Alan Rosling*, executive director, Tata Sons, and member of the Group Corporate Centre, on the evolving Tata culture for an international future

One of the great strengths of the Tata Group is its unique culture and approach to business. Other than professionalism, a pursuit of quality, fair dealing and a commitment to the community, a significant strand of this culture has always been diversity, tolerance and internationalism.

Our founder spent the early, formative years of his career in China and England, and however much he was an Indian patriot he remained an internationalist to the end. He attracted ideas, technology and people from overseas to build his businesses in India. Mr JRD Tata was born and raised in France, and was a French citizen until his return to India. He too retained an international approach to business throughout his long and illustrious career, demanding international standards of technology, quality and performance of all.

This eclectic and outward-looking tradition lives on in the Group today. We remain open to ideas from overseas, and seek technology and partnership from the world's best. We pride ourselves in the diversity of people from every part of India and every community that we blend into a single corporate culture, without favour or discrimination. And into this diversity we are now injecting a leavening of people from overseas, who are so readily welcomed into the Tata family. Five major Tata companies are now headed by US citizens, though two of them are non-resident Indians so they may be less obviously foreign.

As we internationalise our businesses, this open and international strand in our Tata culture is a great source of strength. Used to working with people from diverse backgrounds in order to run businesses to international standards at home, adapting to doing business internationally comes readily to most Tata people. In fact, freed of some of the handicaps of running businesses in India, such as infrastructure constraints and bureaucratic drags, our people flourish overseas.

In our quest to become world leaders, however, we must recognise that there is a long way to go in terms of size, competitiveness and technology. Evolving our corporate culture to the new challenges of an interconnected world will be one challenge in our yatra of growth and learning.

* Alan Rosling is an executive director of Tata Sons, and a member of the Group Corporate Centre. He has served on the boards of Tata Industries and Tata AutoComp Systems. From 1991 to 1993 he served as special advisor to British prime minister John Major as a member of his policy unit. He received the prestigious OBE from the British government in 1994.

Uploaded on June 22, 2006