Culture in Indian Organisations: Evidence-Based Research and Practice

Abstract

A Google search on the 29 November 2014 at 2200 h GMT inputting the words ‘culture in Indian organisations’ generated ‘about 18,000,000 results (0.38 s)’. Similarly the same words in Google Scholar yielded ‘about 89,300 results (0.06 s)’. These results are not surprising given the World Bank predicting that globally in the near future, India will be the second largest economy after China. The recent high growth rates reported by businesses in the Indian economy, whilst laudable from some perspectives (Cappelli et al. 2010), also need to be sustainable, especially amidst its high cultural diversity. As the world’s largest and most diverse democracy, the Indian society can be best described as a ‘cultural melting pot’ with a combination of multiple cultures, value systems and sociopolitical and institutional orientations. Further, India as one of the oldest civilisations is now regarded the second largest growing economy in the world. As such, there is growing international interest in understanding and unbundling the intricacies of Indian culture (Milner 1994; Nicholson and Sahay 2001), especially through empirical evidence.