Manesar Incident: An example of Management style lacking Cultural Intelligence

A look at the Manesar incident from the cultural aspect would give us good information about what triggered the incident and how it could have been avoided in contrast to what the stalwarts of HR in India said about management practices.

India is a country where hierarchy runs in the veins and it has been this way since long may be since the time Aryans entered into India. Aryans in my opinion have started the hierarchy element in India if we trace back India’s history. History always quotes how Aryans were very masculine, tall, and in all aspects better than the Dravidians. History also quotes that ‘Aryans won the war over the Dravidians; thereby the Dravidians were pushed to Southern India.’ What started a show of valour continued over the ages which ultimately got seeped into their professions. Out of these professions, castes were born; and then the story of discrimination continues. Never can we hear in India that a sweeper sat with his maalik and had a tea together. These kinds of stories are prominent in the west that the sweeper took a break and had a beer with his employer. In India most often, but not all times (rhetoric) our reaction towards a person comes from our status and the other person’s status. Status derived from profession. We Indians are used to discriminating the people with low paid jobs.

In Delhi, a cycle rickshaw passenger addresses the rickshaw wala starting with an abuse, and the rickshaw wala too takes it with humility as he considers that his profession is the basest level of all hence the abuses are a part and parcel of his job. Imagine a manager of some jazzy XYZ company being abused liked that by a customer. The manager will pounce on him and tear him up with a law suit. The fact here is neither that the rickshaw wala is a weak guy without strength nor that the manager is a hefty guy who hits the gym 3 hours a day, but the valour to fight back in India was derived from the profession they are into.  The chain of discrimination in Delhi typically is this. ‘Customer shouts at the taxi driver coz he’s getting late. The Taxi driver then hurls an abuse at the auto driver for cutting the lane and making a mess of the road for other travellers, the auto wala in turn abuses the rickshaw wala for moving the rickshaw slowly and the rickshaw wala has no one to shout at, so he mutters to himself about his own situation.’ Courage to discriminate is the by-product of profession.

In this kind of an atmosphere in India, how can we think about having fair bi-partite negotiations and settlement? Ever since Manesar incident broke out, most of the HR biggies have let out a newspaper statement or a twitter post or a blog, stating how the west countries’ manage it and what the best practices are. Arre Bahiyya, why do we forget that a best practice is always a function of the culture, the leadership, the attitude of the employees involved, and everything surrounding it?  Best practice is the product of a systems approach of dealing with the practice. To make a best practice, just mimicking the practice alone would not fetch us a name in Harvard Business Review or Fortune Magazine. Best practice is way of life for any organization, wherein to make a practice the best, the practice has to be strategically imbedded into the culture of the organization and involve years of patience and change to do it. This was how Southwest Airlines were able to achieve, so did Singapore Airlines and so did Indian PSUs’. Indian PSUs’ are hailed to have the best practices for work-life balance and private sector units trying to copy them. Failure will be the result of mimicking.

Indian culture is governed by high levels of ostracism and discrimination and same is the case when it comes to the management and the workmen in every company and same is case in Maruti Suzuki as well. The difference in case of Maruti Suzuki was that culture of that area where Manesar is located is that workmen are not prone to being humiliated for long. Many know Haryanvi’s to be short tempered, Biharis’ to be hard working, Manipuris’ to be high on style quotient and Tamilians to be uncompromising with their food habits. You cannot force a Haryanvi to do a particular task for long despite resistance. Chances are that he will get up and bash you up one fine day. You cannot force a Manipuri to not spend money on good branded clothes, and at the same time you cannot force a Tamilian to eat parathas and panner for long. In all these cases, chances are that you will be beaten black and blue due to build-up of frustration. Maruti Suzuki did exactly the same; build their frustration via discrimination using unfair labour practices. I remember our law professor at TISS giving us an example in one his classes of a factory in Tamil Nadu where he was the IR Manager the workmen wanted to go on a strike coz the management denied their request for providing Horlicks milk for breakfast. Hilarious it may sound but such are indeed the cultural differences which exist and can cause an aggravation in the workmen.

In India itself, we have 28 states and 7 UTs’. In most of these states the culture is different, meaning India is not a single culture place like the west. When India is not like the west, then why do we adopt practices from the west and call it as best practice. Why did Maruti Suzuki cop the Japanese style of workplace setting (no cabin or cubicle) when it is inherent in India that a General Manager feels happy and proud if a cabin is provided to him? The call for the day is organizations should customize their practices as per the culture prevalent in area where they are located. One size fits only one. A company could be diverse in terms of geographies of operations having manufacturing capabilities spread across many states of the country, but having one culture operating in all of them may prove to be a problem. The case of Manesar would have never even occurred had that Manesar been in Gujarat or Andhra Pradesh.

Cultural Intelligence should be embedded into the working style of the management to avoid mishaps and improve the overall productivity.

Many a times we HR professionals talk about ‘Empowering the Employee so that employee works at his/her best’. Replacing an employee in the above statement with a branch office or manufacturing plant of any organization is what is needed now. ‘Empowering the facility/branch so that the contribution towards the organization is in the best possible way’ is what we should start saying. Standardizing of practices may help an organization reduce paperwork, but cannot reduce costs associated as a result of unrest caused thereof. Practices are meant for proper functioning, which nowadays are suffocating. A close look at all the situations of labour unrest in India happened have resulting out of quite different stories but one common factor which cuts across all these is lack of management’s cultural intelligence (CQ).

I’m not saying that organizations are unaware of CQ, they are; that is the reason why organizations give regional holidays to their employees at various locations. Management with a cultural centric approach can help the workmen/employees give the desired output and outcomes. It is then a best practice can be generated; when a practice is developed as a result of the culture prevalent in that region. A best practice having the outer coating of culture is generally imbibed into the breath of the organization and is hard to imitate by other organizations.

Times are fast changing. What was earlier as one culture for the whole organization may not be applicable today, management with cultural intelligence calls for a contrasting practice from the one existing today, i.e., one organization, many cultures (cultures defined by the respective regions). You may find that I’m contradicting some of the huge global organizations with many manufacturing facilities and branches across the world having only one culture but still doing so well, but when these organizations are closely noticed two points emerge; firstly, many countries and in fact some continents have similar cultures (UK and USA and many more) but in India, even our neighbours though belonging to the same country may not have the same practices as you do, may not eat the food you eat, etc.  It is at this point that Indian employee market stands aloof and secondly, most global organizations do tweak their practices so as to align with the culture of other countries. This distinction makes the global organizations fare well. India is a country just on paper, but culturally it represents a world within. So for the world as a market, is your practice globally driven or locally?