Pub Date : 2020-03-07DOI: 10.1177/2277975219885285
Murali Jagannathan, V. K. Delhi
Disputes in construction projects have become an integral part of the construction process. In addition to reducing their productivity, disputes create mistrust between the involved parties. A variety of reasons that contribute to the occurrence of disputes in construction projects have been discussed in the literature. One among them is the nature of the construction contract that exists between the parties. A review of the existing literature brings to the fore two schools of thought regarding the drafting of construction contracts. While the traditional school considers the contract as those documents that contain inherent incompleteness and hence prone to disputes, the liberal school believes that construction contracts can be drafted in an efficient manner to prevent disputes. In this exploratory research, we conducted semi-structured open-ended interviews with experts in contractual decision making and contract drafting in construction organizations to understand their perspective on contract drafting/redrafting process and to classify them under the respective school of thought. The study reveals some interesting insights about the perceptions and motivations of the contract drafters and the senior management of construction organizations in India, when it comes to drafting dispute-free equitable contract documents. We believe that the findings of our study will pave the way for further research in drafting efficient construction contracts that can be practicable and dispute-resistant in the Indian context.
{"title":"Perceptions of Stakeholders on the ‘Redraftability’ of Construction Contracts","authors":"Murali Jagannathan, V. K. Delhi","doi":"10.1177/2277975219885285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2277975219885285","url":null,"abstract":"Disputes in construction projects have become an integral part of the construction process. In addition to reducing their productivity, disputes create mistrust between the involved parties. A variety of reasons that contribute to the occurrence of disputes in construction projects have been discussed in the literature. One among them is the nature of the construction contract that exists between the parties. A review of the existing literature brings to the fore two schools of thought regarding the drafting of construction contracts. While the traditional school considers the contract as those documents that contain inherent incompleteness and hence prone to disputes, the liberal school believes that construction contracts can be drafted in an efficient manner to prevent disputes. In this exploratory research, we conducted semi-structured open-ended interviews with experts in contractual decision making and contract drafting in construction organizations to understand their perspective on contract drafting/redrafting process and to classify them under the respective school of thought. The study reveals some interesting insights about the perceptions and motivations of the contract drafters and the senior management of construction organizations in India, when it comes to drafting dispute-free equitable contract documents. We believe that the findings of our study will pave the way for further research in drafting efficient construction contracts that can be practicable and dispute-resistant in the Indian context.","PeriodicalId":43330,"journal":{"name":"IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2277975219885285","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47692666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1177/2277975219889778
Kausik Gangopadhyay, Remya Tressa Jacob, R. S. S. Jayanth
The absence or inculcation of ethics among the people is a matter of serious concern. We investigated through an experiment the role of religion-teaching schools in incorporating ethics and found that the attitude towards cheating in examinations is no different for students in a religion-teaching school than in a regular school. We analysed this situation with different perspectives and concluded that it indicates the failure of religion-teaching schools in inculcating ethics among students. Using the method of randomised response, we found that about 30 per cent of the students were found to be cheating in examinations. When we ask the students about the intention for cheating, they would answer hypothetically if they did not know any cheater. However, the presence of such a significant proportion of cheaters indicates that when they answer about cheating they understand it as a real issue and would answer with the understanding of the real cheaters in mind. The implications of our result are, however, much wider than this observation. Balagangadhara (1994) divided human cultures into ‘religious’ (theory-driven) and ‘non-religious’ (empirics-driven) classes. Accordingly, the teaching of ethics must also be different for these two classes of culture. Although a theoretical way of teaching ethics may help a theory-driven culture, it would not help an empirics-driven culture. Balagangadhara places India as a non-religious culture, and our results illustrates the validity of his theory in explaining the failure of a theory-driven ethics education in India.
{"title":"How Effective is Theory-Based Learning of Ethics in India?","authors":"Kausik Gangopadhyay, Remya Tressa Jacob, R. S. S. Jayanth","doi":"10.1177/2277975219889778","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2277975219889778","url":null,"abstract":"The absence or inculcation of ethics among the people is a matter of serious concern. We investigated through an experiment the role of religion-teaching schools in incorporating ethics and found that the attitude towards cheating in examinations is no different for students in a religion-teaching school than in a regular school. We analysed this situation with different perspectives and concluded that it indicates the failure of religion-teaching schools in inculcating ethics among students. Using the method of randomised response, we found that about 30 per cent of the students were found to be cheating in examinations. When we ask the students about the intention for cheating, they would answer hypothetically if they did not know any cheater. However, the presence of such a significant proportion of cheaters indicates that when they answer about cheating they understand it as a real issue and would answer with the understanding of the real cheaters in mind. The implications of our result are, however, much wider than this observation. Balagangadhara (1994) divided human cultures into ‘religious’ (theory-driven) and ‘non-religious’ (empirics-driven) classes. Accordingly, the teaching of ethics must also be different for these two classes of culture. Although a theoretical way of teaching ethics may help a theory-driven culture, it would not help an empirics-driven culture. Balagangadhara places India as a non-religious culture, and our results illustrates the validity of his theory in explaining the failure of a theory-driven ethics education in India.","PeriodicalId":43330,"journal":{"name":"IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2277975219889778","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44297258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1177/2277975219859770
Siddharth Mohapatra, Pratima Verma
Land acquisition for commercial purposes in India is mainly a top-down approach that employs instrumental means like fair market valuations. Market forces play a major role in the land transfer process. On many instances, these have led to sustainability challenges, poor stakeholder management, sustainability challenges and subpar business performance. Land since time immemorial has spiritual bearings in India. There have been numerous occasions in the past when land-related sustainability challenges were resolved through spiritual means—most notably the Bhoodān movement. This article is an attempt to offer a bottom-up and socioculturally aligned spiritual means to facilitate land acquisition based on voluntary land transfers. In particular, we conceptualize Bhoodān-based land acquisition (BhaLĀi) which can facilitate voluntary land transfer, creating stakeholder bhalai (well-being in Hindi), spiritually. Implications for research and practice in this regard have been discussed.
{"title":"Bhoodān-based Land Acquisition (BhaLĀi): Creating Stakeholder Bhalai, Spiritually","authors":"Siddharth Mohapatra, Pratima Verma","doi":"10.1177/2277975219859770","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2277975219859770","url":null,"abstract":"Land acquisition for commercial purposes in India is mainly a top-down approach that employs instrumental means like fair market valuations. Market forces play a major role in the land transfer process. On many instances, these have led to sustainability challenges, poor stakeholder management, sustainability challenges and subpar business performance. Land since time immemorial has spiritual bearings in India. There have been numerous occasions in the past when land-related sustainability challenges were resolved through spiritual means—most notably the Bhoodān movement. This article is an attempt to offer a bottom-up and socioculturally aligned spiritual means to facilitate land acquisition based on voluntary land transfers. In particular, we conceptualize Bhoodān-based land acquisition (BhaLĀi) which can facilitate voluntary land transfer, creating stakeholder bhalai (well-being in Hindi), spiritually. Implications for research and practice in this regard have been discussed.","PeriodicalId":43330,"journal":{"name":"IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2277975219859770","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41389019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1177/2277975219890932
Mamatha S.V., Geetanjali P.
Organizational culture is created gradually by founder leaders on the basis of their values, assumptions and beliefs. Organizational culture is tangible in terms of the architecture of the company, office layout and exhibits and intangible in terms of behaviour of employees, decisions, policies and procedures. This article aims to perform a comparative analysis of some of the founder leaders of Indian and American businesses and their influence on the culture of the organization. The study adopts the case method research design where the focus is on the specific interesting cases, articles and interviews of the founder(s) in their formational years and cases when the company had a stable organizational culture. The unit of analysis is the founder leader. The company’s culture is evaluated using Schein’s Model of Organizational Culture while that of the founder leader is evaluated using Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions. This study does not equate national culture to individual’s culture to avoid ecological fallacy of interpreting country-level relationships being applied to individuals. The study shows that there exist layers of subcultures in each individual. The article discusses an interesting paradigm, that is, the culture in which they are born/trained and the culture they adopt intentionally. When founders adopt other cultures, some traces of adopted cultures are reflected in the organization. The article concludes that founder leaders’ culture needs a better framework in order to see its effects on the organization. Hofstede’s model does not show the relationship between different layers of the culture. Hence, the model seems inadequate to be applied to analyse founder leaders.
{"title":"Founder Leaders and Organization Culture: A Comparative Study on Indian and American Founder Leaders Based on Schein’s Model of Organizational Culture","authors":"Mamatha S.V., Geetanjali P.","doi":"10.1177/2277975219890932","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2277975219890932","url":null,"abstract":"Organizational culture is created gradually by founder leaders on the basis of their values, assumptions and beliefs. Organizational culture is tangible in terms of the architecture of the company, office layout and exhibits and intangible in terms of behaviour of employees, decisions, policies and procedures. This article aims to perform a comparative analysis of some of the founder leaders of Indian and American businesses and their influence on the culture of the organization. The study adopts the case method research design where the focus is on the specific interesting cases, articles and interviews of the founder(s) in their formational years and cases when the company had a stable organizational culture. The unit of analysis is the founder leader. The company’s culture is evaluated using Schein’s Model of Organizational Culture while that of the founder leader is evaluated using Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions. This study does not equate national culture to individual’s culture to avoid ecological fallacy of interpreting country-level relationships being applied to individuals. The study shows that there exist layers of subcultures in each individual. The article discusses an interesting paradigm, that is, the culture in which they are born/trained and the culture they adopt intentionally. When founders adopt other cultures, some traces of adopted cultures are reflected in the organization. The article concludes that founder leaders’ culture needs a better framework in order to see its effects on the organization. Hofstede’s model does not show the relationship between different layers of the culture. Hence, the model seems inadequate to be applied to analyse founder leaders.","PeriodicalId":43330,"journal":{"name":"IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2277975219890932","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44686798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1177/2277975219859774
A. Venkataraman, C. Joshi
The self is both a sociological and a psychological construct. It is investigated in this paper from the perspectives of sociology of work, critical management studies and employment relations. Accordingly, drawing upon ethnographic research, this article seeks to unravel how an employee defines herself or himself in two realms—the organizational and the personal—respectively against the background of changing Indian IT industry marked by uncertainty and rising job insecurity. It examines how these two realms converge to bring about an individual’s sense of ‘dasein’ or being. The self is entwined in the value chain of the Indian IT labour process and, within it, soft HRM discursive practices seek to constitute and mould the ‘disciplined confessional self’ who is supposed to be not only autonomous but a proactive and proactive team player. This article identifies the sources from which the self finds definitions and validation in the liquid modern context of the ‘gig economy’. It seeks to reflect upon the ramifications arising out of the interplay between Western and Indian managerial repertoires and, finally, the interplay of caste and class against changing Indian societal norms and expectations. In doing so, it looks at the micro and macro means through which the self seeks to obviate its incoherence and find resonance and fullness. Given the volatile political economy of the Indian IT industry labour process, much of the work is repetitive and fragmented, and individuals feel alienated and burnt out after the initial excitement of experiencing the Sapient or Cisco way of life. They adopt various coping mechanisms reminiscent of Burawoy’s (1985) respondents to fight job insecurity and to secure their peer group’s acceptance. Thus, the onus of negotiating inherent dualities for finding meaning in the organizational realm, and yet leaving room for a transcendental individual coherent self whose larger ‘internal conversation’ transcends the existential concern of the structured antagonism of the wage–employment relationship, lies upon the individual rather than the organization.
{"title":"Who Am I? An Ethnographic Study Exploring the Construction of Organizational and Individual Self among Indian IT Employees","authors":"A. Venkataraman, C. Joshi","doi":"10.1177/2277975219859774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2277975219859774","url":null,"abstract":"The self is both a sociological and a psychological construct. It is investigated in this paper from the perspectives of sociology of work, critical management studies and employment relations. Accordingly, drawing upon ethnographic research, this article seeks to unravel how an employee defines herself or himself in two realms—the organizational and the personal—respectively against the background of changing Indian IT industry marked by uncertainty and rising job insecurity. It examines how these two realms converge to bring about an individual’s sense of ‘dasein’ or being. The self is entwined in the value chain of the Indian IT labour process and, within it, soft HRM discursive practices seek to constitute and mould the ‘disciplined confessional self’ who is supposed to be not only autonomous but a proactive and proactive team player. This article identifies the sources from which the self finds definitions and validation in the liquid modern context of the ‘gig economy’. It seeks to reflect upon the ramifications arising out of the interplay between Western and Indian managerial repertoires and, finally, the interplay of caste and class against changing Indian societal norms and expectations. In doing so, it looks at the micro and macro means through which the self seeks to obviate its incoherence and find resonance and fullness. Given the volatile political economy of the Indian IT industry labour process, much of the work is repetitive and fragmented, and individuals feel alienated and burnt out after the initial excitement of experiencing the Sapient or Cisco way of life. They adopt various coping mechanisms reminiscent of Burawoy’s (1985) respondents to fight job insecurity and to secure their peer group’s acceptance. Thus, the onus of negotiating inherent dualities for finding meaning in the organizational realm, and yet leaving room for a transcendental individual coherent self whose larger ‘internal conversation’ transcends the existential concern of the structured antagonism of the wage–employment relationship, lies upon the individual rather than the organization.","PeriodicalId":43330,"journal":{"name":"IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2277975219859774","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45202794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1177/2277975219865230
Debtanu Chakraborty
India was pushed to call itself a nation to achieve independence from British. Although many still try to identify possible nationalities inside India, it is forgotten that nation is a very recent phenomenon with its root in Biblical traditions. Through the diverse voices that conceptualized a free India during colonial times, it becomes clear that Indians did not try to make a nation and sometimes actively abhorred the European conception of race as nations. They rather saw and described India using markers from the civilization itself.
{"title":"India and the Nation-State Model","authors":"Debtanu Chakraborty","doi":"10.1177/2277975219865230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2277975219865230","url":null,"abstract":"India was pushed to call itself a nation to achieve independence from British. Although many still try to identify possible nationalities inside India, it is forgotten that nation is a very recent phenomenon with its root in Biblical traditions. Through the diverse voices that conceptualized a free India during colonial times, it becomes clear that Indians did not try to make a nation and sometimes actively abhorred the European conception of race as nations. They rather saw and described India using markers from the civilization itself.","PeriodicalId":43330,"journal":{"name":"IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2277975219865230","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41430795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1177/2277975219863185
P. B. Gnanakumar
Self-esteem values, with the new art of living, in the minds of Indians, lead to establish faith among the spiritual organization. Later on, the spiritual organization branded their names and market the products in their branded name. These brands, which are inspired by faith and created by Indian spiritual gurus have even disrupted the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) market by being customer-centric instead of being geared by lucrative returns. It is in this context this research is motivated: to find the cultural divergence factors that lead to change the consumption pattern of FMCG and how Indian spiritual gurus are segmenting the market. The research concludes that cultural divergence variables such as power distance, collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation influence the brands that are inspired by faith. Spiritual gurus in India are using sociocultural marketing activities such as social endorsement and cause-related marketing strategies for segmenting the markets.
{"title":"Reinforcement of Brands Inspired by Faith with the Paradox of Cultural Divergence in Indian FMCG Market","authors":"P. B. Gnanakumar","doi":"10.1177/2277975219863185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2277975219863185","url":null,"abstract":"Self-esteem values, with the new art of living, in the minds of Indians, lead to establish faith among the spiritual organization. Later on, the spiritual organization branded their names and market the products in their branded name. These brands, which are inspired by faith and created by Indian spiritual gurus have even disrupted the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) market by being customer-centric instead of being geared by lucrative returns. It is in this context this research is motivated: to find the cultural divergence factors that lead to change the consumption pattern of FMCG and how Indian spiritual gurus are segmenting the market. The research concludes that cultural divergence variables such as power distance, collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation influence the brands that are inspired by faith. Spiritual gurus in India are using sociocultural marketing activities such as social endorsement and cause-related marketing strategies for segmenting the markets.","PeriodicalId":43330,"journal":{"name":"IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2277975219863185","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49627160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1177/2277975219890934
Kausik Gangopadhyay
In social sciences, the most important name is that of Karl Marx. Marx offered a general framework in which the production process as ‘base’ supports the superstructural entity of ‘culture’. Not only in Marxian economics or Marxian sociology, but also in neoclassical economics – the present-day dominant discourse on economic thinking – the emphasis is mostly on explaining culture using the economics of production. No doubt Marx deserves a lot of credit for offering a framework for social sciences, but exploration must never cease. New facts always widen our horizon of understanding. Many new discoveries are emphasizing an increasingly important role of culture beyond its being a by-product of economic production. Let me cite a few examples. One key element of culture is the spoken language. How important is the role of language in shaping our thinking and our action? Far more than one would imagine. Keith Chen (2013) has demonstrated that the savings rate, health behaviour and retirement assets of a person depend upon the language spoken by the person. In essence, the economy depends more strongly on the spoken language instead of the language being dependent on the economy. In the Indian context, Gangopadhyay and Sarkar (2014) found that investment in one’s offspring’s education depends upon the caste of the family. I emphasize that this dependence on caste occurs after controlling for parental education, parental income and all such related variables. Again, this is a case of culture being a significant factor of economic decision making. I have used these two examples only to drive the point home. There is no dearth of examples on the importance of culture for a scientific study of the social forces. However, what has been missing is the application of a scientific framework for culture. What exactly defines a scientific framework? A scientific framework is characterised by its falsifiability and its predictive power. An observation does not necessarily make an element of science, unless we can generalize from that particular observation to come up with a predictive framework. An oft-repeated cliché is about the discovery of gravity from observing the fall of an apple. Although we all see a fruit fall from the tree, our observation does not constitute any science. Newton’s observation was, as he came up with a framework. In management sciences, a plethora of interesting observations drive home the importance of culture. I am afraid that a predictive framework is yet to be used, which is why S. N. Balagangadhara’s work is extremely important. He has provided a falsifiable framework in his masterpiece The Heathen in His Blindness characterizing a critical element of culture called religion and, in the process, divided the cultures of the world into two categories of ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’ (secular). The testability of his framework as well as its usefulness follow from his characterization of the meta-learning of cultures. It is high ti
在社会科学领域,最重要的名字是卡尔·马克思。马克思提出了一个总体框架,在这个框架中,生产过程作为“基础”支撑着“文化”这一上层建筑实体。不仅在马克思主义经济学或马克思主义社会学中,而且在新古典经济学(当今经济思想的主导话语)中,重点主要是利用生产经济学来解释文化。毫无疑问,马克思为社会科学提供了一个框架,值得称赞,但探索决不能停止。新的事实总是能拓宽我们的视野。许多新的发现都在强调文化的日益重要的作用,而不仅仅是经济生产的副产品。让我举几个例子。文化的一个关键要素是口语。语言在塑造我们的思维和行为方面的作用有多重要?远远超出人们的想象。Keith Chen(2013)已经证明,一个人的储蓄率、健康行为和退休资产取决于这个人说的语言。从本质上讲,经济更依赖于口语,而不是语言依赖于经济。在印度背景下,Gangopadhyay和Sarkar(2014)发现,对后代教育的投资取决于家庭的种姓。我强调,这种对种姓的依赖是在控制了父母的教育、父母的收入和所有这些相关变量之后发生的。再一次,这是一个文化成为经济决策重要因素的例子。我用这两个例子只是为了说明这一点。关于文化对于科学地研究社会力量的重要性的例子并不缺乏。然而,缺少的是对文化的科学框架的应用。科学框架的确切定义是什么?科学框架的特点是其可证伪性和预测能力。一个观察不一定构成科学的要素,除非我们能从那个特定的观察中归纳出一个预测框架。一个经常被重复的陈词滥调是关于通过观察苹果的下落而发现重力的。虽然我们都看到果子从树上掉下来,但我们的观察并不构成任何科学。牛顿的观察是,他提出了一个框架。在管理科学中,大量有趣的观察充分说明了文化的重要性。我担心一个预测框架还没有被使用,这就是为什么S. N. Balagangadhara的工作是极其重要的。他在他的杰作《盲目中的异教徒》中提供了一个可证伪的框架,描绘了一种被称为宗教的文化的关键元素,并在此过程中将世界文化分为“宗教”和“非宗教”(世俗)两类。他的框架的可测试性和实用性源于他对文化元学习的描述。我们是时候尝试使用这个框架来检验文化是否可以在预测管理决策方面进行科学调查了。随着印度公司在全球蓬勃发展——2019年福布斯全球2000强名单中有57家印度公司——印度管理方式的存在是一个有趣的想法。2018年12月,我在科日科德国际管理学院组织了一次关于这一主题的会议。内勒·德·格森(Nele De Gersem)记录了她在那次会议上提出的工作要点,这些要点要求我们认真反思研究文化和管理的现有理念。她特别解构了两个概念,即:
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"Kausik Gangopadhyay","doi":"10.1177/2277975219890934","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2277975219890934","url":null,"abstract":"In social sciences, the most important name is that of Karl Marx. Marx offered a general framework in which the production process as ‘base’ supports the superstructural entity of ‘culture’. Not only in Marxian economics or Marxian sociology, but also in neoclassical economics – the present-day dominant discourse on economic thinking – the emphasis is mostly on explaining culture using the economics of production. No doubt Marx deserves a lot of credit for offering a framework for social sciences, but exploration must never cease. New facts always widen our horizon of understanding. Many new discoveries are emphasizing an increasingly important role of culture beyond its being a by-product of economic production. Let me cite a few examples. One key element of culture is the spoken language. How important is the role of language in shaping our thinking and our action? Far more than one would imagine. Keith Chen (2013) has demonstrated that the savings rate, health behaviour and retirement assets of a person depend upon the language spoken by the person. In essence, the economy depends more strongly on the spoken language instead of the language being dependent on the economy. In the Indian context, Gangopadhyay and Sarkar (2014) found that investment in one’s offspring’s education depends upon the caste of the family. I emphasize that this dependence on caste occurs after controlling for parental education, parental income and all such related variables. Again, this is a case of culture being a significant factor of economic decision making. I have used these two examples only to drive the point home. There is no dearth of examples on the importance of culture for a scientific study of the social forces. However, what has been missing is the application of a scientific framework for culture. What exactly defines a scientific framework? A scientific framework is characterised by its falsifiability and its predictive power. An observation does not necessarily make an element of science, unless we can generalize from that particular observation to come up with a predictive framework. An oft-repeated cliché is about the discovery of gravity from observing the fall of an apple. Although we all see a fruit fall from the tree, our observation does not constitute any science. Newton’s observation was, as he came up with a framework. In management sciences, a plethora of interesting observations drive home the importance of culture. I am afraid that a predictive framework is yet to be used, which is why S. N. Balagangadhara’s work is extremely important. He has provided a falsifiable framework in his masterpiece The Heathen in His Blindness characterizing a critical element of culture called religion and, in the process, divided the cultures of the world into two categories of ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’ (secular). The testability of his framework as well as its usefulness follow from his characterization of the meta-learning of cultures. It is high ti","PeriodicalId":43330,"journal":{"name":"IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2277975219890934","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44509183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1177/2277975219858864
A. S. Pande, Ranjan Kumar
The unceasing stream of corporate scams and financial misdemeanours establish that agency conflicts are a stark reality of the contractual relationship between principals and agents. Agency theory identifies four sources of agency conflicts at the leadership level: moral hazard, earnings retention, risk aversion and time horizon. The theory proposes an outcome- and/or behaviour oriented mitigating mechanism based on agency costs. However, as the real-world evidence shows, these mechanisms have been only partially effective. In this context, the present study conducts a diagnosis of agency conflicts at the leadership level, trying to understand its origin, sources, mitigating mechanism and its limitations. The paper then takes a novel approach for bridging the gap between the current state of conflicts and the desired state of absence from conflicts, by examining Indian philosophical systems. It identifies the characteristics of Indian philosophy rooted in the Vedic wisdom as integrative, holistic, stressing on a direct experience of vision of the truth, emphasising practicality, and promoting the goal of self-realization through mind management. The paper then leverages the pithy aphorisms (sutras) from Indian philosophical texts to develop a mind management framework as a tool to mitigate agency conflicts.
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Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1177/2277975219859777
K. Sivakumar
The ethical structure of economics, based on the standard of economic maximization of satisfaction, explains all kinds of behaviour in terms of maximization of self-interest. This paper shows that interventions from the philosophy of Advaita Vedānta would enable economics to recognize and accommodate, within its ethical structure, the important role played by altruistic and moral commitments in the decision-making deliberations of individuals. The concept-based paper deduces the primary or basic causes for the limitations in the ethical structure of economics and, in this background, expounds the ethical philosophy of Advaita Vedānta, its important takeaways and implications for the ethical structure of economics. The ethical ideal offered by Advaita Vedānta, unlike that of economics, is based on the standard of self-purification through intention/duty. The ideal is neither committed to the naturalistic fallacy (the identification of the ‘good’ with ‘satisfaction/pleasure’) nor upholds a position of maximization of consequences. By incorporating the perspectives of Advaita Vedānta into the ethical structure of economics, we may evolve an ethical standard that would exhibit, among other factors, the following implications: (a) the ethical standard would enlarge the scope of economics, without dismantling the present ethical structure of economics; (b) economic models built based on such an ethical standard would not only be comprehensive theoretical models and empirically- verifiable practical models, but more importantly, ethically-validated holistic models as well; and (c) the ethical standard and the models build upon it would also enrich other disciplines like management science, commerce, etc., which also share the strategies and models of economics.
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