NRI managers hit gold with MNCs overseas

The Made- in- India Manager.

The definition of ‘ madeinIndia’ manager here is those who have “received their foundational education and degrees in India till the age of 18 and little later”. It does not include people of Indian- origin, born and raised abroad.

Written by two business experts, R. Gopalakrishnan and Ranjan Banerjee, the book speaks about the “unique combination” of factors that led to Indian management thought and practises becoming a “soft power”.

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CEOs are than more any Indian other ■ ■ nationality after Americans in S& P 500 companies, finds a study by executive search firm Egon Zehnder, quotes the book.

“Poverty and living in cramped spaces occurs in San Salvador and Egypt as well. Family values and the pursuit of a better standard of living is a recurrent theme in every society. But the combination of challenges in India is quite distinctive. Navigating those challenges while growing up endows distinctive capabilities in made- in- Indian managers,” write the authors.

Delving into it further, the book explains the four secret ingredients of Indian- born managers including their “felicity with the English language”, “surviving in a hyper- competitive environment” and “developing a high degree of adaptability”.

“The propensity that Indians have for hard work has been ( sometimes grudgingly) acknowledged by employers the world over.”

“Explaining how Gujarati merchants managed to capture 70 per cent of the diamond trade in Antwerp, Abraham Pinkusewitz, the head of a diamondtrading family business in Europe, commented, ‘ Business has always been important for the Jews but we cannot pursue it with the single- mindedness of the Indians’,” said the author quoting an article of an Indian business daily.