Culture Differences in Organizations

Culture- Impact on Business Environment “Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.” Pt Jawaharlal Nehru.
These are strong words indeed from the first Prime Minister of Independent India and as the borders across the globe become more and more irrelevant, understanding of one another’s culture has become a crucial aspect to succeed in this globalized world. From simply creating a web-site or physically opening a store in a foreign country, understanding local culture is often overlooked and has caused more business failure than any other business aspect. But what is culture? How different can a culture be? How to understand and adapt to a different culture? To answer all these questions, we had with us Mr. Amar Raj Singh, Owner of Gamma Pizzakraft Pvt Ltd who took out time from his busy schedule to enlighten us on this crucial topic. After a warm welcome, Mr. Singh started the lecture on a rather humorous note and had everyone rolling with laughter. Throughout the interaction, he was very effervescent with his humorous anecdotes which kept the students engrossed.

Mr. Amar illustrated five cultural orientations which prevail in society like Universalism vs Particularism, Individualism vs Collectivism, Neutralism vs Selectionism, Specialization vs Diversification and Restrictivism vs Inclusivism. These orientations explain some of the very fundamental questions like: What matters more, team work or individual effort? What is more important, you as a being or your actions? What is more agreeable, following a universal rule book or creating our own? House was enlightened with advancements that have taken place in Indian culture .Topics such as growth of foreign investments in India, supplier-buyer relation, relationship with consumers, choice in terms of varieties were discussed in detail.

He, then, discussed about the differences in perceptions and viewpoints of people working in same organizations or studying in same institutions and speculated the reasons to be the cross cultural diversity or the upbringing of the concerned people. He also discussed how the past, present and future of people are interconnected, and how most of the people tend to build their ideologies and opinions based on their past. He very lucidly explained three approaches that define our attitudes viz. Futuristic, present oriented and past oriented.

He also shed some light on the different approaches to cultures: Sequential and Synchronic, illustrating India being a country which largely follows Synchronic culture.
Moving ahead, he asked some students to share their experiences regarding the culture differences that they had observed while they were doing summer internship projects. The students cited examples of several firms like Maruti, Tata, etc. and what they have noticed about how culture differences affect the very functioning of these companies and how concepts like high power distance and hierarchy are forcing companies to realign and rethink their strategy. To further highlight the importance of culture in today’s business context, he elucidated the entry strategy of McDonalds in India. He explained the three factors that made it a successful venture in India- first maintaining Indianization with Internationalization on its menu; second factor was branding it as a family restaurant and third being its affordability. These factors show how sensitivity towards local culture is essential for businesses to flourish in any country.

To conclude, we saw the importance of culture in a business environment and how important it is for firms to imbibe the local culture. We also understood how businesses can fall flat on their feet merely because of cultural differences. Hence, a certain degree of cognizance about diverseness of cultures and disparateness of values is essential for having a competitive edge.