Hofstede ' s Cultural Dimensions of India

The Hofstede dimensions for the culture are classified into five types Power Distance Indicator , Individualism, Long Term Orientation, Masculinity and Uncertainty Avoidance .India has Power Distance (PDI) as the highest Hofstede dimension with a rank 77 when compared to the worlds average PDI which is 56.5. This number indicates that the level of inequality with power and wealth within a society is high. India's Long Term Orientation (LTO) dimension rank is 61, having the world average at 48. A high LTO score can indicate that the culture is perseverant and parsimonious.

India's third highest ranking Hofstede dimension is Masculinity(MAS) which is at 56, with the world average just slightly lower at 51. The higher the country ranks in this dimension, the greater is the gap between values of men and women. Although there is high male competition, it may also generate a more competitive and assertive female population.

The lowest ranking Dimension is Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) at 40, which is less than the world average of 65. Falling under the lower end of this ranking, the culture may be more open to unstructured ideas and situations. The population has not much restrictions which means having fewer rules and regulations to attempt control of every unknown and unexpected event or situation, which is not in the case of high Uncertainty Avoidance countries.

India's environmental analysis

Regarding the rapidly growth of the population and the economic development, India goes to an environmental degradation.
Indeed, having the 18% of the world’s population on the 2.4% world’s area, India has greatly wasted its natural resources: water and air pollution, deforestation, water shortages, soil exhaustion…
However, India is riding high on outsourcing. Information technology and IT-enabled services will employ 4 million people in 2008 and account for 7% of gross domestic product and 33% of India's foreign-exchange inflows, according to Nasscom, an Indian IT industry organization.
The reality is that wages are rising in India. The cost advantage for offshoring to India used to be at least 1:6. Today, it is at best 1:3. Attrition is scary. Jobs that are low value-added and easily automatable should and will disappear over the next decade.
People talk a lot about India moving up the value chain. Some of that has indeed happened. An industry that started gaining momentum when Indian software developers were tapped to help fix the "Y2K" problems in old software code has blossomed beautifully into one that offers a much more comprehensive spectrum of services.

INDIA’S ECONOMIC INDICATORS

The boom in India Inc's is attributed to steep rise of key India Economic Indicators like Industrial Growth, FIIs and FDIs. Further, other India Economic Indicators like Balance-of-Payments, Merchandise Exports, Invisible Accounts and Foreign-Exchange-Reserves also had substantial contribution toward growth of Indian Economy.
India's Industrial Growth - for the first time has exceeded 10%. Manufacturing growth rate has exceeded 12 % in 6 months. The mining and quarrying sector has registered a growth of 4%. The electricity sector recorded a double-digit growth of 12% during September 2006 as compared to September 2005. Consumer durables and non-durables have also recorded upswings. The use-base economic sub-groups, intermediate goods have registered an impressive growth of almost 15% during September 2006 over September 2005. Consumer goods have recorded a high growth of 13%. The National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council has targeted 12 to 14% growth in the 11th Plan period.

Net investments in equities crossed US$ 7 billion in calendar 2006. FII net investment till November 2006 has been US$ 7.08 billion, according to the Securities and Exchange Board of India. 151 new FIIs have opened their offices in India during first 10 months of 2006. The total number of FIIs in India stands at 974 as on November 2006.
FDI - India envisage of attracting $10 billion of foreign direct investment (FDI) this year as inflows have nearly doubled to US$ 4.4 billion in April-September 2006. In September 2006, FDI inflows grew 225% to US$ 916 million as compared to US$ 282 million in the same month last year. Services attracted maximum investment of US$ 1.5 billion recording growth of 350%. Telecom sector with inflows of US$ 405 million has registered the maximum growth of 950%. Corporate India has recorded its highest rise in salaries at 22% in the first half of 2006-07 against increase of 17% in 2005-06.

Merchandise Exports - recorded strong growth.
The Invisibles Account remained positive during last financial year and financed 2/3 of the trade deficit.
India's Foreign Exchange Reserves - were US$ 166.2 billion as on October 2006, showing increment of US$ 14.5 billion over end-March 2006.
The upswing in ' Indicators of Indian Economy ' especially manufacturing and services sector activities together with bullish stock market suggests that the recent growth momentum of the India Economic Indicators is likely to be maintained further.

INDIA’S OUTSOURCING WORKERS

The outsourcing revolution has legions of alarmed office workers terrified of losing their jobs in the west. Far too many of India’s youth are being sucked into a work culture that promises one thing and delivers quite another. Indeed, behind the promise of a good salary (about US$800 per month, India’s average salary for a whole year), outsourcing jobs involve gruelling work schedules straddling multifarious time zones and cultures, tight deadlines, ambitious targets, phones that never stop ringing and rude and demanding callers.
Cumulatively, this is spiraling into a burnout phenomenon for many of India’s 7 million-plus outsourcing workers. The industry calls it BOSS -- Burn Out Stress Syndrome. According to doctors, BOSS affects a third of call centre workers with symptoms that include chronic fatigue, insomnia, alteration of biorhythms, loss of appetite, gastrointestinal problems and others. Physical problems like back pain and shoulder pain are also common and -- with excessive exposure to computers, headphones and other such equipment -- many ear and eye-related ailments.
The government, in the meantime, is being asked to urgently announce a promised new health policy for outsourcing workers as a prerequisite for worker satisfaction and productivity to restore the sheen to India’s `sunshine’ industry. Till then, dark clouds loom over its workers’ health.
While similarities in business culture and language will keep India at the top of the United Kingdom's list of outsourcing hot spots, Eastern Europe and Russia could be set to emerge as an alternative.

About Capability Maturity Model levels

The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) in software engineering is a model of the maturity of the capability of certain business processes. A maturity model can be described as a structured collection of elements that describe certain aspects of maturity in an organization, and aids in the definition and understanding of an organization's processes. The Capability Maturity Model was originally applied as a tool for objectively assessing the ability of government contractors' processes to perform a contracted software project. Though it comes from the area of software development, it is also being applied as a generally applicable model to assist in understanding the process capability maturity of organizations in diverse areas; for example in software engineering, system engineering, project management, software maintenance, risk management, system acquisition, information technology, personnel management. It has been used extensively for avionics software and government projects around the world.

In this part we will introduce the concept of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and illustrate the value that this model can provide to an enterprise. We will also explain the CMM key concepts through each of the six levels.

Key CMM Concepts

First it is important to understand the five key concepts. These concepts are Consistency, Repeatable, Transferable, Quantitative and Qualitative.

When an IT activity is Consistently performed it means that the task is performed much more frequently than it is not performed. For example, if the majority of your company's IT projects use written project plans then this activity would be performed consistently. It is important to note that consistency does not address quality or value that the task provided. Therefore, some IT staff will prepare written project plans using Microsoft Project, others will use Microsoft Excel and others will write them out by hand.

Repeatable refers to an IT activity that provides value and is followed by a particular team project within the company. For example, a data warehousing team may have a standard method to build a project plans (tool, level of detail, resource naming…).

Transferable means that the IT activity is standardized and followed throughout the company. As a result, the success of this task is transferable across groups within the company. For instance, all project plans throughout an organization would be standardized, formatted consistently and have the same level of granularity.

Quantitative refers to the measuring of an IT activity. For example, the time it takes to build each project plan would be measured and captured.

Qualitative refers to how well a task was accomplished. In our example, we would see if the project plan was accurate, followed by the team…

CMM Levels

The CMM is designed to be an easy to understand methodology for ranking a company's IT related activities. The CMM has six levels from 0 to 5. The purpose of these levels is to provide a “measuring stick” for organizations looking to improve their system development processes.

Level 0: Not Performed

Level 0 is common for companies that are just entering the IT field. At this level there are few or no best practices. Some IT activities are not even performed and all deliverables are done in “one-off efforts.” Typically new applications are built by a small number of people (possibly even one person) in a very isolated fashion.

Level 1: Performed Informally

It consists on planning and tracking of IT activities is missing and deliverables are accomplished via punctual effort. That means that a team might work long hours in order to build a particular application. As a result, IT deliverables are adequate but the deliverables are not repeatable or transferable.

Level 2: Planned and Tracked

Level 2 has IT deliverables that are planned and tracked. In addition, there are some defined best practices within the enterprise. Some repeatable processes exist within an IT project team/group, but the success of this team/group is not transferable across the enterprise

Level 3: Well-Defined

IT best practices are documented and performed throughout the enterprise. At level 3 IT deliverables are repeatable AND transferable across the company. This level is a very difficult jump for most companies. Not surprisingly, this is also the level that provides the greatest cost savings.

Level 4: Qualitatively Controlled

Companies at level 4 have established measurable process goals for each defined process. These measurements are collected and analyzed quantitatively. At this level, companies can begin to predict future IT implementation performance.

Level 5: Continuously Improving

At level 5 enterprises have quantitative and qualitative understanding of each IT process. It is at this level that a company understands how each IT process is related to the overall business strategies and goals of the corporation.