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INTRODUCTION
Falling trade and economic barriers have increased global trade. Increasingly, South Asian countries like India which have embraced free market reforms are facing increased exposure to not only Western (particularly American) products and services, but also to their management philosophies, ideologies, and practices. According to Gopalan and Dixon (1996), the United States has emerged as a significant investor in India accounting for over seventeen percent of all actual foreign direct investment from 1991 until 1994. Additionally, the Clinton Administration has designated India as one of the world's "ten big emerging markets." Future projections indicate an increased U.S. presence and involvement in diverse areas ranging from telecommunications, consumer goods, power generation, financial services, software, and automobile manufacturing (Phillips, 1992).
While some management ideas (especially those of a technical nature) are easily transferred across countries (i.e, they are culture free), a large number of American management ideas and practices are "culture-specific" (Hofstede, 1980b; Kanungo and Jaeger, 1990). They cannot and should not be blindly imported to developing countries such as India where the cultural, social, political, economic, and judicial environments are vastly different than that of the United States. Unfortunately, this has not been the case-as the American business model is considered to be the paradigm for success, American management ideas and practices have been largely replicated with little or no modification in several developing countries including India (Jaeger, 1990).
American and Indian managers would benefit a great deal if they gained a better understanding of the cultural context in which American management theories originated. Such knowledge would enhance their ability to better discriminate and differentiate between management ideas that are culturally compatible against others that are incompatible (Davis and Rasool, 1988). Additionally, cultural awareness will enable managers from both countries to make suitable modifications and revisions to American management ideas and approaches in their application to the Indian business environment.
CAN BEHAVIORAL MODELS AND MANAGEMENT THEORIES BE UNIVERSALLY TRANSPLANTED? THE DEBATE WITHIN THE MANAGEMENT COMMUNITY
The majority of organizational behavioral theories (a) originate from the United States, and (b) are for the most part based on samples consisting of Anglo-Saxon male managers who have been socialized in cultural, political, and economic environments that are vastly different from Asian and African cultures (Kanungo and Jaeger, 1990;...