The Singapore Civil Service Bureaucracy and the Kathakalli Corporate Culture - The Analogy Revisited

In this paper, through literature survey and interviews with forty-one civil service officers, the corporate culture particularly the salient features of the Singapore Civil Bureaucracy, is examined. The use of analogies and metaphors is indeed not uncommon in describing cultures, and in this study, the researcher interestingly revisits and further expounds the Kathakalli dance metaphor (as applied in a previous study). The Indian Singaporean ethnic dance and its key features are aptly used to attribute the key cultural traits of the Singapore Civil Service