Cultural competency for the global age

ABSTRACT

Teaching cultural competency is a two-way street. Instruction is more comprehensive when it raises awareness of cultural context. And students see relevancy when they learn how theories and principles relate to the context they know. Cultural context is especially obvious in nations colonized by cultures different from theirs. India provides a compelling example because it has a blended public service culture containing several parts tradition and several parts that fit uncomfortably with the nation’s psyche. This discussion uses public administration in India to demonstrate how cultural context shapes preferences for institutions and how it influences expectations for interpersonal dynamics when state meets street. After presenting the Indian scenario, suggestions are provided for how to incorporate cultural competency into the curriculum and how to spotlight it in a classroom exercise.

KEYWORDS:

• Comparative public administration
• culture
• citizen-state encounters
• public management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The word ‘citizen’ is used in a generic sense, not a legal sense. The word refers to everyone in a jurisdiction.

2. Excerpts describing India are taken with permission from Guy et al. (2019).