_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 PG Department of Psychology, Patliputra University, Patna & Honorary Faculty, ASSERT Institute of Management Studies, Patna, India. 2 Department of Management Studies, Galgotias College of Engineering and Technology, Greater Noida, India. *Corresponding author: E-mail: rbns2@rediffmail.com; Chapter 2 Print ISBN: 978-93-91595-57-9, eBook ISBN: 978-93-91595-65-4 Impact of Context Sensitivity on Manager’s Behavior R. B. N. Sinha 1* and N. Lakshmi 2 DOI: 10.9734/bpi/sthss/v5/11882D ABSTRACT The study aimed to examine how manager’s sensitivity to enabling and disabling contexts affects his behavior. A sample of 150 respondents, 50 from each of three different locations (Patna, Delhi & Mumbai) in India, participated in a study that explored the shifts in the behavior of managers when they moved from disabling to enabling or from enabling to disabling context. The results showed that in some instances manager’s behavior improved as a function of the change from disabling to enabling and reversed as a result of the change from enabling to disabling contexts. Some of the behaviors were more positive in the enabling than in the disabling context. The study suggests a need to explore the issues further. Keywords: Collectivist culture; context sensitivity; disabling contexts; enabling contexts; individualist culture 1. PREVIEW Indians are reported to be highly sensitive to their contexts and they tend to balance their thoughts and actions in order to function effectively. Context sensitivity pertains to varying receptivity to specific persons, at different times and places [1]. In fact, context orientations differentiate cultures. Some cultures are high and while others are low in sensitivity to contexts. In the latter, people tend to think in terms of abstract principles and norms [2]. A large number of investigators [e.g., 3, 4, 5; 6] reported that Western cultures are low on context sensitivity while Eastern cultures such as China, India and South Korea are high on context sensitivity [7, 8, 9]. Indians indeed are highly sensitive to contexts in their thoughts and practices [10]. Hughes [11] also reported that Indians think, talk and act differently with different persons in the same situation at same point of time; but behave differently with the same person in different situations and at different points of time. In a more recent study by Sinha et al. [12] confirmed that Indians tend to sense others’ expectations, selectively relate to those who are likely to be useful, judge the right time to think to initiate action and reach out to avail of opportunities. For example, Indians are concerned about what others think of them; they have the ability to figure out what others expect from them; and they behave accordingly; they sense what others mean and intend; and so on. Collectivist cultures are known to be high on context sensitivity [3]. People in high context sensitive cultures are more receptive to cues from physical as well as cultural contexts and respond to them by behaving differently more appropriately than the people of low context sensitivity cultures who behave consistently across situations and times. In a high context cultures, people tend to rely on their history, their status, their relationships and a plethora of other information, including religion, to assign meaning to an event. In a collectivist culture, people paid more attention to context than did people from individualist culture [13]. Gupta [14] found that cooperative behavior and team work among Indians are extremely difficult in organizational context, though group solidarity in well known in times of crisis in Indian families. Another series of studies [e.g., 9, 1] showed that Indians are sensitive to their contexts. They have been culturally socialized to view events and episodes from a long term perspectives. It has been found that majority of Indian perceive a situation and the responses to it as