Syst Pract Act ResDOI 10.1007/s11213-006-9024-6

ORIGINAL PAPER

From East to West- Has the Twain Met? LinkagesBetween Context Sensitivity and SoftSystems Methodology∗

Madhu Ranjan Kumar · Shankar Sankaran

Received: 28 November 2005 / Accepted: 3 June 2006C© Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Abstract This paper links context sensitivity of Indians to mode 2 of Soft Systems Method-ology (SSM) bringing out the similarities between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft and theprimary mode and secondary mode of behaviour of context sensitivity respectively. BothSSM and context sensitivity consider the totality of environment before selecting the mostappropriate behaviour. In the Indian context, the three dimensions of context sensitivity—person (patra), time (kal) and ecology (the pattern of relationships people have with theirsocial and physical surrounding) (desh) are the three coordinates along which SSM’s stan-dard of facts and values change. The unbundling of the changing standard of SSM along thethree dimensions of person, time and ecology and across the two polarities of Gemeinschaftand Gesellschaft provides a model which is used to explain the recent economic rise of India.

Keywords Context sensitivity . Adaptability . Appreciative system . Soft systemsmethodology

∗ An earlier and shorter version of this paper titled ‘Context sensitivity: An Indian version of soft systems’has been presented at the ALARPM Congress 2006.

M. R. Kumar (�)Chief Materials Manager, Indian Railways, 50, Diesel Locomotive Works,Banaras, India 221004e-mail: madhu ranjan@yahoo.com

S. SankaranSenior Lecturer University of Technology, Sydney, Australiae-mail: shankar.sankaran@uts.edu.au

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1. Introduction

Senge (1990) has been critical of the lack of systemic thinking in the western world. Senge’ssystemic understanding of the world is expressed as: ‘the nature is not made up of parts. Itis made up of wholes within whole.’ This echoes with an ancient vedic mantra of India:

That is whole. This too is whole (Om poornamada, Poornam-idsm).Take away whole from whole (Poornasya Poornamadaye).What remains is still the whole (Poornameva Vishashyate).(note: The sentences in the parenthesis are the original vedic verses in Sanskrit. TheSanskrit word ‘poornam’ means complete or whole)

Beer (1994) also underscores the systemic approach of the classical Indian thinking inhis analysis of Gita. He interprets verse 3.27 of Gita into cybernetic language as:

Output is a self-regulating black box of input variety. It speaks of the self-determinationof the system from its own nature.

He concludes that this verse of Gita speaks of the implicit (emphasis in original) controlin nature which cybernetics discovered 5000 years later (Beer 1994, p. 85). He also linkshis viable systems model (VSM) with the vedantic creation model called sristi. This paperattempts to uncover this systemic Indian mind set through the construct of context sensi-tivity (Sinha and Kanungo 1997) by identifying the conceptual similarities between contextsensitivity and Checkland’s soft systems and Vickers’s appreciative systems. In the process,this paper argues that the current economic rise of India is attributable in part to the contextsensitive mind set of Indians.

2. Context sensitivity

According to Sinha and Kanungo (1997) context sensitivity refers to the adaptive na-ture of an idea or behaviour in a context. A context sensitive behaviour is situation-driven. Related to the concept of context sensitivity is that of ‘balancing.’ Balancingis the behavioural manifestation of a context sensitive mentality. People who are sensi-tive to their contexts are also aware of their diverse demands. Therefore, they have tostrike a balance among the diverse demands of environment by adapting their behaviourto them.

Sinha and Kanungo (1997) provide a socio-historic reason behind the context sensitivebehaviour of Indians:

The traditional systems of Hinduism, castes and agricultural mode of production haveinteracted with the events of foreign invasions, alien rules, and the exposure to the Westto create a context sensitivity which takes into consideration the person-related (patra)and temporal (kal) aspects and the ecology (desh) of the environment while respondingto a given situation. Here ecology means the pattern of relationships of people withtheir social and physical surrounding. A behaviour that can be considered appropriatefor a given time, place and persons may not be considered appropriate for another time,place and person.

A few anecdotes may explain context sensitivity better. One of the authors was a studentin an Australian university. There were other Indian students also in that university. Oneteacher at university was of Indian origin. It was noted that when the teacher of Indian origin

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would come to the group of Indian students, they would get up as a mark of respect to him.On his part, the teacher too, would wave them to sit down. Showing respect to a teacher is atypical Indian trait. However the same group of students would not get up when any otherteacher would come up to them. Because the teachers of Australian origin did not expectthem to get up, the Indian students did not feel the necessity of getting up on their arrivaleven though the Indian students might be quite respectful to them. This is an example ofbehaving differently with different persons in the same situation - the person (patra) basedmanifestation of context sensitivity.

The temporal (kal) related dimension of context sensitivity is manifested by way ofbehaving differently with the same person or situation at different points in time. For decades,two sons of a prominent Indian business tycoon were living with their parents, wives andchildren like an Indian joint family. In public the two sons—now in their mid forties—were amodel of sibling affection. Professionally too, within a span of 30 years, the business tycoonand his two sons had created the second largest industrial empire in India that was the envy ofthe rest of Indian industrialists who in generations could not create what the threesome createdin a matter of 30 years. However within a year of the death of the business tycoon, his two sonssplit up after a series of very acrimonious and very public spats. But it did not embarrass theircommon acquaintances. Rather, some of them including an ex. Chief Minister of an Indianstate trooped in to decide how to split the business assets between the two. It is to be notedthat no mediation was warranted as far as their personal split was concerned. The mediationwas only for the division of assets. As if the society accepted that the death of their fathersignified an event whereby they have crossed one time period (kal) of their life and enteredanother time period of their life. Thus, the same two persons, in the same situation of runninga business empire could behave differently in the changed times caused by the death of theirfather.

Ecology (desh) means the pattern of relationships of people with their social and physicalsurrounding. A group of Indian managers including one of the authors once visited USA asmembers of an official delegation. This group consisted of managers from the lowest to thehighest rung of an Indian bureaucratic organisation. Indian bureaucracy and Indian societyare highly hierarchical (Khandwalla 1999; Sinha 1995). However a few days into USA, thejunior members of the delegation began calling their seniors by their names—somethingthe junior members could never have imagined to do in India. Few weeks later, when thegroup returned to Indian, the status quo ante was restored—the juniors began to ‘sir’ theseniors! One of them remarked, “I am surprised, how I was able to call my boss by hisname in USA”! This is an example of change in behaviour due to ecology (desh) dimen-sion of context sensitivity—the change in the pattern of relationships of people with theirsocial and physical surrounding made them develop different understanding of ‘appropriatebehaviour.’

2.1. Philosophical underpinning of context sensitivity

The authors argue that the context sensitive nature of Indians can be traced to their mentalorientation of being able to work at different levels of reality. The philosophical underpinningfor different levels of reality is reflected in Taittiriya Upnishad—an ancient Indian scripture—which had identified five levels of reality (Radhakrishnan 1949, p. 43). According to Jainand Kussman (1994) the lowest level reality can be identified with matter and food (anna).This reality is at the empirical level limited by space and time. The next level of reality is life(prana). Life is different from matter and food, yet it is the essence of matter and food (Koller1982, p. 101). It is akin to saying that matter and food have given rise to the life form of

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reality. The third level of reality is mind (manas). Mind is different from life yet it is theessence of life. It is the rudimentary form of awareness which humans share with animals.It is akin to saying that life has given rise to the mind form of reality. The fourth levelof reality is intelligence (vijnana). Mind has given rise to intelligence which is about un-derstanding the world. While human beings have largely mastered the material world, thelife and the working of mind, he has not yet mastered the reality at the level of intelli-gence or understanding. Therefore he is not the master of his/her act (Radhakrishnan 1949,p. 43) because there is a struggle of opposites in the world of experience. The ultimatereality—the fifth and the highest—is above all opposites (Gita verse 2.45 interpreted byRadhakrishnan 1949, p. 43). Thus it is the endeavour of each person to attain the ultimatereality which is called joy or bliss (anand). ‘This ultimate reality is boundless. Thereforeall possibilities can coexist without excluding or compromising one another. Thus oppo-sites can coexist and even enrich one another with all their differences’ (Jain and Kussman1994, p. 96).

Thus, for Indians, no description can convey the entire truth about anything. However,the deeper the level of reality the more fully one participates in the truth of being (Jain andKussman 1994, p. 96). Embree (1989, p.13) echoes the same when he says

(For Indians) there is the concept of many levels of truth, the assertion that while thereis ‘truth’ in the sense of an overarching reality and there are ‘true’ actions, there aremany possibilities and contradictions, all of which may be true in some sense. . . . It isnot mere accident that Mahatma Gandhi titled his autobiography as ‘my experimentswith truth.’

Thus each perspective provides a partial glimpse of reality-–these viewpoints can even beopposing. A new viewpoint may render the older one less dominant, but the older viewpointis not therefore rejected. Both coexist (Jain and Kussman, 1994, p.103). Carl Jung has said,“It is bewildering to see how fragments of Western science live peacefully with what we,short-sightedly, would call superstition. Indians do not mind seemingly intolerable contra-dictions’ (quoted in Sinha and Kanungo 1997, p. 1995). On the same lines, Radhakrishnan(1949, p. 143) has said, ‘In its anxiety to lose nothing in the march of ages, to harmonize everysincere conviction without renouncing any, it (Hinduism) has become an immense synthesiscombining within itself varied elements and motives’. In such a situation, there cannot be anabstract formulation of law. Laws are thus applied as applicable to each new case. Therefore,it is not surprising that Nakamura (1964, p. 115) holds the view that ‘Hindus distrust anyabstract formulation of law applicable to all cases. They want to consider each case on itsindividual merit’. Thus there can be different levels of truth as truth can take many shadeand interpretations. Derne (1992, p. 266) reflects the same opinion when he says that ‘NorthIndian Hindu . . . do not recognize institutional standards as right in an abstract way’. Indi-ans de-emphasize individual autonomy in explaining each individual action. (Derne 1992,p. 261). Everyone assesses his/her own context and acts accordingly. In this situation, thereis nothing objective or ‘hard reality’ about what a person sees or does.

The understanding that no belief can be declared absolutely true or absolutely false is alsofound in other religions of Indian origin e.g. in Buddhism and Jainism. In Buddhism there aretwo levels of reality (Mullin, 1999) and Buddha often compared reality to mirages, magic illu-sions or dreams (http://www.purifymind.com/InterdependenceBudd.htm). Similarly, in Jain-ism the theory of Syadvada (may be) says that all knowledge is probable and relative; there-fore another person’s point of view is as true as one’s own (Jain and Kussman 1994, p. 103).

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Table 1 Dimensions of SSM types

Mode 1 Mode 2

Methodology-driven Situation-drivenIntervention InteractionSometimes sequential Always iterativeSSM as external SSM as internalised model

Source: Checkland and Scholes (1990)

3. Similarities between context sensitivity and soft systems methodology

This paper now argues how the philosophical underpinning about the absence of a hardreality in an Indian’s psych is conceptually similar to the appreciative systems of Vickers andCheckland’s soft systems methodology (SSM). Appreciative systems are the interconnectedset of largely tacit standards of judgment by which we both order and value our experience.People appreciate the facts on personal, institutional and cultural factors (Vickers, 1970).The appreciated world is a world of represented contexts (Vickers 1970, p. 97). Accordingto Vickers, organisational members set standards or norms rather than goals and the focus ongoal is replaced by one on managing relationships according to the standard or norm generatedby the previous history of the organization. Independent of Vicker’s appreciative systems,Checkland also developed his understanding of such systems which are not goal seeking. Hecalled the methodology of understanding such systems as soft systems methodology (SSM).For Checkland, SSM is a process to articulate Vicker’ s concept of appreciative systems(Checkland 2003, p. 17).

Going back to context sensitivity, if everyone assesses his/her own context and actsaccordingly resulting in nothing objective or ‘hard reality’ about what a person sees or does,then there is no real world that a person is attempting to map. On similar lines, Checkland’ssoft systems methodology does not attempt to model the real world. The mode 2 of SSM issituation-driven and always iterative (see Table 1) wherein a person internalises what he/shesees, understands it and then acts according to his/her understanding of the situation or shouldwe say according to his/her understanding of context. Little wonder in an unstable, messyIndia which has handled events of foreign invasions, alien rules, and numerous cultures, thecontext sensitivity is echoing what Checkland calls SSM for studying ‘ill-defined, messyproblems of this world’ (Checkland 1994, p. 80).

It is possible to formally integrate context sensitivity and balancing within SSM. In orderto integrate context sensitivity within SSM, let us first see how mode 2 of SSM draws fromVickers’s concept of appreciative systems (Checkland 1994):

In Vickers’s appreciative system, the worldview of a person is represented by theinteracting flux of events and ideas. They are represented by ‘two-stranded rope,’ thestrands being inseparable and continuously affecting each other. There is a recursiveloop in which the flux of events and ideas generate appreciation. Appreciation leads toaction. Both appreciation and action also contribute to flux. A person appreciates theflux of events and ideas and makes judgment about it based on his/her own standard(or norms) of facts and values: standards of what is—the facts, and standards of whatis good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable—the values. Also the very act of using thestandard may itself modify them. Thus, there is no ultimate source for standards bymeans of which what is noticed is deemed good or bad, important or unimportant. Thesource of the standard is the previous history of the system itself (emphasis in original).

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time

the flux of

events and

ideas

Appreciation: • Perceive • Judge, in terms

of facts and value

• Envisage desired relationship

Standards (of fact and value)

Action

Fig. 1 The structure of an appreciative system. Source: Checkland (1994, p. 83)

Action results from the meaning which members of an organization attribute to theiract and to the acts of others. Meanings are socially sustained and meanings are sociallychanged.

This discussion on appreciative system is pictorially shown in Fig. 1.The standard here is defined as an individual’s judgment of what is good or bad, acceptable

or unacceptable and Vickers says that the source of the standard or norm is the previous historyof the system. A question arises at this stage: Is it possible to represent the previous history ofthe system in some frame of reference? That is, is there any culturally, socially constructedframe of reference within which a person assesses and modifies his/her standard or is it that thestandard just evolves from a random drift and the resultant temporary mental amalgamationof previous history? The authors argue that at least in India, the three dimensions of contextsensitivity—person (patra), time (kal) and ecology (desh) provide the frame of referencewithin which an Indian defines his/her standard. Thus though the ‘standard’ keeps changing,the changes in the standard are along the three coordinates of ‘person,’ ‘time’ and ‘ecology.’A person’s belief and values can be placed on these three coordinates.

Further, while adjudging the world as per the three components of standard, a personin India expresses a primary expressive mode which is traditional in nature and also a sec-ondary expressive mode that is acquired as a result of the transplantation of the Westernmanagement concepts onto a traditional Indian core (Sinha and Kanungo 1997, p. 100). Aprimary mode of behaviour is triggered by indigenous traditional influences. The secondarymode of behaviour comes from more recent Western influence and exposure to the principlesof modern organisational management (Sinha and Kanungo 1997, p. 99). This is conceptu-ally similar to what Tonnies has called ‘Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft’ (Checkland 1994;Loomis 1955, p. 77). Gemeinschaft is the natural living community of family or tribe in

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which a person is born and Gesellschaft is the formally created group as when a personjoins a company. Gemeinschaft shows those relationships which develop on ‘natural will.’‘Natural will’ implies that people are not treated as means to another end. Means and ends aretaken together. On the other hand, Gesellschaft depicts such relationships which are basedon ‘rational will’ where people are treated instrumentally, as objects/means to another end.A market is a typical area for such relations. In Gesellschaft, relations are short term lastingfor the time during which a person fulfils the function of achieving an end through anotherperson. In Gemeinschaft, relations are expected to last longer. It is not an exchange relation-ship where through the instrumentality of an interaction, an end is fulfilled. For example,the relationship between a shopkeeper and a customer is a Gesellschaft relationship wherethey are interacting to fulfil the roles of a seller and a buyer. The relationship does not lastany longer. But in Gemeinschaft, people treat each other as ‘persons’ and not as roles (Vat2004, p. 945). Therefore relationships between a father and a son, a teacher and a studentare Gemeinschaft relationships.

Checkland (1994, p. 78) says that the traditional organizational theory has emphasizedthe Gesellschaft aspect of the organization which has led to hard system thinking. But theactual behaviour of members of organisation is a mixture of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.On the same lines, ‘context sensitivity’ of Sinha and Kanungo (1997) recognize both theGesellschaft and the Gemeinschaft based responses of a person. What they consider as theprimary expressive mode of a person is the Gemeinschaft based response and what theyconsider as the secondary expressive mode is the Gesellschaft based response of a person.

The authors now argue that it is along this continuum of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaftthat the coordinates of person, time and ecology get differentiated.

This argument is pictorially shown in Fig. 2.Figure 2 splits the standards of fact and value into three components of time, person

and ecology and also positions them along the Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft continuum.Thus what has been referred to merely as ‘standard’ in Checkland’s model (see Fig. 1) hasnow been unbundled using Sinha and Kanungo’s notion of context sensitivity. How a personis going to perceive, judge and respond to the environmental cues depends on the relativesalience along the Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft continuum of his/her understanding of

1. the persons he/she is interacting with (patra—person)2. the occasion he/she is facing (kal—temporal)3. the social/physical environment he/she is placed in (desh—ecology).

The above argument will be made clearer by explaining the three examples of contextsensitivity given in section 2 in terms of Fig. 2.

Because of the Gemeinschaft value called hierarchy manifested in relation to behaviourwith persons (patra), the Indian students displayed their primary mode of behaviour of‘getting up’ in deference to the Indian teacher. Because of the Gesellschaft value calledegalitarianism, the same students displayed their secondary mode of behaviour of ‘notgetting up’ before the Australian teachers.

Because of the Gemeinschaft value called ‘past and present orientation’ the sons ofthe business tycoon displayed their primary mode of behaviour of ‘living with the past’(their parents). After the death of their father (end of a time phase—kal), because of theirGesellschaft value called ‘future planning,’ they broke their umbilical chords with past anddisplayed the secondary mode of behaviour of parting ways so as to chart the course of theirrespective business empires in their own preferred ways. Gamer (1999) has said, ‘we areborn into families, whose good we pursue until we seek our own independence and beginour own families.’

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Historical Behavioural Manifestations Contemporary influence influence (Gemeinschaft) (Gesellschaft)

(Gemeinschaft) (Gesellschaft)

Relating to people (patra)Primary Mode Secondary mode

In-group embeddedness -------Individualism Hierarchy ------------- Egalitarianism

Relating to time (kal)Primary Mode Secondary Mode Past & present -----------------Future planning orientation Avoidance -------------------------Taking risk

Relating to ecology (desh)Primary Mode Secondary Mode Moralism --------------------------- Pragmatism Poverty syndrome --------------- Growth

oriented

Hinduism

Caste

Agricultural mode of production

Invasions

Alien rules

Technological and industrial expansion

Modernization

Western management education

Fig. 2 Unbundling of standards of fact and value into three components of time, person and ecology andtheir positioning along the Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft continuum. Source: developed from Sinha andKanungo (1997) and Checkland (1994)

Because of the Gesellschaft value called ‘pragmatism’ the members of the Indian del-egation did not want to look stupid in the social and physical surrounding of USA (theecology-–desh component of context sensitivity), they displayed the secondary mode ofbehaviour by addressing each other by their names. Because of the Gemeinschaft valuecalled ‘moralism’ (we ought not to address our seniors by their name—an Indian trait), themembers of the Indian delegation displayed the primary mode of behaviour by once again‘sirring’ their seniors on their return to India.

Taking the comparison between SSM and context sensitivity further, both context sen-sitivity and SSM are adaptive. Both take the soft system and not the hard system aroundthem in consideration. A context sensitive mindset like SSM is not goal seeking. In both,goals emerge out of the process of accommodation. The goals may change with time. WhatCheckland calls ‘action’ is akin to ‘balancing’ of Sinha and Kanungo. Action arises frommeaning which members of an organization attribute to each other’s act (Checkland 1994,p. 78). The action is based on accommodation between different conflicting perspectives.Action is what is culturally feasible for a particular group of person in a particular situationwith a particular history (Checkland 1994, p. 94). ‘Balancing is also trying to seek a middle

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time

the flux of events

and ideas

Standards of fact and value

Gemeinschaft Gesellschaft

Appreciation:Perceive Judge in terms of fact and value Envisage desired relationship

Action

Balancing of behaviour or coping with the environment

Fig. 3 Integration of mode 2 of SSM with context sensitivity and balancing

path which in general avoids the extreme path. It tends to accommodate between differentenvironmental contexts’ (Sinha and Kanungo 1997, p. 96).

Now it is now possible to integrate mode 2 of SSM with context sensitivity and balancing.It is pictorially shown in Fig. 3. It shows that context sensitivity is the mental map whichprovides a different response in each situation depending on the user and the nature of thesituation. And providing a different response in each situation depending on the user and thenature of the situation is what Checkland calls SSM.

In spite of above integration of context sensitivity with the soft systems methodology,there are differences between them.

The difference lies in that while SSM gives rise to action, context sensitivity gives riseto coping. It has been shown in Fig. 3. Because of the action learning approach, SSM istoday a methodology which is relevant more in an organizational situation. But becauseof the behavioural science approach, context sensitivity is relevant more in an individualsituation. The learning through SSM can be both at the individual level and at the group level.However, through context sensitivity, the learning is generally at individual level. Soft systemmethodology (SSM) has been advocated as a flexible approach to problem solving in complexorganizational situations, context sensitivity is a flexible approach to social interaction incomplex social situations. SSM has an action bias—it decides about an individual’s actionafter considering the environment in its totality from his/her point of view, context sensitivityhas an interaction bias—it decides about how a person interacts with his/her environment

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after considering the environment in its totality. But both emphasize accommodation withthe totality of situation and both lead to adaptive behaviour. The emphasis on the totality ofsituation is because both have their origin in systemic thought.

Perhaps it is this systemic understanding of the world inbuilt into the Indian psych throughreligious scriptures (see Section 2.1) that has made them understand the schemes of the worldas soft systems. Basham (1967, p. 344–345) interprets the Indian perspective on action as:‘In every circumstances there are actions which are intrinsically right (and) the right coursemust be chosen according to circumstances’. It can be rephrased in the language of SSM as:‘In every circumstances, there are more than one world-view and the action to be taken isthe one which is both desirable and feasible for a particular group of persons in a particularsituation’ (Checkland 1994, p. 86).

4. Context sensitivity as an intervening factor in management of change in India

This paper now uses the argument developed above to explain a finding which went againstthe grain of the existing literature. Literature has generally referred to resistance to change(Hersey et al. 2002) more so in bureaucracy (Watson 1966; Khandwalla 1999). However,in a survey-based review of ISO 9000 implementation in six units of Indian bureaucracy,no resistance to change was reported (Kumar 2006). The lack of resistance to change wasalso found in action research based implementation of ISO 9000 in other units of Indianbureaucracy. The consistent lack of resistance to change needed an explanation which theexisting literature could not provide (Kumar 2006, p. 239). This paper argues that it wasbecause of their context sensitive dispositions that the Indian employees were amenable tochange. The model developed in Fig. 3 provides the theoretical basis for this. A contextsensitive behaviour is situation-driven. Therefore one is flexible and does not feel the needto offer any resistance to change—why, because if the context has changed, so has theinternal model of action. Or talking systemically in terms of Fig. 3, the standard of facts andvalues—which interprets the cues of the external world—had got modified along the threedimensions of person, ecology and time. This made the employees more flexible.

However, in the above referred research, it needs to be explained how the context gotchanged.

The first change in context was that the boss—subordinate relationship in the organisationgot repositioned as a guru-shishya (teacher-student) relationship (Kumar 2006, p. 203–206). In terms of Fig. 3, this meant that for the Indians, the context got shifted towardsthe Gemeinschaft end of the continuum along the dimension of ‘person’ (patra) becausetraditionally, Indians have a preference for being guided by gurus (teachers)(Sekhar 2001,p. 361). The teacher-student relationship made the situation conducive for learning andtherefore conducive for change. The second change in context was that the need for customersatisfaction was not inculcated with its economic logic but with its Gemeinschaft logic. Ina conventional approach to customer satisfaction, customer needs are to be understood andsatisfied because it is the customer who gives us business and a dissatisfied customer canmean winding up of business. Thus it is the fear of retaliation by the customer which makesone satisfy him/her. Thus under the veneer of customer satisfaction, in reality, it is a ‘war likesituation’ (Truzzi 1971) between me and my customer. This can be termed as the economiclogic behind customer satisfaction. To paraphrase it in the language of Tonnies (Loomis1955), this is the Gesellschaft—‘rational will’—for customer satisfaction because customersatisfaction is looked upon as a means to achieve the end objective of remaining profitablein business. However, it may not be internalised in a traditional society like India where dutyand obligations are considered superior virtues than hedonism (Sinha 1995). Thus it can

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mean a double handicap. First, the customer’s desire for his/her satisfaction can be construedas his/her hedonism and thus looked down upon; second, here customer satisfaction is notbeing internalised as one’s duty or obligation towards society. So it does not resonate withthe ‘natural will’—the Gemeinschaft of the employees. The following paragraph explainshow in Fig. 3, the context got changed towards the Gemeinschaft end of the continuum alongthe dimension of ‘ecology’ (desh).

The ethical relevance of customer satisfaction was developed as follows: In the actionlearning cycle 1, one of the staff had mentioned about how banks had decided that theywould encash a cheque in 10 min. This logic was taken further: In his/her day-to-daylife an Indian goes to a bank, to a municipal office, to an electric supply companyoffice or to a hospital. The common theme in all these institutions is that he/she is acustomer and he/she wants his/her problem to be addressed efficiently. However, thegeneral experience in India is that interaction with these institutions leaves a bad tastein mouth. If the staff in the Indian bureaucracy are explained that the common themelacking in these organizations is a customer orientation, then they should be able tounderstand its relevance as a duty or obligation towards society so that they, as membersof the society, can collectively have a better life. . . . Since Indians are prone to think intotality rather than in a reductionist way, the understanding of customer satisfaction asa duty valid across different organizations will make them understand the big pictureand their own role in that big picture (slightly paraphrased from Kumar 2006, p. 213).

It is to be noted here how customer satisfaction resonates with the ‘natural will’ ofpeople if inculcated as another manifestation of people’s collective duty towards each other,towards their kin and towards their societal members. It is no longer a means to attain the endobjective of getting more business or retaining the customer. Gamer (1999) has said, ‘changemust proceed in conformity with social righteousness and the spirit of a given people.’ Inreflections after the change, the members of the bureaucracy said that as long as what wasbeing changed did not militate against their inner values (read—against their standard ofGemeinschaft), they did not feel the urge to resist change. This shows that there can beculture specific differences in a society’s response to change. The above emphasis on theGemeinschaft based standard in place of Gesellschaft based standard is an issue we shallcome back to a little later.

4.1. From context sensitivity to adaptability—the reason behind India’srecent economic rise?

From the above specific example of ‘change in context’ in a short span of time, this paper nowtakes up the changing contexts of Indians with respect to an organization (say a factory—asa metaphor) since India’s independence in terms of Fig. 3 and juxtaposes them within anappreciative and soft systems framework. It is shown in Table 2. Then the paper argues howthe context sensitivity of Indians has been a key reason behind the current economic rise ofIndia.

For a factory, Table 2 shows the Gemeinschaft standard of Indians and the varyingGesellschaft standard of Indians along the three dimensions of context sensitivity at threestages since the time India became independent. For the sake of brevity, only the moresalient Gesellschaft standard has been indicated in Table 2. Four things are to be notedhere. First, much like the soft systems, different group of persons were allowed to havedifferent perceptions about what is the ‘real’ objective of a factory in India without trying toanalyse and define what should be the ‘real’ goal of a factory as perhaps would have been

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Fig. 4 The systemic variation in appreciation about a factory in India over time leading to different actionsSource: developed from Checkland (1994, p. 84) Note: A, B, C and D in this figure correspond to the respectivecolumns of Table 2

done in a Western country. The resulting action (the output) of a factory was therefore anaccommodation of these different perceptions (see Fig. 4). Second, as the action changedthe flux of events and ideas they in turn changed the appreciation (or the world view) of theIndians towards a factory and hence changed their Gesellschaft standard much in line withVickers reasoning that the very act of using the standard may itself modify them. Figure 4 alsoshows how the process of enquiry (about the objectives of a factory) itself became systemic.This changed the actions of a factory and thus to that extent, learning took place amongst thedifferent stakeholders—the employees, the owner, the government, the customer etc—of thefactory. Third, in all these changing world views about what a factory is, the older views werenot jettisoned, but newer views were added in line with the Indian tendencies to concurrentlyhold even contradictory points of view (see Section 2.1 above). The relative salience of an

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Syst Pract Act Res

older view however decreased. For example in 1947, the most salient Gesellschaft worldview about a factory was that it was looked upon as a harbinger of new India—the templesof modern India as Nehru the then Prime Minister of India called them. A factory wassomething which would catapult India into the league of industrial nations (see row B inTable 2). By the eighties, the same factory, in addition to being looked upon as a harbinger ofnew India, was also looked upon as a employment generator, capacity builder and a place tofoster national integration (see row C in Table 2). Today, the same factories are additionallybeing looked upon as a source of profit generation (see row D in Table 2). Profit generationis the most salient Gesellschaft worldview about a factory in contemporary India. Fourthly,for an Indian, the current Gesellschaft standard for a factory has much in common with theGemeinschaft standard for a factory (In Table 2, compare column A with column D). Let usrecall that at the end of Section 4, the emphasis on the Gemeinschaft based standard in placeof Gesellschaft based standard was a key reason for the lack of resistance to change in anIndian bureaucracy.

So what have been the changes in the Indian’s context in the last 60 years? India gotindependence in 1947. At that time it was industrially backward. Yet it was able to createa massive industrial base within 20 years of independence. It was able to appreciate that inthe changed context, rapid industrialization was the path to progress. But, Indians were nothandling the industrial assets efficiently in a western-economic sense—perhaps because theywere not expected to look at it only economically—after all India was a socialist welfarestate. Thus between sixties to eighties, a number of factories were nationalized, banks weredirected to distribute loans almost as freebies (see Fig. 4). But once that approach wasjettisoned in the early nineties, instead of getting overwhelmed by the supposedly moreefficient economic order of the Western countries, Indians have been able to profit from it—look at the transfer of jobs to India from USA (Forrester Report 2005; Sheshabalaya 2004,Prestowitz 2005). Today, Indians have made their mark as software experts, as knowledgeworkers, in BPOs and India is a preferred destination for setting up manufacturing outposts—the changed context told the Indians ‘work better’ and they immediately rebooted themselvesfor this—no resistance to change- because I do not look back to justify my looking forward.It is perhaps this lack of resistance to change or more formally the adaptability of Indianswhich explains why India has been able to do well in many industry segments which emergedpost 1990. This is the social manifestation of an individual’s context sensitivity. If membersof a group have been culturally cued to pick up the contextual signals for the performanceof their activities, then they do not feel the tug of history which can pull them back fromthat activity. Members of the group do not feel any excessive need to justify whatever theyhave been doing till then. When you do not suffer from the need to justify your past orcurrent activities, you are temperamentally more amenable to change your current activityinto any other activity as the goal changes (which was never predefined in the first place).Earlier I was doing a job with one mindset—call it a conservative Indian, socialist welfaremindset—because that was expected of me in the context in which the work was then defined.Now if a new set of activity looks justifiable in a new context, I may as well do this anddo this with full gusto—whether it is working in a government bureaucracy or whether itis working in a highly competitive world-class organization in India. I only need to rebootmyself.

Researchers from other streams have also referred to the adaptability of Indians. Ronald(1988, p. 271) found that Indians have ‘radar sensitivity’ which alerts them to what is expectedin any group or situation. He explains this to ‘a profoundly internalised ego-ideal (of Indians)that is strongly oriented towards having appropriate attitudes and actions in different socialcontexts’ (Ronald 1988, p. 202). According to him this has resulted in superior adaptability of

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Indians even when they are working in western societies (Ronald 1988, p. 202). Derne (1992,p. 270) conceptualises Indians as people who find their real selves in acting in accordancewith situational demands. To work according to situational demands also have the sanctionof Indian scriptures. In Mahabharat—an ancient Indian epic, Vyas—a sage, explains toKing Yudhisthir of Hastinapur that at times what is considered a righteous behaviour can beconsidered a non-righteous behaviour and vice-versa (Shantiparv verse 34.20, 37.8). In factchapter 35 of Shantiparv of Mahabharat explains in detail the situations under which what isnormally considered a non-righteous behaviour can be accepted as a righteous behaviour andvice-versa. In India, the equivalent word for religion is dharma. Dharma means ‘that whichholds.’ Thus a person who follows dharma is a person who is able to hold himself/herself inthe changing world where different thoughts and worldviews have been allowed to co-exist.Koller (1982, p. 62) explains, “The various senses of dharma all refer to what must bedone to maintain and support the individual, the family, social class, and the whole society.”This approach to religion (or dharma) is much different from the general understandingof religion which means following a particular kind of faith and worshipping as per thatfaith. This shows how in hinduism religion is understood as making proper responses to thevarying environment so as to maintain one’s balance.

4.2. From India to East Asia: A more adaptable culture as a sourceof competitive advantage

At a more general level, it may possible to extend this argument of adaptability to othercontext-sensitive East Asian countries. Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars (1993) introducedthe dimension of universalism vs. particularism to differentiate between whether peoplefollow rules regardless of the circumstances (universalism) or whether their response takesinto account the particulars of circumstances (particularism). The Asian cultures like Japan,China and India are ‘particularists’ (Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, 1993). However,because of their stable environment, the Western world in general and the English speakingnations in particular have been able to adopt a universal standard to following of rules(Ramsey 1999). According to Ramsey, the excessive reliance on application of universalstandards, individualism, analysis and achievement have given rise to what Senge (1990)calls ‘learning disabilities’ of the Western world. Ji et al. (2000, p. 953) have found that thepersons from the East Asian countries like China, Japan and South Korea are more holisticand more attentive to their social environment than the Americans. According to Ji et al.(2000), this is because the emphasis of Western culture is on what Hui and Triandis (1986)have called ‘primary control’ which makes a westerner believe that (s)he can change theenvironment as per her/his choice instead of coping with it. On the other hand, the emphasison the East Asian culture is on ‘secondary control’ which aims at accommodation of personalneeds as per the environmental demands. It is this constant accommodation of an East Asianindividual to his/her environment which builds progressive learning into his/her actions andtherefore makes him/her appreciate the world from constantly varying standard of facts andvalues much like the Indians.

Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars (1993) have shown how shared expectations leadto business success and how East Asian cultures are transforming the rules of business(Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1998) leading North and Hort (2002) to comment thatculture can be a competitive advantage. Towards the later part of 20th century, Japan andmore recently, India and China have given the Western economies a run for their money(Fang and Hall 2003; Prestowitz 2005). Is context sensitivity one of the cultural reasonsfor the quick emergence of these East Asian economies from relative obscurity less than

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60 years ago? An exploratory attempt has been made in this paper in the Indian context withthe metaphor of a factory. This paper now argues that because the Western world suffersfrom ‘illusion of control’ (Langer 1975, p. 313), it has given rise to what Vickers (1970)calls a ‘trap.’ Vickers (1970, p. 15) says

. . .The nature of the trap is a function of the nature of the trapped. To describe either is toimply the other. . . . we the trapped tend to take our own state of mind for granted-–whichis partly why we are trapped.

The ‘trap’ of being a ‘universalist’ and the tendency to master the environment are thecultural reasons behind the learning disabilities which Senge (1990) is talking about. Today,this ‘trap’ has resulted in the relative decline of the Western dominance of the world. ‘Nodegree of technological innovation and no scale of technological effort can rescue the Westfrom its self-set trap’ said Vickers in 1970 (Vickers 1970, p. 27). 35 years later, the worldis watching it happen. To paraphrase Baeck (2000), the claims of Western rationality touniversal legitimacy are gradually being undermined by its incapacity to cope with Asiancultures of ‘social rationality’ or should we say ‘context sensitivity.’

5. Conclusion

Khandwalla (1992, p. 267) has said that far too much social science remains compartmen-talized, so that insights from studying the family or group are seldom used by organizationtheorists and vice versa. Such insights from one kind of collectivity can, at least, supplyprovocative hypotheses for other kinds of collectivities. A deliberate attempt was thereforemade in this paper to link the terminology of organizational study (SSM) to that of collec-tivity (context sensitivity). Via the construct of context sensitivity, this paper has linked the‘multiples levels of reality’ of the Indians with Checkland’s SSM and Vickers’ appreciativesystems. This paper has shown how context sensitivity has been leveraged by Indians to gaincompetitive advantage over the Western world in many technological areas. But this lacks anempirical verification. Thus an objective measurement of ‘context sensitivity’ and its linkagewith adaptability can be an area for further research.

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