Editorial

Abstract

In social sciences, the most important name is that of Karl Marx. Marx offered a general framework in which the production process as ‘base’ supports the superstructural entity of ‘culture’. Not only in Marxian economics or Marxian sociology, but also in neoclassical economics – the present-day dominant discourse on economic thinking – the emphasis is mostly on explaining culture using the economics of production. No doubt Marx deserves a lot of credit for offering a framework for social sciences, but exploration must never cease. New facts always widen our horizon of understanding. Many new discoveries are emphasizing an increasingly important role of culture beyond its being a by-product of economic production. Let me cite a few examples. One key element of culture is the spoken language. How important is the role of language in shaping our thinking and our action? Far more than one would imagine. Keith Chen (2013) has demonstrated that the savings rate, health behaviour and retirement assets of a person depend upon the language spoken by the person. In essence, the economy depends more strongly on the spoken language instead of the language being dependent on the economy. In the Indian context, Gangopadhyay and Sarkar (2014) found that investment in one’s offspring’s education depends upon the caste of the family. I emphasize that this dependence on caste occurs after controlling for parental education, parental income and all such related variables. Again, this is a case of culture being a significant factor of economic decision making. I have used these two examples only to drive the point home. There is no dearth of examples on the importance of culture for a scientific study of the social forces. However, what has been missing is the application of a scientific framework for culture. What exactly defines a scientific framework? A scientific framework is characterised by its falsifiability and its predictive power. An observation does not necessarily make an element of science, unless we can generalize from that particular observation to come up with a predictive framework. An oft-repeated cliché is about the discovery of gravity from observing the fall of an apple. Although we all see a fruit fall from the tree, our observation does not constitute any science. Newton’s observation was, as he came up with a framework. In management sciences, a plethora of interesting observations drive home the importance of culture. I am afraid that a predictive framework is yet to be used, which is why S. N. Balagangadhara’s work is extremely important. He has provided a falsifiable framework in his masterpiece The Heathen in His Blindness characterizing a critical element of culture called religion and, in the process, divided the cultures of the world into two categories of ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’ (secular). The testability of his framework as well as its usefulness follow from his characterization of the meta-learning of cultures. It is high time that we attempt to engage this framework to examine if culture can be scientifically investigated in predicting management decisions. With Indian companies flourishing globally—The Forbes Global 2000 list in 2019 lists 57 Indian companies—the existence of an Indian way of management is an interesting thought. I organized a conference on this theme at IIM Kozhikode during December 2018. Nele De Gersem has documented the highlights of her work presented in that conference that demands a serious rethinking of the existing ideas in studying culture and management. In particular, she has deconstructed two notions, which are: