The Hindu Business Line : Management knowledge: Global or local?

THE debate within Indian management about the alleged conflict between Western concept and Indian practice has survived two generations and evokes strong positions. The point at issue is whether theories primarily emerging from American consultants and academicians can really apply to Indian market conditions and a vastly different society.

The usual implication is that the young enthusiasts uncritically plump for whatever is foreign, and the latest from Harvard Business Review or the best-seller list, while the more senior, `patriotic' and realistic managers still feel a loyalty to indigenous methods of managing. We could, however, dispose of the implied and fallacious patriotic element pointing out that this should then apply equally to all established scientific knowledge. So there is no more reason to object to western management science than there is to shun physics or chemistry as we know it.

Yet where management is concerned, the analogy with other sciences becomes a bit trickier, because it is strictly limited to one aspect of theory. Let me explain. A part of what is taught as management by business schools has less to do with the actual process of getting results through people than tools and techniques of measurement and analysis. To the extent that tools are universal, such as using the PC or e-mail, the books contain universal material.

Typically, such management science, if it can be called so, deals with the finite, inanimate and controllable aspects — such as machines in operations and manufacturing. Industrial engineering, work measurement, process improvements, statistical analysis of process parameters and quality control and even parts of quantitative market research can indeed be treated akin to physical sciences. Rules can be prescribed; books and manuals transported across continents, software applied to similar situations regardless of where it happens. Indeed, without this flexibility, India should be able to get nowhere with the outsourcing industry. The flip side of management has to do with organisations; and people, both as employees and as consumers. Here the scene gets murky — management knowledge rests on foundations laid by psychological and sociological theory.

Theories as to how people perceive and form images, and what makes them act, are the core of behavioural science in management. One can make universal generalisations about them. Some knowledge is purely descriptive; others, such as how and why people buy or behave as they generally do, are still subject to conjecture.

Advertising, product development, marketing and motivational HR policies would be at a loss without them. Yet, the paradox is that while basic human motivations, needs and wants are much the same, this is not true of behaviour in groups, across groups and in large corporate organisations. Culture becomes a major consideration here. Not only do countries have a distinctive flavour, but so do organisations and regions.

In India, therefore, behaviour has to be moderated by a deeper understanding of what works in each setting. The difficulties imposed by the cultural diversity at both national and corporate levels have come to occupy centre-stage in managerial discussions because of the recent focus on massive and deliberate change. This requires a higher level of mental sophistication and agility in managerial attitudes to acquiring new knowledge and using it. They must continue to operate with problem-solving procedures and techniques wherever they can find them — imported from Japan, Europe or the US.

Meanwhile, they must always develop for themselves an entirely situational set of currently useful generalisations about how to deal with the large-scale human transactions in business.

There is great danger in blindly applying the conclusions from another society and time to our situation. The science might be universal but the art has to be shaped by local circumstance and intuition.

(Feedback can be sent to srchander23@netscape.net)