Exploring the Makeup of Indian Corporate Culture
Experiencing Burnout
Five years ago, Divya Khanna was afflicted by a malaise that might be familiar to Indian corporate executives: burnout. In her book, The Company We Keep, she says that she felt overwhelmed and undervalued. Overtaken by an ennui that depleted her motivation and sense of purpose.
As a graduate of IIM-Bangalore, Khanna had approached her work life with the zeal and relentlessness expected of someone with a pedigreed qualification. Moreover, with endearing candor, she admits that “as an ambitious newbie with awkward social skills,” she was more invested in her career than in any other life dimension
She had signed on as a management trainee with Lowe Lintas and climbed the ranks. In her last position, she was a VP & Strategic Planning Director with JWT. Torn by her own yearnings to be a writer and her father’s preference for a corporate job, advertising had seemed like a perfect middle ground. A space that licensed creativity with the structure and remuneration of a corporate career.
As an account planner, she relished meeting with clients and hearing their stories. She was fascinated by people, and by the mazy makings of human behavior.
Over time, she found herself hemmed in by the ceaseless demand to do more, without compensating support or remuneration. Advertising companies themselves were subject to larger forces. To cost-cutting measures imposed by clients, resulting in employees being squeezed. But comprehending systemic pressures did not temper her exhaustion.
At the start of 2018, she took a break.
Embarking on a Study
In the meanwhile, she stayed curious about her experience. She sensed that she wasn’t a solitary victim of corporate burnout. This was before the pandemic was to bring such issues into stark notice, adding terms like ‘quiet quitting’ and ‘The Great Resignation’ to the global lexicon.
Leveraging the most appealing aspect of her workplace stints – consumer stories – with her own proclivity to be a writer, she decided to embark on research. And turn her findings into a book.
She had started wondering if there were particular aspects to “Indian corporate culture” that fueled such burnout. Of course, ‘corporate culture’ used in the singular could hardly describe the wide variety of workplace cultures that constitute white-collar work. Family-owned Indian businesses tended to be more hierarchical than American multinationals. Even the latter would be deemed stodgy by Gen-Z entrants, accustomed to informal, new-age startups.
And despite the nation projecting a 21st Century brashness, Khanna sensed that we still suffer from colonial hangovers. Or from unequal power relations, wherein Indian workers accede to conference calls at unreasonable hours. All this, while servicing American or European daytimes, foregoing sleep and family commitments. There was also a pervasive imperative to work harder, to feed into a stereotype that “[we] are more hardworking.”
To buttress her study with reliable qualitative interviews, she partnered with Quantum Consumer Solutions. The research eventually covered people across a range of companies from Delhi and Mumbai, and included a pilot sample from Bangalore. She also drew from the expertise of senior leaders and mental health experts. The thrust, at the end of this, was to propose changes to culture, in a manner that would retain and motivate employees.
Empowering Employees
Before dwelling on the downsides of overwork or excessive stress, Khanna observes that corporate jobs are a means of empowerment for many. A route to acquiring “status, material wealth and lifestyle,” especially for folks who were denied such privileges at birth.
They are also spaces where other forms of social inequity – like caste and class – can be tackled or at least, superficially overcome. Women too might gain freedom from social strictures, with their job enabling the evasion of controlling fathers, husbands or in-laws. As Khanna puts it, “It’s the sort of excuse that can work well with our ambitious and competitive Indian families.”
In his book Queeristan, Parmesh Shahani emphasizes that corporate workplaces are often the only spaces in which gays and lesbians might feel safe enough to come out. The support of colleagues and leaders can imbue them with the courage to reveal their authentic selves at home.
Facing Material Pressures
Divya interviewed R.R. Nair, former H.R. Director at Unilever, who opines that Indian freshers confront twin dilemmas. On the one hand, they have to repay educational loans, and on the other, they need to match the lifestyles of colleagues.
Nair uses the analogy of a baby elephant that has been fettered all its life by a thin rope, and fails to realize, as an adult, that it can quite easily snap free. Many shackles and so-called “rules” can be questioned. But as Nair suggests, “[it] takes a lot of confidence to build up the courage to be genuinely different.” Especially as employees, folks fear rejection or job loss.
Khanna observes that “peer pressure” inside corporates can feel as angsty or stifling to adult employees as it can be for teenagers. More so for nervy newcomers who are striving to get a footing inside an alien terrain. “We don’t outgrow our need to feel accepted, admired and be popular in the cultures we want to belong to.”
Stifling Hierarchies
Hierarchies are helpful. After all, the lack of clearly defined roles and reporting structures can lead to ineffectiveness and chaos.
But according to Divya, hierarchy in the Indian context, acquires other cultural connotations: “Status-consciousness is one of the most conspicuous Indian traits.” Historically, we have been a culture where it has been critical to know “who deferred to whom.” Earlier markers of identities like age, gender, caste et al are overlaid by new ones: the pedigree of one’s alma mater, whether one has a Master’s degree or not, years of experience, one’s level inside the pecking order.
Overly hierarchical organizations are problematic. In some companies, Khanna notes, bosses leverage their power to flay juniors. She spoke to Kalyani Capoor, a mental health professional, who notes that bosses flaunt their power when they suffer from internal inadequacies. As Capoor puts it, “The more empowered you feel within, the less likely you are to misuse external power.” Some of this bullying carries echoes of “ragging” in college, wherein seniors were permitted to cross lines while subjecting freshers to humiliating acts.
Rigid hierarchies stifle dissent, promote yesmanship, and morph “respect for leaders” into “fear of leaders.” Indian corporates need to inhabit a healthy in-between, with greater autonomy accorded to junior levels. Besides, as a culture, we ought to downplay the significance of superficial markers like cabin sizes and designations.
R.R. Nair observes differences between the younger generation, who prefer softer hierarchies and the older cohorts, who are accustomed to command-and-control cultures.
Awarding Flexibility to Men
While there have been a plethora of articles and books on women dropping out of the workforce, and especially at senior levels, Khanna also draws attention to men needing more flexibility: “[Equal] flexibility seems to be an unvoiced need area for men.” Just as women’s ambitions need to be heeded, in both monetary and social terms, men’s needs for family time or self-care ought to be respected.
As she also observes, one of the issues is that “men’s lives have been positioned as aspirational to women.” This ignores the stresses baked into 24×7 achievement-oriented climbs. As a woman, she notes, she hardly faced any social censure for taking a career break. “Were a man to make such a choice, social criticism would be scathing.”
Changing Corporate Culture
Divya also deconstructs other notions like ‘jugaad’ – a concept that is usually bandied about as an Indian advantage, but can work against organizations and people, in certain situations. And questions the valorization of “hard work” over “smart work”.
At a broader level, The Company We Keep interrogates the idea that cultures are fixed. Incorporating findings from works like Khanna’s would ensure that collective employee voices reshape culture.
References
Divya Khanna, The Company We Keep: Insights Into Indian Corporate Culture, Penguin Books, 2023
Parmesh Shahani, Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion in the Indian Workplace, Westland, 2020