Bridging the Cultural Gap

Q. There is a culutral gap between parent company (for MNC) and Indian workforce What are the measures requried at HQ of the parent company to brigde the cultural gap? Also at times, brigding the huge gap between aspirations due to societal pressure and capability, results to loss of good professionals failing in the next role, how should one cope with this to maintian the balance?

Social-cultural aspects in multi-national companies are becoming a major concern for the employees as well as the employers, more than socio-economic issues. The challenge in these organizations is to fix the cultural gaps, by learning to build a bridge over cultural distances. Some companies have realized that business happens locally and is dictated by the way people transact business daily, and all countries are not the same.

In large multi-cultural companies, many people working cross-country would not know about the local country and its working. This cultural gap might create misunderstanding, for example it is important to understand the local time zone of transacting business. There have been some cases where the senior management is sensitive about such issues of working hours.

Business organizations are made up of people and they are free to follow their own culture, but it is important to assure that there is no imposition of one's culture. Also, the local community isn't harmed and are open to have new culture. Thus, for the organizations it is important to make a stand for multi-culture ethnicity and protect employee's interests.

The multi-organizations having a mixed cultural environment must ensure that leaders or departmental heads are sensitive towards cultural and geographic situations. There are instances when multi-national organizations have tagged India as an archaic land, which shows that there is a lack of understanding in the culture and local concerns. It is the responsibility of the companies to articulate the cultural imperatives with mechanisms such as communication forum, recognition platforms, and development of strong leaders who are open to cross-culture.

Living in the Right Perspective

Cross-culture working is an issue that employees need to work upon beyond the social pressure. The issue stems to the fact how one adapts to the changing needs and thrives to overcome the challenges of new geography, culture, and local lifestyle. It is not only about survival of the fittest, but how one prospers as the organization grows along. In a corporate scenario, one needs to get the right knowledge, right psychological, maturity, etc. The situation becomes difficult when people are unable to cope with new circumstances or challenges of the new roles.

An excellent professional is lost due to aspirations stemming from social pressure-this statement defines incapability of an individual to move to for the next role. There is a saying-what got you here, will not get you there, which means that-a set of competency is only important as long as one is performing their current role and it is important to acquire a new set of competencies for the next level. There have been examples of good people who were successful at lower levels of the organization, but when pushed them to a higher level, their competencies don't measure up any longer. Therefore, organizations must assess competencies at the time of defining roles.

It is also pertinent over here to say that organizations at times are not able to manage aspirations of high performers and resort to classical solution of promoting. Therefore, the term promoting to the next level of incompetency is so clichéd yet so relevant. However, I have seen that when people are focused and know what they want also figure out how to get there and try 100%. This path is simple but needs lots of perseverance assuccess is guaranteed. So excellence is a daily diet of a performer, needs to be espoused at all levels, if not would lead to failure.