conducted in India on ‘Changing face of Indian Organization Culture’. In particular this paper identifies and groups companies into four segments and dissects culture into: Organization Communication, Management team evaluation, work group assessment, management self-perception, organization relations and organization changes.”
Contributed by Prof. Dr P S Rao, Prof. Ketna L Mehta and Prof Dr. Uday Salunkhe, Group Director, WeSchool.
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