Culture and Work Alienation: Western Models and Eastern Realities

This paper argues that the existing theoretical explanations of work alienation and corrective management practices developed in the Western world have limited cross‐cultural applicability. This argument is supported first by identifying the cultural bias inherent in the Western explanatory models of alienation and then by indicating how such a bias fails to adequately explain work alienation and its opposite work involvement phenomena in Eastern societies like India. Finally, the paper probes into the role of some critical indigenous variables responsible for the development of alienation among workers in India. The case of Indian workers provides an illustrative example of what is needed for alienation research in a developing country context: to avoid the folly of uncritically accepting the Western explanatory models and to encourage the discovery of indigenous explanations.