Managing Culture Transformation in Indian Companies
It’s hard to define culture because it is soft, elusive, complex and difficult to measure. However from business perspective, we can view culture as sum total of three elements: Behaviors (Individual or organizational), Business Outcomes of behaviors, and Drivers that influence behavioral patterns. Drivers of behavior can be classified into four types: Personal, Social, Organizational, and Models. Here, the drivers “Organizational” and “Models” can be altered to change the underlying behavior of a given culture while the other two – “Personal” and Social” generally need to be understood and worked with. This is the fundamental approach that needs to be recognized during an acquisition in order to develop and execute a practical approach to cultural integration. Therefore, Managing Cultural transformation is the process of implementing drivers that in turn change behaviors or create new or modified behaviors.
Whenever an acquisition takes place, general expectation is that the overall productivity would increase however, cultural misalignment often leads to decreased productivity and lower revenues and therefore, combined entity would be of less worth than expected. For example a consensus culture based company may be good at making best decisions but at the cost of time lost. On the other hand, a command-and-control culture based company may be good at making fast decisions but such decisions are prone to risks. Combination of such two cultures will need a strong Culture transformation strategy to foster value creation in the long run.
Indian Business Culture and Management system is a product of social, economic and religious factors. Indians are conscious of social order and hierarchy and their status compared to others. Indians value strong family ties and extended family relationships which has resulted in greater significance of inter-personal relationships at work place. In 1999, Steffen Braasch coined “Adaptation and Leadership” style for managing Indian
Whenever an acquisition takes place, general expectation is that the overall productivity would increase however, cultural misalignment often leads to decreased productivity and lower revenues and therefore, combined entity would be of less worth than expected. For example a consensus culture based company may be good at making best decisions but at the cost of time lost. On the other hand, a command-and-control culture based company may be good at making fast decisions but such decisions are prone to risks. Combination of such two cultures will need a strong Culture transformation strategy to foster value creation in the long run.
Indian Business Culture and Management system is a product of social, economic and religious factors. Indians are conscious of social order and hierarchy and their status compared to others. Indians value strong family ties and extended family relationships which has resulted in greater significance of inter-personal relationships at work place. In 1999, Steffen Braasch coined “Adaptation and Leadership” style for managing Indian