Organisational Culture in India: Role of Social Institutions and Realities

This article examines the cultural foundations of organisational behaviour in India, arguing that Indian organisations cannot be understood through frameworks borrowed from Western management theory. Drawing on the distinctive social institutions that shape Indian life - the joint family, the caste system, and religion - as well as the long historical experience of colonial rule and post-independence economic development, the article develops an institutional account of how Indian organisational culture is formed and sustained. The concept of Indian ethos is central to this analysis: the values, attitudes, relational obligations, and moral orientations that Indian employees bring into the workplace from the social world they inhabit. The article shows how hierarchy, deference, collectivism, and relational trust operate as organising principles in Indian workplaces, and argues that effective management in India requires cultural literacy rooted in indigenous categories rather than imported ones. The analysis contributes to a contextually grounded understanding of Indian organisational life that remains relevant to contemporary scholarship on management, inclusion, and workplace behaviour in India.