The Journey and the challenges
In a connected world, where cultures no longer exist in isolation, international cooperation becomes the desired reality among public entities, large corporations or SMEs, and not-for-profits alike, the ability to navigate and explore the theme of cultural diversity and its impact becomes a necessity for leaders worldwide. This series of articles is a map that guides non-profits leaders to approach multiculturalism and make sense of the world: cooperate with international entities, create and grow their multicultural teams, understand better different national cultures and their distinctive behaviours, become aware of their own cultural behaviour and get familiarized with relevant instruments.
What is culture?
Traditionally speaking, the word “culture” which derives from the Latin word “colere” (to tend to the earth and grow, or cultivation and nurture) is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular “tribe”: language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music, and arts. Taking a step further, culture represents shared patterns of behaviours and interactions, cognitive constructs, learned by socialization within a group. These social patterns are unique, different for groups, tribes, regions, minorities or majorities, or even nations. According to John Van Maanen and Andre Laurent, we read the map of the world from “gestures, words, tone of voice, noises, colours, smells, and body contact we experience; with the way we are raised, washed, rewarded, punished, held in check, toilet trained and fed; by the stories we are told, the games we play, the songs we ding or rhymes we recite; the schooling we receive the jobs we hold, and the careers we follow; right down to the very way we sleep and dream. Our culture is what is familiar, recognizable, habitual. It is what goes without saying.”
We start our journey trying to define the concept of cultural diversity – “the quality of diverse or different cultures, as opposed to monoculture, the global monoculture, or a homogenization of cultures, akin to cultural decay”[1]. Frequently we found ourselves talking about French, Turkish, Italian cultures, even though cultural boundaries are not overlapping necessarily with the national boundaries. And if we go at the micro-level and we zoom on these national cultures, we can easily identify distinct cultures within nations. Therefore, we can’t say about individuals that their affiliations are exclusively belonging to one culture, but they are members of multiple ones: national, professional, social and organizational. Each of these has a different impact on shaping our values, perceptions, experiences, identity and behaviour – some are stronger, others less. Geert Hofstede said that, in the sense of collective mental programming, culture is difficult to change, or it changes slowly exactly because it belongs to several people and was defined by them through institutions (family structures, religious and educational entities, authorities or work organizations). Among these structures and groups, it’s worth mentioning that the culture of a small group (which function on common sense) will prevail and will be stronger than the one of a larger group (where ethical cohesion is necessary).
Why does cultural diversity matter?
Our country, workplaces, communities increasingly consist of various cultural, racial, ethnic groups. Therefore, it can help us recognize and respect different ways of being, understand different perspectives, dispel negative stereotypes, personal biases about certain groups. The first step is to observe the cultural similarities (artefacts, norms, values, believes) and only after to proceed in understanding the cultural differences. With this approach, we can build faster bridges towards trust, respect and speaking a common language. It takes courage and commitment to celebrate and embrace the diversity of the communities, and not-for-profit organizations play an essential role in encouraging their members to be open-minded, non-judgmental about the value of different groups, encouraging these to make real contributions. Moreover, multicultural organizations have more benefits since their people have a different perspective which allows them to tackle the issues from all angles, enhance creative processes and achieve innovative results.
The leaders of these organizations who celebrate cultural diversity show respect for the differences, acknowledge the validity of different cultural expressions, encourage the contributions of diverse groups and value other cultures. They understand that some practices that fit in one cultural context might be inappropriate in another cultural context.
The legend of the map
To properly read the map, we need to make use of a comprehensive legend. Earlier I was mentioning that the winning approach towards understanding a different culture is by acknowledging the similarities. The common ground is represented by the human values, which help us, individually, to identify and recognize the good – for us and the others. A closer look at the Universal Moral Foundation proposed by Jonathan Haidt help us understand what our common values are: fairness/cheating, sanctity/degradation, liberty/oppression, care/harm, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion. Each human being possesses these values, what differentiates us is which ones we decide to prioritize. The combination of loyalty – authority – sanctity is specific to conservative communities, while fairness – liberty – care for the modern communities. To train our moral machinery we can practice active listening of different opinions, not “listening just to reload”, constantly checking our adopted values system, while observing virtuous people and reproducing their positive actions and behaviours. This machinery is challenged in modern societies with tight cultures where, in order “to reduce chaos in nations with high population density, deal with resource scarcity, coordinate in the face of natural disasters, defend against territorial threats, or contain the spread of disease”[2], strong norms are imposed and there’s low tolerance of deviant behaviour. By contrast, the countries with loose cultures are exposed to fewer environmental and human-made threats that have a lower need for order and social coordination, weaker social norms and more freedom. Citizens of nations with high situational constraints will practice caution, have a higher self-regulatory strength and self-monitoring ability
Cooke, Jung, Schein’s, Hofstede, Hall and Meyer Islands
In this learning journey, NGOs practitioners will debark on six different islands allowing them to explore six useful instruments: 1)Life Styles Inventory; 2) Myers-Briggs Type Indicator; 3) The 3 levels in the organizational culture of Schein’s; 4) Hofstede Model of National Culture; 5) Hall’s 5 Dimensions of National Culture; 6) Cultural Map of Erin Meyer
The first instrument, “Life Styles Inventory” (LSI), proposed by Robert A. Cooke and Clayton Lafferty, is a self-assessment instrument designed around the Human Synergistics Circumplex, describing constructive, passive/defensive and aggressive/defensive behaviours. The model guides us to decipher our thoughts and behaviours using twelve styles grouped into three categories: aggressive, passive and constructive. Since the key to organizational success is the development of each member of the team, knowing who we are and how we respond to an external stimulus is the first important step in shaping who will we be in the future. The instrument gives us a clear overview of our style and allows us to positively change our behaviour, increase our effectiveness, recognize the styles of other team members and create healthier professional relationships.
There are 4 Passive/Defensive styles, each one with its characteristics: Approval (set goals to please others and agree with everyone), Conventional (resist ideas that are different; follow policies and practices), Dependent (wait for others to act first; be a good follower), Avoidance, (lay low” when things get tough and stay away from problems).
Key take-aways:
- “Don’t give the fish, teach them how to fish”.
As leaders or/and managers we should never take the decisions for somebody else. We can provide to the person in need know-how and resources instead. This rule should apply because the leader doesn’t always necessarily have a valid answer and the employees become less and less motivated and capable to make their own decisions. Moreover, leaders should delegate objectives, not tasks.
- “You can’t see the forest for the trees”.
When we have a disagreement with a team member, the tendency is to focus on the points of contention instead of commonalities, which leads us to a defensive phase or even we approach an offensive strategy to convince the other that your way is the right way. To not get lost in the trees, constructive disagreement should be practised, encouraging people to take a position and provide justified arguments.
- “Everyone’s got a plan until they get hit.”
The planning process is important, not the plan and the leaders should encourage the team to improve and change the procedures if the plan is not working.
There are 4 Aggressive/Defensive styles with characteristics: Oppositional (look for mistakes and stay aloof and detached), Power (stay on the offensive; maintain tight control), Competitive (try to look good and outperform others), Perfectionistic (set unrealistic goals and take care of every detail)
Key take-aways:
- “Mistakes are learning opportunities”.
For the well-being of the employees and to encourage innovation and active involvement of all team members, it’s better to promote psychological safety, since mistakes are part of the learning process and these can be corrected.
- “We listen just to reload”
Instead of constantly searching to dismantle everyone’s ideas, proposals, thoughts and bring critics to your team, it’s better to ask, “how did you get to this conclusion?”, to suspend our judgment and try to understand another point of view. Only after we can find together a solution. Accept that you have something to change and try your best to seek the best in others. Being visible only while criticizing others doesn’t leave a good impression on the team. Instead, if a team member that you respect and value has a different perspective on a given topic, the only action to take is to become curious and to doubt your own arguments.
- “A bird in the bush worth two in the bush”
A perfectionist might think that if his work is insufficient, then by default he’s insufficient. He’s an adopter of the belief that it is normal to do good and the progress comes from frustrations. What we can learn from perfectionists is to encourage people to do their best with the given resources respecting the deadline, instead of perfecting after the deadline.
There are 4 Constructive styles with specificities: Achievement (work toward self-set goals; take on challenging tasks), Self-actualizing (maintain personal integrity; emphasize quality), Humanistic-Encouraging (develop others; resolve conflicts constructively) and Affiliative (cooperate and be friendly).
Key take-aways
- “Leave your idea on the table and let them grow it”
A leader who intends to convince their team to invest energy, skills, know-how and embrace a difficult, yet achievable organizational objective, should first convince them that the objective is theirs and dismantle the fear from the process. He should leave the idea on the table, get detached from it and allow his team to develop it and grow it further. If this idea seems hard to achieve at the beginning, rather than lower the difficulty level, he should raise the energy of the team.
- “You reap what you sow”
The previous takeaway can be continued with the Pygmalion effect of Leon Rosenthal. The not-for-profits can integrate into their organizational culture and approach where constant encouragements and higher expectations are used to increase team performance. If the leader continuously seeks to identify and publicly acknowledge people’s professional assets, this can have a major and positive change in their beliefs about themselves and consequently, their performance. What you instil, that will grow.
The second instrument is the MBTI Instrument developed by Myers and Briggs, based on Jung’s Theory of Psychological Types, which make the theory understandable and useful for practitioners. Seemingly random variations in behaviour illustrate the ways individuals prefer to use their perception and judgement. The objective of the instrument is to identify four basic preferences: Extroversion (E) vs Introversion (I), Sensing (S) vs Intuition (N), Thinking (T) vs Feeling (F), Judges (J) vs Perceiver(P). At the organizational level, this instrument can support situations like managing teams, developing leadership skills, solving conflicts, change management etc. At the individual level, as we understand our preferences, we become better at approaching our work: managing our time, solving problems, take decisions, acknowledging your involvement in team process or dealing with stressful situations.
Key take-aways
- We should cooperate as much as possible with colleagues that think and act differently from us.
- When we become aware of where each team member takes their energy from, we can offer them the needed support to excel in our working environment and be productive. For instance, in a meeting where we try to obtain different perspectives in order to solve an issue, instead of leaving the process open and everyone says what he/she thinks, we could use instead a brainwriting method. In this everybody – introverts and extroverts – have the chance to express their opinions in a comfortable and safe way, without influencing each other.
- To help a person with a dominant T to cooperate and have a constructive dialogue with a person with an F, instead of providing him with a contra-argument, it’s better to ask the person with an F “How did you get to this conclusion?”
The third instrument is “The three levels in organizational culture”, proposed by Edgar Schein. According to the MIT professor, organisational culture is developed in time, as the team go through various changes, they are forced to adapt to the external environment and are challenged to solve problems together.
He believed that there are three levels in an organization culture:
- Artefacts – all the characteristics easily viewed, heard and felt by individuals. This can include everything connected with the culture of the workplace: facilities, dress code, behaviour, mission and vision etc.
- Expected values – the values and the mindset of the individuals that have a deep impact and shape the organizational culture
- Underlying assumptions – practices that are not discussed or agreed upon, “the unwritten code”
Key take-aways:
- Leaders shouldn’t over-simplify their organizational culture because it’s far more than “how we do things around here.”
- People are working with the illusion that if they change their behaviour then they changed the culture. Actually, what they have really done is to change their behavior. If it is a source of inspiration for the team, they like it, and it becomes a norm, then we can say it has changed the culture.
- Extra benefits, facilities and freebies won’t make the employees feel more engaged. They can be activated instead if they are treated as human beings and they don’t get hit by a “don’t bother me” attitude from their management.
We discover on the fourth island the instrument proposed by Geert Hofstede. The Model of organization culture state that national and regional factors contributes to the culture of the organization and influence the behaviour of the team. According to Hofstede, there are four basic dimensions that influence the national culture and the one at the workplace: individualism/collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity/femininity.
We are culturally conditioned, and we perceive the world in the only way we have learned to see it. So, we might find ourselves constrained in expanding the boundaries imposed by our own cultural conditioning. This instrument has its limitations since it reflects a national, intellectual, middle-class, cultural background. Besides, “the dimension of national culture is best understood by comparison with the dimensions of personality, intelligence (high-low), energy level (active-passive), emotional stability (stable-unstable).”[3]
Since many not-for-profits are expanding across national lines, organizational leaders will find it useful to develop an awareness of their cultural behaviour and to identify specific ways in which various cultural groups have distinctive behaviours. For instance, an American individualist management system and personal policies might be difficult to integrate in the Japanese culture or as a matter of fact, in any other collectivist culture. Mostly it’s connected to different employee values, government policies and legislation that can affect the performance, labour turnover, attention to quality costs etc. So, the dilemma is: should we adapt to the local culture or try to change it? Usually, the policy and strategy should be adapted to fit the local culture with the help of acculturated locals. Therefore, previous training to dive into an unfamiliar culture is recommended with host-country teachers.
Key take-ways:
- Unprepared leaders can assume that best practices could be merged with another culture without optimization. If the transfer of best practices is difficult there are several strategies to be approached: We can allow the workers to adapt the practice to the cultural context after we clearly express our intent and ask questions about what might work well in that culture instead of offering implementation instructions. Simultaneously, we should aim for compatibility, flexibility and experimentation rather than replication.
- In embedded cultures, social relationships, conformity, solidarity and traditional order are preferred.
- In autonomous cultures, intellectual, affective autonomy and innovation is expected from people. They are used to express their own preferences, feelings, ideas, and abilities, and to find meaning in their own uniqueness.
- When we’re in the process of researching and understanding a national culture, we should refrain from generalizing these characteristics and tag them to every single person of a specific nation.
- Hofstede’s findings must be approached as a starting point on understanding cultural diversity. However, each organization should make individual research too.
The fifth instrument is “Dimensions of national culture” or the “silent language” of the anthropologist Edward Hall. He tried to identify the cultural dimensions from the perspective of human common life, and he researched the languages of the time, space, material goods, friendship and agreement. These are in fact, the first issues that we are confronted with when we are interacting with people from different cultures.
When considering the language of the time, societies can be monochrome and polychrome. When dealing with people from countries such as Germany, the US or Japan, it is expected to face little tolerance to time/term collisions and to interrupt meetings, while in Latin America or South Europe, people enjoy doing tasks simultaneously and at a different pace. In some countries, such as Ethiopia or Brazil, the time required for a decision is directly proportional to its importance, while in Middle East countries, in terms of time, close relatives take absolute priority and non-relatives are kept waiting. For Arabs, rushed and tight deadlines, as well as last-minute party invitations, are not well perceived. Japanese consider Americans that “You Americans have one terrible weakness. If we make you wait long enough, you will agree to anything.”[4]
Regarding the language of space, each culture has its own norm of social distance, therefore when people from different countries share a common workplace, without prior guidance and agreed on rules, misunderstandings may appear. Language issues may be frequent, and some will disagree on how the team members manage their time, but an issue can be the way the people perceive and prefer to use space. In American cultures, the highest in management hierarchy has the largest offices, in the corners of the offices or upper floors. French supervisors will be found in the middle of their employees to have better control over their activities and results. The top floor in Japanese companies is allocated for negotiations and not for top management. We have to internally agree about the personal space that people need to feel comfortable in during conversations. Another aspect is even the different translation of the “word “office”, which is masculine in some European languages and feminine in others, which may cause native speakers to think about those spaces in subtly different ways”[5]. Briefly, in collectivistic cultures, people keep a shorter distance by communication, whereas in individualistic cultures people prefer longer personal distance.
In terms of the language of material goods, Americans make use of clothes, houses, cars to ascertain each other’s status, while the Japanese take pride in inexpensive, simple and tasteful arrangements with the sole purpose to induce a certain emotional state. In the Middle East, leaders will appreciate mostly family, connections and friendship so material goods are not a strategy to exhibit their status system.
The language of friends is different again, from culture to culture. In the Middle East, Latin America, developing and maintaining relationships with your friends is a lifestyle, a priority, it comes with obligations. They prefer to work with their friends. In India, friends should read a person’s needs and take action, while Americans perceive friendship as relationships to be built with neighbours and co-workers.
Referring to the last dimension, the language of the agreement, Edward Hall considers that “no society can exist on a high commercial level without a highly developed working base on which agreements can rest.”[6]. These agreements are based on 3 principles: the rules are established through law or regulation, through moral practices mutually agreed and through everyone’s agreement without an exact set of rules. In some cases, negotiation is completed when the contract is signed. In others, for instance for Greeks, this process can continue during the project development, while in Arab countries, in most cases, a man’s word is more valuable than any written contract.
To have a solid foundation for a partnership in a given country, we should develop a proper vocabulary and master the silent languages. This takes time, resources and dedication, but it can ensure optimal results.
Since our navigators need to understand not only human nature, personality differences but also a wider array of work styles, our exploratory journey will bring them to the last island: the “Cultural Map” of Erin Meyer. This is an efficient tool for not-for-profits who are working internationally or with multicultural teams. The tool can illustrate which aspects from their interactions are results of personality or of differences in cultural perspectives. The culture map is made up of eight scales of management behaviours where cultural gaps are most common. By comparing the relative position of one nationality to another on each scale, the user can decode how culture influences day-to-day collaboration. This works only by positioning cultures up and down on each of the following scales: communicating, evaluating, persuading, leading, deciding, trusting, disagreeing and scheduling. This will allow leaders and employees alike to extract the similarities and differences between two or more cultures on each scale. In order to be able to understand individuals, we can start by trying to understand their culture, which ultimately will lead us to get to know them through frequent and meaningful exchanges.
Key take-aways:
- Persuading in Principles-First culture: don’t rely on calling something best practice if applies only to a handful of organizations; In Applications-Firs culture, it’s encouraged to start with a case study or an application;
- If we want to build trust in a team with a task-based culture, we have to expect that friendly conversations are not a sign of a solid relationship, while in a relationship-based culture to “get down to business” until we don’t establish a relationship is not recommended. Better spot the common interests and build on them.
- In confrontational cultures, disagreement is an indicator of interest in a topic. In Avoids conflict culture we better opt-out for 1-on-1 discussions.
- If we need to agree with a consensual culture, patience is a virtue and pushing for quick decisions is negatively perceived. In Top-down culture, the decisions are not always final and maybe our input is not expected or asked.
- If we are in a leadership position in an Egalitarian culture, it’s expected to coordinate action, express disagreement even with juniors, while in Hierarchical culture, the team wait for approval before taking action and the decisions will be taken with people with whom we share the same level of leadership.
- If we want to adjust our clock with linear-time culture, arrive on time (In Japanese culture “on time” means 15 minutes earlier) and add all the relevant topics on the agenda of the meetings. If we deal with Latin Americans and our schedule is tight, we should explicitly say so.
The compass
In the past years, a new leadership trend expanded in the US and Western Europe. It is expected of leaders to embrace an egalitarian approach, move to “management by objective,” open-door policies, and 360-degree feedback. However, hierarchies and attitudes toward authority are woven into the national psyche and culture. International leaders who have a difficult mission to balance and fit their management approach in a diversity of cultures should be prepared to understand that in hierarchical societies and foundations the decisions will be made at the top, while in egalitarian cultures of smaller not-for-profits a group consensus is expected.
At the moment four cultures of leadership were identified: consensual and egalitarian, consensual and hierarchical, top-down and hierarchical, and top-down and egalitarian.
If we cooperate or we lead teams belonging to the first culture, it’s recommended to have patience and expect longer decision-making processes, but once a decision is made, it will be difficult to change it later. This is specific mostly to Northern European countries and the Netherlands. In Japan, Belgium and Germany, the top management should take the decision after involving the members in the process, asking their input, and especially to those with different perspectives. A commitment once taken cannot be easily withdrawn. The specificities of top-down and hierarchical cultures are that the manager is perceived as a director, not a facilitator, so the employees will defer him in public and in private too. Besides, he must state clearly the expectations and that some ideas he’s simply exploring otherwise can be interpreted as final decisions. Those who operate in the last leadership culture – top-down and egalitarian-, need to speak up regardless of their positions, show initiative, self-confidence, support the decisions and remain flexible since these can be adjusted and revised if necessary.
Cultural differences in leadership styles often create unexpected misunderstandings between teams and different organizations. Additionally, the leaders should show 100% commitment and alignment to their organizations and distinguish between different and wrong practices. “Leadership is not rank or privileges, titles or money. Leadership is responsibility”[7]. If they live and stay true to their organizations through actions, energy and words, then the team will replicate their behaviour.
In the real world, the leaders exposed to cultural diversity and different practices, face obstacles that stop them from working by their individual and organizational values. One of them is a continuous commitment due to corporate politics, strong competition and difficult managerial work. Other saboteurs are self-interest who can negatively impact their decisions, right-versus-right conflicts which affect their moral compass and ultimately right-versus-wrong situations when they find themselves hesitating or pressured by top management.
In the above-mentioned situations, he can approach 3 different strategies:
- If they feel they’re out of options, exit is one of the strategies to avoid bad situations, but it leaves space for perpetrators.
- A long-established rule may be loyalty towards the organization, but the leaders should check if their moral compass still shows in the direction of their beneficiaries, since they are the main reason the organization exists in the first place.
- For those finding their voice and the courage to stay true to their beliefs, stepping forward, asking questions, offering alternatives or warnings might be an approach too.
In this journey they can allow themselves to be guided by 5 universal principles:
1. Respect for core human values, which determine the absolute moral threshold for all business activities.
2. Respect for local traditions.
3. The belief that context matters when deciding what is right and what is wrong.
4. Corporate values and formal standards should be treated as absolutes and ethical standards should be practised both at home and abroad.
5. Practice moral imagination to solve tensions in a responsible and creative way.
The pirates
When navigating on the seas of cultural diversity, many pirates will try to sabotage the explorers’ journey. Becoming aware of the existing dangers can prepare the representatives of NGOs to avoid dark times and confusing situations. More than this, people feel trapped by their own biases to focus too much on success, take action too quickly, try too hard to fit in, and depend too much on experts.
The pirates that sabotage your efforts as leaders in multicultural contexts are:
- Self-fulfilling prophecy – this mechanism allows culturally determined beliefs to be perpetuated and encounter negative results. If we believe that people from a certain minority are irresponsible, then institutions operating in a minority community will not allow the chance of these people to hold positions of responsibility. With time, if they don’t have the opportunity to learn what responsibility is, they will end up, showing irresponsible behaviours.
- Unreflective Obedience – People have a tendency to blindly obey the orders of people in apparently legitimate positions of authority and this may lead to a violation of well-established ethical precepts.
- Social Loafing or the Bystander Problem – Due to audience inhibition, people tend not to work as hard in groups as they do alone since they don’t observe a direct connection between their effort and the final outcome. Therefore, the responsibility is diffused in a group. Diffusion of responsibility can have damaging social effects, leading to inaction or bystander behaviour, which implies that the presence of others serves to inhibit the impulse to help. In an emergency situation, people are simply less likely to act in the presence of passive others.
- Social comparison and conformity – individuals end up adjusting their beliefs to conform to those from their tribes. Groupthink is installed and can visibly deteriorate the mental efficiency, reality testing, moral judgement that results from in-group pressure.
- Emotional contagion – Fear inspires fear. Calm creates calm. Joy inspires joy. Intense emotions are transferred from one member of a group to another and can lead to irrational optimism or pessimism. The leader can exhibit positive emotions and protect the team from negative ones.
- Fear of failure – If managers can’t tolerate failure and use it as a learning opportunity, a negative result can trigger an avalanche of painful emotions. In the long term, team members will avoid mistakes or try to hide them as they happen.
- A fixed mindset – People with a fixed mindset think that they are influenced by genetics mostly and limits their abilities to learn. By contrast, those with a growth mindset will constantly look for opportunities and challenges, take risks and see failure as part of the learning-by-doing process.
- Overreliance on past performance – Hiring and promotion decisions are based mostly on previous performance instead of the potential to learn, engagement and determination.
- The attribution bias – For those affected by the attribution bias, good results, brilliance and skills is a matter of hard work, while failures are bad luck. If we assume responsibility for our failures, we increase our chances to register better results in the future.
- Bias Toward Action – Exposing ourselves to hard work, long hours schedules, stressful situations is counterproductive. Instead of integrating breaks into the schedule, offering more time to just think and encouraging reflection after completing processes could be better options.
- Bias Toward Fitting In – Everybody wants to be part of something greater, to fit at their workplace, adhere to written and unwritten codes of behaviour at work. Doing this limit our strengths and we will not feel encouraged to speak up. By allowing the employees to spend a certain period of their time doing work of their own choosing, not only that we encourage them to cultivate their strengths, but the organization benefits as well.
- Bias Toward Experts –External consultants who are not spending enough time in the front line, are not able to understand the problem and to offer optimal solutions. Instead, frontline employees are frequently in the best position to spot and solve real-time problems.
The treasure
At the end of this journey, the explorers should take some time to make a mental picture of their “desired organizational culture” and to understand that culture is an extension of the mission. Starting from the vision, the managers can create the mission, objectives, strategies and plans to ensure the structure of the organizations. Leaders will be in charge to build up the values, norms, styles, and behaviours. In the end, by connecting the structure and the culture of the organization we can achieve the desired results. People are creatures of habits and they expect to be driven by coherence (between the mission and values) and consistency (from a time and hierarchical perspective).
The individual values aligned to valuable organizational ones, the wisdom of the crowds, team dynamics, “A players”, adaptive policies, larger authority that take decisions at lower hierarchical levels, ethical leadership, constructive leadership, and cultural diversity awareness might be some of the biggest assets of not-for-profit organizations.
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[1] Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_diversity, accessed on March 12th 2020
[2] Differences Between Tight and Loose Cultures: A 33-Nation Study by Michele J. Gelfand, Science 332, 1100 (2011);
[3] Organizational Dynamics, Geert Hofstede, 1980, pp. 42-63
[4] The Silent Language in Overseas Business – Edward Hall, Harvard Business Review, 1960
[5] Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, Guy Deutscher, Metropolitan Books, 2010
[6] Idem 4.
[7] The Leader of the Future – Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, Richard Beckhard, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, Publishers, 1996
