On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Venkat Mangudi <s...@venkatmangudi.com> wrote:
>> rather than waiting to be told, they'll either bring it up, or fix it >> themselves. If they think you (as the boss) are doing something >> (technically) incorrectly, or there's a better way - they'll suggest >> it. (Sometimes at the top of their voices! :) > We in India, are only recently shaking off the shackles of being > subservient to our bosses. I think it's harder than you think - it's a cultural thing, and cultures don't change so easily. > My guess is that it gets worse going east. While at Singapore, it always > amazed me how completely incompetent people could become managers and > drive fear into their teams' heart. They were scared to even talk to > their managers. And it was worse in Seoul. Smokers used to hide the > cigarette they were smoking because his manager was around. And this was > at a LG company. I almost got into trouble because the CEO of the > company was seriously offended by me not offering him a smoke and then > later on lighting my own before his. So according to the national culture analysis I like to use there are half a dozen mostly independent dimensions on which you can measure culture. The two axes we're talking about here are actually different - one is the "individual versus collective" action axis, and the other is the "high maximum power distance versus low maximum power distance" metric. The respect for bosses and deference to the CEO expectation is a function of the power distance in the society (and a little about "face" which is a short term versus long term cultural orientation dimension) the individual initiative is more related to how much the culture values individual action over group action. Anyway, I think most of the differences we are discussing here can be analyzed in terms of differences in national culture. -- Charles
