Values in work culture

As a counselor, I envy Kasuo Ishiguro. I mean we struggle professionally to establish empathy and rapport with individuals and groups. Walk in their shoes, as it were, to understand their issues. But for Ishiguro, to weave plausibility across country and culture seems to come naturally. He has the amazing ability to imagine people and situations, and write fiction into reality. 

He says in The Remains of the Day:

Now, naturally, like many of us, I have a reluctance to change too much of the old ways. But there is no virtue at all in clinging as some do to tradition merely for its own sake.

I would imagine that he refers to the orthodox traditions of Japan that he was born into, and spent early childhood in. With his experience of then and now, he perhaps perceives his origins as entrenched in the past when compared to the liberal West. But no, he puts the words in the mouth of Stevens the butler, English in every inch. This character, the protagonist of the book, is in charge of staff at an English manor in England around the time of World War II, a setting perhaps previous by a couple of decades to the birth of the book’s author.

It is true that Ishiguro has been immersed in Western culture from the age of five, but as an immigrant. Hence, to not only visualize a cultural context different from roots, but also to fit it into a bygone era has to be a feat. The author says he gleans much knowledge about the cultural distinctiveness from books. He probably also has a prodigious memory for detail to be able to capture their characteristic quirks – and for this book, the Booker prize.

 

Despite the enlightenment he projects against clinging to traditions, Englishman Stevens himself appears to find it difficult to break out of the standard received mould of a manservant in the England of the ‘forties. A story he mentions, and one that his father would frequently recount admiringly, is of the exploits of a British butler overseas. At the employer’s residence in colonial India, this man had suddenly discovered a tiger hiding under the dining table: 

The butler had left the dining room quietly, taking care to close the doors behind him, and proceeded calmly to the drawing room where his employer was taking tea with a number of visitors. There he attracted his employer’s attention with a polite cough, then whispered in the latter’s year: ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but there appears to be a tiger in the dining room. Perhaps you will permit the twelve-bores to be used?’ And according to legend, a few minutes later, the employer and his guests heard three gun shots. When the butler reappeared in the drawing room some time afterwards to refresh the teapots, the employer had enquired if all was well. ‘Perfectly fine, thank you, sir’, had come the reply. ‘Dinner will be served at the usual time and I am pleased to say there will be no discernible traces left of the recent occurrence by that time.’

In the Stevens perspective, the onus is on the butler worth his salt to choose his employer intelligently. First, he must make a careful study of the employer and the work conditions. He must then make an informed choice for the best fit of employer-employee relations. Thereafter, the choice is binding. The highest work aspiration is to provide unquestioning service in all circumstances throughout employment. Stevens strongly disapproves of critical servants; they neither commit to tasks or stick with the job.

He muses:

For it is, in practice, simply not possible to adopt such a critical attitude towards an employer and at the same time provide good service. It is not simply that one is unlikely to be able to meet the many demands of service at the higher levels while one’s attention is being diverted by such matters; more fundamentally, a butler who is forever attempting to formulate his own ‘strong opinions’ on his employer’s affairs is bound to lack one quality essential in all good professionals: namely, loyalty.

The pronouncement probably resonates with Japanese traditions. But there is a distinct cultural difference. Honour and obedience to elders, especially family members, is paramount in the Asian cultures. In the England of the time, thoughts about the wellbeing the employer appears to trump familial bonds, as happens with Stevens.

The values of service mentioned in the book are hardly in evidence any more in the different regions of the globe. Is globalization to blame for this? Seems to me that we might point to the rise of professional management in organizations. As a result, the operational control of the concern has generally been separated from its ownership.

In the multinational corporation, for instance, commercial holdings of the company in various countries ensure that business transcends borders. Their management style and culture, knowledge and skill-based, is the same across continents. It drives the migration of the global workforce to different parts of the world, irrespective of individual nationality and culture. Their emergence has been welcomed as the process of unifying the world into one global village.  The exploitation of employees, a legacy of the industrial age where owners looked for ‘hands’ not ‘brains’, has thus been curtailed. 

Normally, the fear in the immigrant community would be of losing their cultural identity on foreign soil. Minor issues of discomfort in the new country may then appear magnified – the unfamiliar religious affiliations, food habits, currency calculations, traffic rules and even the inability to vent in the vernacular! These become emotional stressors. To keep from being assimilated, the people would find safety in like numbers, building around them an ethnic shield. A Chandni Chowk, a China Town, a Latin Quarter, and so on, develop in pockets to preserve continuity with ethnic origins.

The trouble is, the immigrant community very often clings to the past they have carried with them overseas. Unbeknownst to them, the social order may itself have evolved beyond back home. The traditions they swear by may in fact, be on the way to extinction in the parent nation, and they thus find themselves caught between cultures, with their adaptability in any case, suspect. 

The workplace, on the other hand, builds a structure and culture unlike society. They base almost solely on the rational numbers of business. This organizational sameness, whether in Asia or America, may appear familiar, reassuring to the individual immigrant.They immerse in work to stave off their angst. They tend to work harder than others to blend into the work culture, which serves the needs of the organization best. Should the culture call for an unwavering focus on the bottom-line, so be it, they live to serve its needs. 

However, there is a downside. The change of process causes the traditional attitudes to service to also change. Money has, instead, become the strongest motivator in the workplace.  In more recent times the pendulum seems to swing in the opposite direction.  Top management in many professionally managed companies resort to paying themselves obscene bonuses at the expense of the system and thousands of laid-off workers. The traditional values of service – commitment, honour, loyalty, and sacrifice, are casualty with the advancement of greed. We might shrug and call it collateral damage.  

Reference: 

Ishiguro Kazuo, “The Remains of the Day”. ISBN 978-0-571-25824-6. Faber and Faber Limited. Great Britain. 1989.

Preservation of culture?

In categorizing people into ‘us’ and ‘them’ groups, we refer to culture a lot.  According to our standards of judgement, these others belong to cultures that may be somewhat like us, or more usually, backward to us. Individual behaviours that may differ from our own, we tend to attribute to their cultural origins, their social DNA. Obviously, the term is of great importance to determine status in the civilized world.  

Culture means different things to different people. The spectrum of definitions the ‘Net throws up is wide, including: 

• Human intellectual achievement
•  Language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts
•  Quality of excellence in person or society in manners and scholarly pursuits
•  A form or stage of civilization
•  Development or improvement of the mind by education or training
•  Shared beliefs and behaviours of particular ethnic, social or age group.

However, in India, and elsewhere in the world, the administrative view of culture focuses on one aspect only – a form or stage of civilization. Accordingly, the preservation of culture is a practice. This does not apply to the mainstream, which may socialize in the global community. It is meant instead to protect uncontacted tribes located in the remotest parts of India’s vast diversity. But, does the process work?

 

No doubt the bureaucracy started out with sound rationales behind the practice.  Because they have lived so long in their own microcosms, these tribes have become endangered species. The rest of the world is toxic for them; hence the intention to save their numbers makes sense. Their physical survival is important against germs of modernity becoming life-threatening diseases.  

They are kept away on reservations of land tract, forest or islands. Their way of life of centuries continues, and that, on face value, seems logical. The social organization, their family structure, relationships and laws are to remain the same, same and same, as they ever were in the bygone days. Taxpayer monies are pumped in to maintain the appropriate ambience, and very heavy restrictions imposed on the surrounding environment. The laws strictly prohibit any interactions between mainstream society these isolated threads of humanity. Mainstream society is warned against entering their preserves, meeting the inhabitants or photographing them up close.  

I, however, find the present process discomforting. Fact is process implementation is faulty with inadequate safeguards and lax supervision. Its very purpose defeats with asphalt roads constructed around the reservations for the flow of convoys of tourist vehicles. When modernity invades their backyard, the tribes are hardly uncontacted anymore. The alien presence they are supposedly protected from is emphatically brought home to the people of the land. 

It seems to have become discriminatory, to keep the uncontacted backward, and make them anthropological attractions. Their ‘form or stage of civilization’ feeds the majority self-esteem. Tour operators rely on the greed of lower level administrative personnel to sell their tours. Their tourist convoys are little different from any jungle safari in search of exotic animals. There is folklore of their wild nature, their mistrust of outsiders, and their attacks with bows and poison-tipped arrows. They are taken as creatures of the wild and their habitats human zoos that excited tourists want to visit.  

The natural curiosity of a people is played upon. Inquisitive customers on tour crane their necks in eagerness for glimpses of their appearance with little or no clothing.  Convoy drivers are bribed to stop, and the tribals – especially women and children – to approach, enticed with food and other objects. They must then perform for the entertainments of a voyeuristic ‘superior’ civilization. The fact that they are living, breathing human beings worthy of dignity and respect, escapes attention. 

It carries the flavour of exploitation of groups unused to the culture of deception and guile. Unscrupulous middlemen take advantage of the gray areas. They grab every opportunity presented by loopholes in the system to further vested interests. Wherever there is an obstacle, bribes or favours are freely exchanged. What then is the point of laws when the measures to enforce them are weak or nonexistent?

 

In South America, watchdog organizations are able to expose the racketeering of corporate bodies that flout laws with impunity for their profits – owning land without title, deforesting without environmental licences. Because the people are isolated from modernity, and have neither the knowledge of laws, nor vigilant administrative support, they are easy prey for predatory groups unconcerned by their extinction. The spokespersons for some ancient tribes in Brazil and Peru have even claimed genocide of tribal population. 

One report from Paraguay last year says:

The secret agenda of a huge ranching firm in Paraguay has been exposed by satellite photos showing a newly-constructed reservoir. The reservoir reveals the firm’s intention to clear nearby forest belonging to an uncontacted tribe. In a pattern characteristic of the Chaco region, landowners first build large water containers before clearing tracts of forest for livestock. Carlos Casado SA’s construction of the reservoir puts neighboring Indians, especially uncontacted Ayoreo, in immediate danger.

Another report in March this year points out the growing dangers posed by unbridled industry:

Many Ayoreo have already been contacted and have been claiming title to the land owned by Carlos Casado S.A. for more than twenty years. Their uncontacted relatives who remain in the forest are extremely vulnerable to diseases brought in by outsiders, and unwanted contact could be deadly. The uncontacted Ayoreo are being forced to flee as their forest is being rapidly bulldozed to make way for cattle. … In 2009, Survival International successfully lobbied shareholders such as the Church of England and the Rowntree Trust to disinvest from mining giant Vedanta Resources, because of the company’s intention to mine the sacred mountain of the Dongria Kondh tribe.

 

It may be argued that in the Indian context, the situation is not so dire. I would add ‘yet’ since it is only a matter to time before it might be. The environment and fragile ecosystems are already endangered, as changing weather patterns testify. The lack of ethics in modern society makes illegal mining, deforestation, poaching, and industrial pollutions almost the rule. Corporate bottomlines drive the agenda, backed by powerful resources. Faced with the politico-corporate nexus, the bureaucracy falls silent, while India’s non-governmental social organizations lack bite. 

Superiority in this new age is certainly in terms of corruption. It threatens not only people groups, but also planet survival. The majority should forget their preoccupation with empty status and relearn from people backward to us a bit of forgotten ancient traditions. The uncontacted tribes have preserved a culture for centuries, that the mainstream has lost sight of – adaptability to Nature, and harmonious existence with its creations. They could ensure longevity of the planet, and yes, of our modernity.