Western Management Concepts in Indian Companies

I want to share some insights about management in Indian context, how it effects and so and so when compared with the western management theories and concepts. So let’s start………

Hope this will be helpful for the young entrepreneurs in understanding the ground rules in India…

Motivation in Indian Context.

Management as we know today is basically borrowed from the west, mainly USA. It’s not from Indian origin and it’s not based on Indian heritage. Indian B-schools design MBA course curriculum based on western Business Schools (for your kind information case study based study methodology is adopted from Harvard’s itself).Thus they ignore the Indian situation.

Management is mainly behavioral study (i.e. consumer, market, buyer, seller…), but they don’t teach how Indian’s behave… (Remember ganguly’s).

Lets not go deep into pro and cons about every thing in management. Let’s have a look into subject Organisational Behavior and Maslov’s theory of motivation.

Maslov’s theory of motivation:

Management text books refer Maslov’s need theory in motivating employees.
He says- a person have five needs—physiological, security, social, esteem, and self actualization. A manager or leader is to satisfy these needs of his subordinates to motivate him to achieve more.

Lets us analyze this theory in Indian context:

In a company, who should motivate workers who are in majority? (Here I am not talking about top management). In day to day life a supervisor, a Graduate engineer Trainee (GET) or a young management trainee (YMT) works with the bottom line people. Now my question is does the GET’s or YMT’s have the authority to satisfy the physiological needs of his sub-ordinate? Only the top management decides whether he deserves a promotion or salary hike or not.

Now security needs: The offer letter which every company gives clearly states that it’s a contract between two parties and this can be terminated by either with or without notice. So no security…. he he he…

As the two basic needs are not fulfilled by a superior or an executive who should motivate his juniors. So Maslov’s theory does not help us in practical field in India.

Another context – In Japan they have life-long employment and they are doing well. We in India have permanent jobs in government organizations and you know the rest of the story…. So, Job security brings positive result in Japan and negative result in India.

Any Comments and ideas to share...?

Wait and Watch for part 2....