Cultural Differences In Business Environment Of Germany And India

Cultural Differences Between India and Germany

Question:

Discuss about the Business Relationship Between The Nations India And Germany.

Work culture is a hindrance for achieving success in business internationally. The dissimilarity in business culture in the midst of global business environment in Germany and India exists. However, the two nations have incorporated strategies to battle them. The cultural differences play a critical role in the efficient business operations of the organization. It is important for the people of both the nations to obtain understanding of the each other’s culture so that they can work efficiently (Borker, 2012).

It is also known to world that both the nations have successful understanding with each other. However, when the business personnel from one country travel to other countries, they find several differences in the lifestyle, eating habits and the work culture which can create stress and burden in the operations of the organization. However, appropriate understanding of the culture and the working habits can assist a person in adjusting in a different culture.

In this project, the differences between the Indian and the foreign culture has been analysed and examined. Apart from it, the usage, application and identification of key factors that affects intercultural business and the influence of cultural values of both the nations is also studied. In the end, recommendations are designed with the analysis of all these important factors and concepts.

India and Germany are two awesome nations with a significant cultural difference. The collaboration of business between the two nations is extremely normal yet not everyone can understand the dissimilarity in their business culture until the point that they are into some genuine project. This report depicts the fundamental “differences in culture” amongst Germany and India as well as the ways through which these differences can be understood better. In the global frontier, Indian economy is considered to be one of the quickest developing economies among all the nations. It can be observed that there is a progress in business investment especially from foreign countries. In other words, outsourcing has become a popular concept through which the organizations reduce their cost of operations. Working in India offers enormous advantages for global companies yet there are various cultural differences that can create miscommunication and increase the struggle for employees who have come from the foreign locations. In addition, if cultural issues are ignored then it can create some serious effects on company’s financial status. Exploring the difficulties of working together in India can be troublesome without a complete comprehension of Indian business culture as well as social culture (Trompenaars, and Hampden-Turner, 2011).

Impact of Cultural Differences on Business Operations

Now, in order to communicate and negotiate with India or its culture; it is essential to fully understand its culture. Some of the cultural differences between India and Germany are as follows:

India has a caste based system and the society has its roots in caste culture; therefore, it puts a high significance on employee status and authority. Communication between management and supervisors is generally limited that any significant information or proposal to workers or to down positions labourers will not be communicated. Without understanding the complications of Indian approaches towards authority and how they affect business, the foreign companies working together in India will find it difficult to execute change as fast as possible. And as a result, they will face difficulties in controlling their employees experience, value and worth. In India, there is culture to follow the orders of the senior member of their society. They are not straightforward and still follow the orders of their seniors even when they are doubtful of the efficacy of these actions. They also find it difficult to say no their seniors. Even when the seniors of the organization are exploiting them, the junior employees find it difficult to say no.

Changing priority with time: The nature of India is considered to be polychronic. The term polychronic is defined as individuals tend to change their needs on conditional basis or depending upon the significance and approach towards regularity or punctuality. Most of the extensive worldwide industries expect adherence to strict decision making and quick leadership. However, Indians are more relaxed and are not always on time. Social mindfulness can enable people to better comprehend Indian ideas of time and create methodologies for managing them. The Indian attitude towards time is more of a relaxed one and they are little concerned with the time. Moreover, the Indian people are always late in their deadlines which may impact on the cordial relations between German and the Indians. On the other hand, Germans are very punctual and cannot bear delay of five minutes in their schedule. It is important to understand the cultural differences between both the countries and use them so that proper communication can be maintained between both the countries.

India has a high acceptance to vulnerability and has made a community that keeps running on the principle of assumptions i.e. on the grounds of set assumptions. It usually acknowledges social manners and standards rather than guidelines along with regulations. Despite the fact that guidelines do exist, the low level of adherence to them makes enormous difficulties for companies setting up business in India, especially those companies following Indians rules and regulations.

Recommendations

Creation of Relationships: The Indian business culture neither focuses more on hard work nor thinks about quickly achieving company’s goals or objectives. Instead they focus more on building relationships and gaining trust. The establishment of business in Indian culture is possible by utilizing awareness strategies which causes companies to create procedures so that the employees better understand the Indian culture and can stay away from disappointment, ventures, inability to achieve substantial outcomes and conflict because of various inclinations for connections and relationships (Moran, Harris, & Moran, 2011).

The most common language to deal with foreign investors in India is English. The level of English language of some persons is quite high and especially those persons who are living in urban cities. Understanding Indian English can be a challenge because of the distinctive vocabulary, articulations and heavy accents. Many individuals are uninformed of this dissimilarity and anticipate that communication with Indians will be easier. Rather, numerous worldwide companies mistakenly translate the Indian English and think that Indians English is the after-effect of their pitiable language skills as well as poor education. Familiarity with Indian English can enable German person to reduce misunderstanding and loss of time (Minkov, 2011).

Indians prefer visual language. In simple words, Indians like to see the entire picture. The impact on relationships, non-verbal communication and feelings or expressions is few things that are highly preferred by Indians. Thus, Indians will regularly keep themselves away from saying ‘no’. The difference in communication manner can make an extensive difficulty for somebody who is accustomed to conveying in a more straightforward and low setting way.

While working together in India; understanding the cultural differences is just the initial step for German person. German person should comprehend what, why and how to deal with these cultural differences and this can be done by developing some approaches. The business in India will enable German organisations to get huge opportunities like opening doors and advantages of working together in India. It will also help German companies to build up an intercultural equipped workforce which understand and acknowledge the difference between different cultures.

German culture is quite different from Indian culture in many ways like Germans do not have any caste basis system. And due to this, they treat all the people, seniors and juniors as equally. They like to complete the task within deadline as they are punctual and do not make excuses for work, the priority of Germans do not get changed as per their needs as they do work in defined way and do not like to change things on varying conditions. Apart from all these, there might be some other culture differences present between both the nations because the differences in business culture between Germany and India is not limited (Singh, et, al, 2013).

Conclusion

Conclusion

In this project, the discussion is carried out about the behavioural as well as cultural difference amid Indians and Germans and it can be inferred that these two cultures have uniqueness. Much the same as with people, nobody is perfect and great, there will be some plus and minus always present in humans. So the most ideal approach to manage each other is to adjust and acknowledge each other’s way of life as well as manage wherever it is essential. As it is known worldwide that India is the most potential market in Asia for German ventures and the other way around, it will be a joy to see the Indo-German ties getting more grounded and strong frequently. Some German companies already doing good in Indian market are Volkswagen, Bosch, and Henkel and so on.

India is a mixed market sector; therefore, the demand to establish business in Indian market is high. There is an enormous diversity in India; thus customer demands and requirements are also different. For that reason, German person should make their decisions thoroughly as well as they should target customer as per their preferences.

Regardless of continuous acceptance of foreign or western products by Indians yet there are large numbers of Indians who are afraid of foreign penetration in their market. The reasons being mostly Indians are old-fashioned and only minority of young age groups living in city have changed their mindset and accepted the western products. Therefore, it is important to understand Indian culture involvedness before entering German person in Indian market. Conclusively, it can be stated that it is important to understand that there are cultural difference between different locations (Hopkins, 2016). It is important to study the difference between different places and the cultural differences of other people should be respected.

References

Borker, D.R., 2012. Accounting, culture, and emerging economies: IFRS in the BRIC countries. Journal of Business & Economics Research (Online), 10(5), p.313.

Hopkins, B. 2016. Cultural Differences and Improving Performance: How Values and Beliefs Influence Organizational Performance. CRC Press.

Kumar, R. and Sethi, A., 2016. Doing business in India. Springer.

Minkov, M. 2011. Cultural Differences in a Globalizing World. Emerald Group Publishing.

Moran, R.T., Harris, P.R., & Moran, S. V. 2011. Managing Cultural Differences: Global Leadership Strategies for Cross-cultural Business Success. Routledge.

Singh, A.N., Picot, A., Kranz, J., Gupta, M.P. and Ojha, A., 2013. Information security management (ism) practices: Lessons from select cases from India and Germany. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 14(4), pp.225-259.

Trompenaars, F. and Hampden-Turner, C., 2011. Riding the waves of culture: Understanding diversity in global business. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.