Professional Documents
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SAMIR R. CHATTERJEE
How can a manager or an organization refine and enrich its global mindset orientation? A radically
different frame of aligning people, strategy and purpose may be through the extension and enrichment of a
global mindset rather than strategy or structure. This article explores the concept of global mindset from a
new perspective and forwards a number of specific action frames for managers to reflect on. The article
contends that the negative effects of contemporary globalization can only be overcome through the enrichment
of global vision of managers everywhere. As for applicability, the article argues that mindset development
can only contribute to the sustainability of organizations and societies.
Kothao amar hariye jabar nei mana mone of the mind has been the hallmark of Indian civil-
mone (I have no boundaries to my mindscape). ization as opposed to the other great civilizations
(Tagore 1940) of Asia such as China or Japan. The Chinese ab-
sorption of Buddhism as its own has been more
Introduction an exception than the Indian ability to absorb
things from everywhere. This is evident in the
The 1940s popular Tagore song on limitless mind- Indian ethos expressed through poetry, art, music,
scape convergence epitomizes the Indian ethos of languages and architecture. In the recent decades
globalism of centuries. The Vedic ideals of ‘vasu- and in particular in the economic arena, the
daiva kutumbakam’ (all the world is connected holistic global thinking of India has not been able
and we are related to all) have been osmosized to match the pace of other Asian nations, particu-
not only in spiritual, literary or religious trad- larly the Japanese. The emergence of competitive
itions, but are also evident in socio-political global organizations and the rise of Asia as the
visions of national leaders in India. Globalization global economic hub of the future call for a wider
Samir R. Chatterjee, Professor, International Management, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987, Perth, Western
Australia 6845. E-mail: samir.chatterjee@cbs.curtin.edu.au.
JOURNAL OF HUMAN VALUES 11:1 (2005)
Sage Publications New Delhi/Thousand Oaks/London
DOI: 10.1177/097168580401100104
38 l SAMIR R. CHATTERJEE
diffusion of global mindset at the micro-level complexity arising out of both ‘globality’ and
corporate context. The paradigm of balancing the locality. In a study of 1,500 executives from 12
mindset that matters with contemporary societal large corporations around the world, ‘the ability
harmony and progress has become a major chal- to acquire global mindset in the organization’ was
lenge to all societies. It is not sufficient any more rated as the 24th item in a 24-item menu of values
for a poet or a visionary leader of a country to (Kefalas 1998). This was particularly perplexing
possess exclusively the visions of globalism. This as these managers were selected from companies
needs desperately to be shared and grasped by that described themselves as ‘global’. It points
all organizations, managers and indeed the popu- to the glaring difficulties in the diffusion of
lation at large. macro-level ideas to micro-level behaviour and
Research amongst Asian managers indicates attitudes. The converging forces of regulatory
that in spite of their ability to recognize and value regimes of new market-oriented ideologies such
the imperatives of a global mindset in the gov- as the WTO, and the expansion of communication
ernance of work organizations, only a handful technology, the Internet and global logistics have
can translate them to practice (Chatterjee and made the imperatives of global mindset urgent in
Pearson 2002). In the corporate arena, responding societies like India and China.
to the challenge of globalization can only be real How the macro-level national strategies of eco-
if the application of the mindset is expressed nomic reform translate into the meso-level enter-
through strategies, systems, structures, behav- prise or industry reorientation is of considerable
iours, designs and organization culture. Develop- interest. At the micro level it is important to con-
ing a global mindset in a work organization ceptualize the processes of filtering of the broad
requires the alignment of deeply held values and societal agenda. The emerging top-down, or in
visions to the empowered networks of managers some areas networked, diffusion of global think-
and employees. People with global vision need ing to the grass-roots are areas of immediate
to be able to integrate the contradictory forces of research attention. Figure 1 presents a model
Figure 1
Global Mindset as a Social Construct
Weaving the Threads of a Global Mindset in Work Organizations l 39
linking the macro-level forces creating and workforces to consider and absorb diverse para-
developing global mindset amongst managers. digms with critical long-term strategic directions.
Societal history and heritage can either open or The possession of global mindset is much more
close people’s mind in this area. Colonial heritage than openness to multiple and broad approaches.
in educational pedagogy and English as a langu- It is an integrative focus where tangibles and in-
age of social and corporate communication had tangibles are synthesized in the cognitive domain
had an impact on the Indian context to a consider- and then configured into corporate values, beliefs,
able extent. The political, social or managerial strategies, cultures and competencies. Perlmutter
elite’s undeniable impact can often be the single (1969) conceptualized three types of mindsets and
most force in the area of developing popular these frames still dominate in the literature. First,
mindset. The post-war transformation of the ethnocentric, reflecting a home country orienta-
Japanese societal, enterprise and individual mind- tion with a compulsion to view the world from a
sets attest to this view. In India organizations like ‘my way is the best way’ frame. Second, the poly-
Infosys, Ranbaxy Labs, Wipro, Tata and Birla centric mindset, reflecting a very contrasting view
Groups, Indian Oil and Reliance are some of the where everything elsewhere is considered effect-
excellent examples in recent years where it ap- ive. The third perspective of geocentricity was
pears that significant achievement in their global advocated as a ‘global’ view where no single cul-
mindset development has been activated at the ture or context contained the ‘best’ answer to
‘grass-roots’ level. It may be argued that global global choices. In recent conceptualization, it is
success in these organizations is more than stra- increasingly being viewed as a ‘knowledge
tegic success or the strength of the structural, structure’ amongst managers. The two primary
cultural or even human resource capabilities. attributes of this knowledge structure are differ-
The adoption of global mindset throughout the entiation (the number of elements in the person
organization and sharing of the global values may or organization’s knowledge base) and integration
have contributed to their spectacular success in (the person or organization’s ability to synthesize
recent years. the disparate elements of business, task and
function) (Gupta and Govindarajan 2004: 83).
The Concept of Global Mindset Differentiation in knowledge leads to the
narrowing of focus and seeing one’s work from
As work organizations expand and respond to a ‘value-free technical perspective’ only. The
competitors and collaborators regionally and knowledge structure of many technical experts
globally, they need workforces and managers who in the fields of engineering, business, health or
can ride the waves of culture and diversity by science demonstrates high differentiation where
learning and adapting in every sphere of organiza- they become specialists of a given task, function
tional life. This can only be done by seeing how or business. Integration in knowledge structure
an organization scans the world in devising the refers to the ability to aggregate and synergize
values, visions and actions in maintaining its disparate elements of the knowledge jigsaw by
cohesive identity. Global mindset is a cognitive combining contradictory perspectives. An indus-
orientation anchored in any organization and try like information technology may necessarily
expressed through its values and practices that have to have technical experts with very high
demonstrate its ability to transcend the boundaries levels of differentiation and, in this case, unless
of immediacy. This allows managers and their the managers demonstrate correspondingly high
40 l SAMIR R. CHATTERJEE
Table 1
Managerial Focus in Mindset Development
a management development concern. It worries global mindset. The ‘creative tension’ generated
that it may be drifting too far towards a fast-action by these four driving forces will possibly set the
culture. It knows that it must act quickly in re- tone of global mindset orientation, not only for
sponding to disasters everywhere—earthquakes German managers but also the home country
and wars, floods and famines—but it also sees managers of this company in various countries.
the need to engage in the slower, more delicate
task of building a capacity for action that is care- Mapping the Global Mindset
ful, thoughtful, and in tune with local conditions
and needs (Gosling and Mintzberg 2003: 56). One can hypothesize the parameters that char-
They argue that the reconciliation of global and acterize a purely global company. A global com-
local orientation is a formidable challenge for pany needs to have an articulated vision of global
managers. Perhaps they cannot be adequately emphasis in terms of global, regional or export
responded to at the individual managerial level ambitions. For example, a global presence may
unless the organizational and societal forces are signal the procurement on a global scale, gen-
also aligned to the mindset. A German manager’s eration or revenue of significant proposition from
global mindset is perhaps influenced by four outside its national boundaries, subscription to
layers of forces. First, the home country (German) its equity from multinational sources and finally
global orientation; second, the company’s global the overwhelming presence of a global mindset.
heritage; third, the industry characteristics; and The two indicators of global involvement for a
fourth, the individual home country managers’ company are often measured through the Global
Weaving the Threads of a Global Mindset in Work Organizations l 43
Revenue Index (GRI) and the Global Capability coordination expectations, as well as policy
Index (GCI). The GRI is calculated by the variables such as career expectations, global
formula: ambition and global impact. The mindset
mapping was outlined by the researcher as:
∑ (x ) ∗ X
n n
X kj = ij kj
i =1
Where:
n = number of regions (such as North Amer- Where:
ica, Europe, South Asia, Middle East, Xkj = the score on scale k (which may be respon-
South-East Asia) siveness to local adjustment of standard-
Ixn = industry demand in a given region in pro- ized global idea or operation)
portion to the world demand j = an individual manager
Rxn = Cumulative proportion of sales achieved x = the score of individual j on the question-
by the company in the region n (for ex- naire item i
ample, Tata Tea’s sales may be 25 per cent n = the number of items in the additive scale k.
in Europe, 10 per cent in USA, 15 per cent
in South-East Asia). The empirical work led the researchers to con-
clude that:
GCI evaluates the distribution of assets across
the world either in terms of capital or in terms of More knowledge that senior managers were
human resource deployment. The combination of attracted to the prescriptions of prominent
GCI and GRI provides an indication of the global academics when they sought to bring about a
strength of a company. cognitive shift toward more global mindsets
A number of researchers in management have among all managers. We found that consistent
attempted to link the managerial mindset to organ- with the case-based literature, operating man-
izational performance by developing empirical agers did not immediately respond to the new
tools. Kobrin (1994) contended that a balanced thinking or to new incentives, but remained
ethnocentrism of managers was linked to global
mired in the past. Some time in the 30 months
advantage of a number of US corporations.
between our observations, thinking changed.
Murtha and colleagues (1998) extended this work
Our findings allow us to assert this with con-
in developing a newer scale for measuring indi-
fidence because our measures exhibited
vidual and organizational mindset towards global
reliability, validity and generalizability across
orientation. The key objective of this quantitative
time. Although the mindset and policy vari-
assessment was to enable individuals working in
organizations to master the complexity of global ables for the operating group were established
strategic choices. The scale items included in this only during the intervening period, we found
mindset survey were measured on a 7-point scale these patterns meaningful in light of the
and included two sets of variables. These vari- literature and the change processes senior
ables were ‘mindset variables’, including inte- managers asserted they had tried to undertake.
gration expectations, responsiveness and country (ibid.: 110)
44 l SAMIR R. CHATTERJEE
An index called Global Creative Class Index development of personal ties across borders
(GCCI) analysed the emergence of ‘thinking man- (Taylor 1991). In contrast to this approach of
agers’ in a number of countries. ‘Using employ- ABB, many Japanese companies still strive to
ment data and the job classifications established achieve a very specific standardization of
by the International Labour Organization (ILO), practices and cultures. Matsushita, for example,
the index is a straightforward calculation of the sends 700 Japanese to serve on four- to eight-
number of people employed in creative job cat- year assignments. They attempt to minimize the
egories in each country divided by the country’s influence of local social, political or cultural dif-
total number of workers’ (Florida 2004: 122). The ferences by combining frequent personal involve-
study reported a dramatic shift in the global ment and strong socialization.
orientation in countries like Ireland, Belgium, Answering the question, ‘Just how global are
Australia and the Netherlands, where at least a we as individuals or organizations or a region or
third of the workforce were engaged in creative- as a nation?’ may need much deeper introspection
competitive sectors of the economy. Other coun- of our values and beliefs. The answer lies in our
tries with a surprising high score on the GCCI capacity to understand contrasting values and
Index were New Zealand, Estonia, the United beliefs as the search for the ‘reductionist measur-
Kingdom, Canada, Finland and Iceland. This ability’ discussed earlier in this article may only
measure correlated closely with other well-known provide an indication to the signpost of a long
global competitiveness measures, such as the road. The real test of being on the road to achiev-
Global Innovation Index (GII) developed by ing global mindset may even be to see how many
Michael Porter and the Globalization Index (GI) members of the board are from overseas or are
developed by the consulting firm A.T. Kearney. people with global competence. For an Indian
company like Infosys, Wipro or Tata, how many
Weaving the Design of their top managers are of non-Indian origin?
Can an Indian company become really global if
Percy Barnevik, the Swedish CEO of ABB is all the top 100 managers are Indians? As has been
widely credited as the key idea leader of global pointed out:
mindset in his organization. When English was
chosen as the common language of ABB, it was The leaders of the world’s most admired com-
the mother tongue of a minority of its 220,000 panies have shown that they have the talent
employees. A management information system not only to design a multi-cultural strategy but
called ABACUS was developed specifically to also ... and perhaps more important ... to
broaden the global information awareness of its mobilize and to energize their people. The
approximately 1,400 companies and 5,000 profit international acumen that they possess have
centre operatives. The country managers at ABB enabled them to keep their organizations at the
were often referred to as ‘global optimizers’ and forefront in the global markets. (Kets DeVries
a global cadre of 500 elite was given the role in and Florent-Treacy 1999: 14)
transforming organizational practices and mind-
sets. Barnevik had at one time described ABB to Creating a global mindset necessitates oppor-
be a collection of local business coordinated by tunities for learning. Learning to be open, learning
teams with a global mindset. Cross-national to be more self-aware, learning to challenge en-
membership of the teams made it easy for the trenched values and beliefs, and develop healthy
Weaving the Threads of a Global Mindset in Work Organizations l 45
approaches to dealing with differences. European Indians are among the brightest people on this
companies attempted this type of learning by earth, said a German statesman in a candid dis-
establishing ‘the European round table’, an cussion at Davos in the early nineties, and yet
association for 40 of Europe’s biggest companies India can’t seem to take advantage of the global
in the early 1990s. There are opportunities of economy. Why can’t Indians understand that
member companies to swap managers between there is only one game in town? Those who
companies for short periods. The building of learn to play it well will make it in the twenty-
global mindset is the platform for any learning first century; others will be left behind. (Das
pyramid in organizations striving to achieve the 2002: 263)
broadest possible perspectives in dealing with
future. The inventor of Hotmail, Sabeer Bhatia, attrib-
Learning through immersion in strange con- uted his global techno-entrepreneurial mindset to
texts is a pedagogy often employed in developing the Indian heritage. He recently reflected on the
a global view for managers. It has been experi- remarkable influence Indians have had on the IT
mented in management development programmes industry and believed it to be contributed by a
around the world. A programme module of combination of Indian family life and British
INSEAD in India had been explicitly formulated colonial heritage. The extraordinary emphasis on
to get into someone else’s world as a mirror to education in India combined with the Hindu trad-
one’s own assumptions. ition of science and mathematics, and the British
legacy of the English language had contributed
For all but the Indian managers, India is not just to the shaping of globally linked professionalism
another world, but, in a sense, other-worldly. in India (McNicoll 2004: 6).
Being there, especially among fellow managers A company such as Nokia, which emerged out
from Indian companies, takes the non-Indian of a sunset industry like lumbering and paper
participants past the nice abstractions of eco- pulping and has become a mind-boggling multi-
nomic, political, and social differences, down national entity, attributes this success largely to
onto the streets, where these differences come its global mindset weaving managerial leader
alive. How can you possibly drive in this Ollila. It is hard to believe that a company that
traffic? An American marketing manager from once strategized to corner the ‘toilet tissue
Lufthansa, shaken up during her ride from the market’ of the newly opening Soviet Russia could
airport, asked an Indian Professor. He replied, reinvent itself as a truly global player of a highly
‘I just join the flow.’ Learning can begin. That successful innovative product. ‘It is a company
is not chaos on the streets of India, but another that bends over backward to tailor its products to
kind of logic. (Gosling and Mintzberg 2003: 59) every local quirk, from the Chinese need to have
long-lasting batteries to the Japanese enthusi-
The overwhelming trends point toward a world asm for dialing by voice’ (Micklethwait and
where individuals have unparalleled opportunities Wooldridge 2000: 131).
of linking to each other. The explosive growth of Global mindset can be perceived and inter-
people-to-people connection potential has been preted in terms of the social and economic en-
paradoxically hindered by the tribality of political, vironments of a given managerial context. As
social and corporate leadership. It has been divergent cultures place importance to different
pointed that: aspects of values in a society and the changing
46 l SAMIR R. CHATTERJEE
economic imperatives demand divergence of managers to see themselves and their work roles
managerial focus, the challenge for managers in a broader frame of reference needs a com-
becomes more formidable as globalization takes pletely different analysis, reflection and creativity
hold. A mindset is not the acquisition of a set of of mind. Fundamental shifts in assumptions about
skills; it is a way of defining one’s ‘being’ con- local consequences of global integration are
sciousness. It is an orientation that allows an needed as the managerial wind of globalization
individual or a society to see certain things that touches every corner of the world. The negative
others are unable to. The rising dominance of impacts of mindless global convergence through
American culture all around the world shows the a consumerist culture can only be overcome
inadequacy of global orientation in many through the development of a knowledgeable
societies. While the fast movement of books, cadre of managers whose values transcend narrow
films and art can only enrich cultures, the move- technical or commercial considerations, and who
ment of popular culture from one context to the can link contemporary challenges to a civiliza-
other can be of great harm if it does not presup- tional context. The need to understand exploding
pose a much higher level of global understanding. boundaries of work and organizations with a
The emerging world of ‘cultural imperialism’ deeper level of cultural intelligence is an impera-
evident with consumeristic globalization has been tive of paramount significance for all managers.
strengthened by the gap left open by the absence Belief systems and cognitive processes differ
of global imagination elsewhere. On the one across cultures, and in-depth field-based know-
hand, the expanding frontiers of Hollywood’s ledge will always lead to mindscapes that are not
empire is a threat to other cultures; on the other generalized dimensional views of a society or a
hand, this inherently offers opportunities for real company.
globality to take hold as countervailing forces The research in this article points towards
come into play. In recent years, not only has understanding macro-societal influences on
Bollywood signalled its desire to acquire a global organizations and managers. What is unique
reach, but also a number of Chinese films had about the concept and its action frame is that it
been able to cross their cultural boundaries and does not limit itself on macro-societal influences.
achieve success in other spheres. Instead, the focus of attention is on a manager
(as in Figure 2). In essence, it is a complete shift
Conclusion in the managerial paradigm, in calculating a new
way of connecting to each other through the
Returning to the central issue of managerial role refinement of a mindset rather than emphasizing
in the weaving of global vision that allows the traditional structure, system and culture.
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