Corporate culture under the lens

Divya Khanna's book makes a case for a more humane and engaging corporate culture. She argues our status consciousness and competitiveness make our careers a collection of shorter sprints

The Company We Keep – Insights into Indian Corporate Culture

Author: Divya Khanna

Publisher:  Penguin Random House

Pages: 264

Price: Rs 499

"Culture does not make people. People make culture,” says Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in We Should All Be Feminists.

Divya Khanna who is a management graduate and an experienced media professional having worked in the leading multinational advertising agencies (Lowe Lintas & J Walter Thompson), has brought out a perceptive book on Indian corporate culture, holding up a mirror to the conscious and unconscious biases and cultural conditioning we all have in our corporate life — the culture we have made over the years in our corporations.

The author has done extensive quantitative and qualitative surveys and narrates numerous stories and the experiences of professionals across the country that makes the book an interesting read. The book also draws insights from experienced experts in the field of human relations (R R Nair, director – HR of Unilever Group Cos), psychotherapy (Kalyani Capoor, mental health professional), business (Ashok Capoor, business consultant and former managing director of Diageo – United Spirits) and design consulting (Rohit Krishan Gulati, architect, design consultant and founder director of Incubis Consultants). Their perspectives on Indian corporate behaviour at an individual level emanating from our cultural underpinnings enriches the book.

The book discusses some of the distinctive elements of Indian corporate behaviour like the corporate caste system, jugaad at work, workaholism, gender inequality, work-life balance and so on. Status consciousness, the author observes, is a conspicuous Indian trait. Organisations are still hierarchical and foster an inherent disregard for employees at their lower levels as they hold little power. Juniors are treated more aggressively while seniors are flattered and pandered to. We force our people under tremendous pressure to demonstrate commitment and sacrifice for the organisation. This gets accentuated as we are culturally conditioned to communicate less assertively with our seniors and more aggressively with our juniors.

The author notes that as we seek the materialistic success of the corporate world in a liberal economy, the beliefs we carry about how to achieve success remain rooted in the past that glorifies personal sacrifice. There is a constant justification for differences in the way gender is perceived, programmed and perpetuated in the country, reinforcing societal bias about women’s safety. Deep rooted patriarchal views foster a negative culture and hostile emotion towards women at their workplace. The idea embedded in the Gita, “do your work without worrying about the fruits of your labour,” often creates confusion and conflicts in the minds of people working in Western-oriented corporate structures that over-emphasise performance-based reward systems. While we focus on our connections at the office, we hardly connect with our colleagues in a more authentic and meaningful way. Most of these observations and insights resonate well with our personal experiences.

Those with international exposure can draw from their experiences and identify the nuanced differences of various cultures — Chinese, Japanese, European, American, and become more sensitive to other cultures.

The author also discusses the cultural underpinnings as we navigate the corporate life cycle from the induction boot camp through mid-careers and the shifting goals of our professional career as we seek purpose and relevance around retirement. Adjust and accommodate becomes the preferred attitude to anything new and we pride ourselves on being flexible. Loyalty seems to be getting lower priority and cost controls are becoming important as we see it from large scale layoffs across India too. Relationships between employers and employees have become transactional. The author observes that while our corporate careers and lives have the span of a marathon, our status consciousness and competitiveness often make them a collection of shorter sprints. Our corporate persona and designations impact our wider social interactions and personal networks.

As the country becomes a dominant global player integrating intensively with the rest of the world, awareness of our cultural nuances is critical for the Indian professionals to work effectively with the rest of the world.  The successes of the 25-odd Indian professionals who are leading the global corporations suggests that the Indian cultural backdrop and upbringing can be a multiplier for career growth if our professionals can melt and gel with other cultures. Building on our cultural strengths and minimising impact of our negative behaviours can enhance successful international careers for Indian professionals.

The author hopes that the post-Covid world, which has taught us many new aspects of managing our work life, can possibly help us re-evaluate our corporate culture to be more humane, engaging, inclusive and productive.

This book is a welcome read and is a very good addition to the limited study and literature we have on how our culture impacts our corporate life and the aspects of which we need to be conscious and aware as we engage more and more with other cultures.

The reviewer is a senior corporate professional who worked with a leading FMCG MNC and an Indian media group