Contemporary Asian Culture and its impact on Organizational Behavior

Abstract

This paper explores the influence of prevailing Asian culture on Sri Lankan Organizational Behavior. In an increasingly globalized organizational environment it is inevitable that the people organizations change their culture towards their organization’s operations. In Sri Lanka, three ethnic groups – Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims are the major working members of any organization. Especially in Sri Lankan organizations, culture plays an important role. Ethnicity, religion and language are some of the important Asian cultural factors influencing the Sri Lankan organizations. When these factors are to be practiced in the organizational context, the human behavior in organizations would also be changed towards that. This research study is based on the Observation method and the secondary data from various journals, books and organizational case studies. Literatures show that Appreciation, Motivation, Respect, Sympathy and Politeness are some of the important behavioral factors which highly influence organizations. Since Sri Lanka is a small island in the Asian continent, the resemblance of the culture of neighbor countries in Sri Lanka is obvious. In Sri Lankan organizations, the organizational behavior is influenced by the regional cultural factors in deciding the other behavioral aspects of the people. This is also another adaptation from the Asian culture. The findings show that the organizational behavior of Sri Lankan organizations is highly depending on Asian cultural aspects with the influence of some Western cultural aspects. Personality, Communication, Motivation and the organizational culture are highly depending on Asian culture and in Leadership and decision making there are Western cultural influences in organizations.