Corporate Koreas Work Culture Gets Indian Workers Goat

In an Indo-Korean textile joint venture, factory workers recently went on a flash strike protesting against the Korean supervisors high-handedness with employees.

In Samsung, a top-level executive had no option but to walk out as the Korean boss increasingly bypassed his decisions and took away his independent authority.

In LG Electronics, the Korean brass in Seoul instructed their Delhi head-office that women employees should be wearing skirt-suits the official formalwear of women staff in LG offices all over Korea. The move immediately met with opposition from the aggrieved ladies.

These incidents might seem isolated, but are symptomatic of swelling cultural differences and tensions between the Indian and Korean staff in innumerable Korean companies across the country.

 

Longer working hours, limited independence of Indian executives in operational decisions, strict adherence to hierarchical structures, and rare attempts at intermingling are creating schisms in the Indian arms of Korean companies, thereby affecting the morale of Indian employees.

Says a management expert who has dealt with Korean as well as Japanese companies: The problem is that, unlike the Japanese who are ready to accept Indian cultural standards, the Koreans, in their aggressiveness to get going in India, are pushing through their own cultural standards and only very reluctantly accepting the Indian realities.

A key area is the tight control of the Koreans over the management without any major attempt at consulting Indian mangers. In most Korean companies, the top posts are held by Koreans and even regional heads, overseeing local offices, are run by the Koreans.

In Daewoo Motor, for instance, both the chairman as well as the vice-chairman are Koreans while the managing director is the sole Indian in the top management. The four deputy managing directors who look after the daily functions of finance, marketing, exports & imports, new projects development & production are all Koreans.

The problem is compounded by the fact that most important official communication between the headquarters and India-office are in Korean a language understood by few Indians. Crucial information and E-mail services on the computer are available only in the Korean language.Many Korean companies have thus evolved a unique system where they have an Indian and a Korean in a similar management position but it is the Korean who gives the orders in most cases.

A typical example: Samsung has a managing director who is a Korean and another post of a joint managing director filled in by an Indian, but the managing directors decision in most cases is preeminent. However, a company executive denied this charge and said: Most decisions are taken jointly.

While the Korean companies state that the idea of a Korean and an Indian at equivalent positions is to better translate into action the policy outline of the multinationa in India, Indian employees counter that often they are reduced to carrying out orders from the headquarters rather than implement independent decisions.

As a consequence, there seems to be burgeoning differences in management perceptions between the Indian and the Korean staff. Company insiders and industry watchers blame the Koreans for not Indianising their work ethos even while they focus on Indianisation of their products.

An insider in a Korean company said: The problem is that unlike the Indian offices of US-based multinational companies where they are increasingly using either expat-Indians or resident Indians at top management positions, Koreans prefer to have their own men in decision making areas.

The peculiar thing is that when there are any problems, they blame the Indians. But if things go well, the sabashi is taken by the Koreans, says a manager in a Korean auto company. They, however, prefer Indians only to execute orders, not to be part of the decision making process, he said.

Another senior executive, who preferred to take up a lesser-paying job in another company rather than continue with the unpleasant work atmosphere, albeit at a much higher pay, with a Korean firm stated: They need only yes sir Indians.

While the allegation of sidelining Indian from the management decision-making process has been denied by all these Korean companies, they agree that at initial stages it is more reasonable to place their own employees from overseas operations at key positions.

We need key men from our own operations here in order to kick-start the Indian operations and get the show going. Meanwhile, we would be training our Indian staff as well, and slowly transfer responsibilities as they pick up our business culture and focus, said a senior executive of LG Electronics.

An acute problem faced by Koreans and Indians in these companies are the different attitude to work-hours. While Koreans are used to long working hours with very little leave in a year, their schedule comes a cropper in India where people are used to a greater number of holidays.

As a result, the Korean companies find Indian workers more laidback a perception which is the root cause of many problems.

Indians do not like to work very hard. In Korea, we are always working. Here, people need many days of leave, said a Korean factory manager in the Indian subsidiary of Daewoo Motors.

In fact, lack of sympathy towards holidays and leave at an Indo-Korean textile joint venture company actually led to a protest flash-strike by distressed Indian workers some weeks back. The workers demanded an apology and were appeased only after some conciliatory moves by the Korean top brass.

In Daewoo Motor, insiders say inspite of the office timings spanning 9 am to 6 pm, as a rule most major management meetings are taken either before or after office hours. The company prefers to use its office hours to meet clients and conduct routine business work, said insiders.

But Korean companies, where employee and corporate identity are seen almost as one, do not fathom as to why it is unfair to expect workers to sacrifice leisure time for work in order to build a company. Work is very important. Otherwise how will we grow? asked a Korean factory manager.

In contrast, Indian employees complain of difficulties in availing entitled leave. In a place where our Korean bosses take almost no leave, it seems like a crime if we want to take some days off. Therefore, most of us have 100 per cent attendance, said a hapless employee in the Indian subsidiary of a Korean auto conglomerate.

The stressful work hours have already begun to take a toll on many Indian employees of Korean companies who are trying to explore other work avenues in competitor companies.

A senior executive of Honda disclosed that the Japanese auto major had interviewed many employees from a rival Korean company and they had expressed extreme unhappiness over the work hours and conditions in the Korean company.

These tensions are heightened by the fact that there is little cultural intermixing between the Indian and the Korean employees. Moreover, there is lack of awareness on the part of the latter to understand Indian traditions. For instance, women employees at Samsung India Electronics Ltd were directed to wear skirts on the occasion of the inauguration of the New Delhi office simply because it is the formal officewear at the Seoul headquarters.

The move naturally led to a protest by the women who had never faced such a ridiculous demand. While company executives clarified that there was no such controversy and that the company had, in fact, issued sarees for its women employees for the occasion, insiders said the Korean management had capitulated only after the employees refused to accept the imposition of the directive.

Insiders say that interaction between Indian and Korean employees is also made difficult by the fact that except for a few top level people, most Koreans are not well-versed in English, let alone in any Indian language.

Another senior level manager, who left one trouble-torn Indo-Korean joint venture company to join another Korean firm, has termed his shift as from the frying pan into the fire within months of joining his new assignment, and is already scouting for another job.

Comparing the shop-floor work atmosphere in both his previous and present companies, he said that the situation was similar in both not much bonhomie between the Korean and Indian workers. The Koreans are a very insulated lot and it is very difficult to work together without much conversation, he said.

Small things like separate eating facilities for the Korean staff have also led to a feeling of mutual alienation between them and the Indian workforce. For instance, discontent is brewing in the factory of a major Korean electronics company where the staff has resented the separate meal menu for the Koreans and the Indians at the canteen.

More so because while the Korean plate of Rs 200 is provided free to the Korean employees, the Indian meal, which is at one-fourth cost, is provided at Rs 12 to the Indian workers, said a senior company executive, lamenting over the apparent discrimination.

Of course, Korean companies defend decisions like separate menus as a necessity because Koreans, they say, cannot survive on Indian food. We buy months supply of food whenever we go home. We cannot eat Indian rice. Our vegetables and rice are so different said a liaision head of a Korean chaebol.

But herein lies the difference between a Korean company and the attitude of other multinationals towards India.

There is a clear lack of effort to absorb even a small part of the Indian culture, food and other habits. In most other MNCs, foreigners always make special effort to pick up the language and appreciate the food. In contrast, the Koreans go to great lengths to maintain a separate identity, commented a noted industrialist.

Reflecting the growing disillusionment with the Korean work culture, an industry watcher said: Korean companies themselves are on their learning curve, expanding beyond their shores and growing with the support of their operations in developing markets like India.

Perhaps, for a joint venture to be successful in a country like India, what is needed are more mature business partners who have already gone through their respective growth paths and, therefore, are willing to take a more patient, empathetic and long term view of the Indian economy.