Mannerism in Organizations II – Blog Post #471 by Asrar Qureshi

Mannerism in Organizations II – Blog Post #471 by Asrar Qureshi

Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #471. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here.

Continued from Previous…

We are tracing the reasons for undesirable manners in the organizations. We discussed class-based social system and lack of literacy in the previous blog. We go on to see more factors.

Lack of Social Development

The access to education, quality of education and the impact of education contribute to social development. 

In our case, access to education is limited, restricted and highly variable. Government does not take responsibility for educating all children, even at cost. The schools are insufficient, many schools do not have proper buildings, do not have furniture and do not have teaching staff. Private education has many tiers. The top tier is extremely expensive, one child’s expenses may be four times that of the minimum wage. It means that only the privileged few shall get their children educated there. This number is obviously small. The middle tier has many well-known school chains and caters for a large number of children coming from upper- middle- and middle-class families. The lower tier is small schools housed in homes. It is quite congested as middle- and lower-income parents send their children to these schools. They are busy places, and they provide education or some semblance of education at less cost. Their results are mixed, but they do provide environment and orientation. Quality is not the core concept here.

A lot of people living in remote areas find it difficult to send their children to far off schools and therefore many children remain deprived of education even when their parents can afford. There is another large number of families who cannot pay fees even in this case. They keep children at home and try to homeschool them. Finally, there is another large number of children whose parents not only cannot afford education expenses, but rather need the children to go out and earn money for the family. Millions of children from this segment remain deprived from education and engaged in child labor. 

Acceptance of Foul Language in families

It is well-known fact that some families in rural Punjab actually celebrated when a young child uttered the first profanity. It was a cause of jubilation based on the thinking that the boy was growing along good lines. It sounds crazy but this is what it is.

Starting from there, the tradition may not have sustained in urban areas, but foul language, swearing and profanities are spoken and accepted even in family settings, in front of men and women alike. Due to such social acceptance, poor manners are carried on to the office settings also.

The colleagues use bad language with each other, not for fighting, but just for the heck of it. It is somehow considered a sign of manhood to swear publicly. 

Our communication and expression generally are mediocre, uncultured and uncivilized. The language spoken on the streets is a reflection of that. In addition, we tend to display huge amount of insensitivity towards others. Our tradition of ‘Jugats’ is not based on the spirit of creating humor, it is humor at the cost of someone. We find reasons for targeting others with a sharp wit and a sharper tongue and take pride in it. The heavier the attack, the more enjoyable it is. 

With these factors woven into our social fabric, there is no doubt that we are who we are. 

Lack of Proper Office Decorum Norms

Barring few organizations, all others do not have properly laid down office decorum norms. The offices grow haphazardly and without defined hierarchy. The norms of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors are neither defined nor implemented. Even where there are some norms, there is lot of flexibility bordering on hesitation in exercising these. 

Another interesting group, quite prevalent in fact, is of people who consider office as the extension of their homes. They will bring things from home to keep in office, and also bring home issues to office. They try to feel homely and informal with colleagues which very quickly degrades into poor manners. There is shouting, calling names, passing remarks and making unnecessary noise, all packed into homely atmosphere. 

These are some more reasons for the kind of mannerism we see in organizations. In the next blog, the last part, we shall conclude our discussion and suggest some measures to improve the situation.

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