View from Practice: Managing Effectively in Collectivist Societies: Lessons from Samba Schools and Dabbawalas

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/tie.21836
• Date: 01 March 2018
• Published date: 01 March 2018
• Author: Alfredo Behrens,Pritam Singh,Asha Bhandarker

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Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com)

© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. • DOI: 10.1002/tie.21836

Correspondence to: Alfredo Behrens, Faculdade FIA – Mestrado Pro ssional em Administração, Rua Jose Alves Cunha Lima, 172 Butanta,

São Paulo SP 05360-050 Brazil, 55 11 38280554 (phone), E-mail: ab@alfredobehrens.com

View from Practice:

Managing Effectively

in Collectivist Societies:

Lessons from Samba

Schools and Dabbawalas

By

Alfredo Behrens

Pritam Singh

Asha Bhandarker

This article reviews the organizational values, recruitment, and reward policies of Brazilian samba

schools and Indian dabbawalas to illustrate how their  t to local cultures results in greater productivity,

engagement, and low turnover. American-style management has spread worldwide, yet in emerging

market countries such as India and Brazil, multinationals often struggle to motivate and engage their

employees. The companies’ top ranks in these countries are usually dominated by English-speaking,

university-educated elites who are comfortable with Western management techniques. But these

managers can be, as the Comprador class was in seventeenth-century China, strangers in their own

land, implementing management techniques that feel foreign and inappropriate to their employees.

The result is often low productivity, absenteeism, and unhappiness. However, there are organizations in

both India and Brazil that achieve staggeringly high productivity and consistently strong engagement

PRACTITIONER ARTICLE