It’s not easy to build a strong organizational culture worldwide — but “cultural hubs” beyond headquarters can help.
Companies often approach the process of developing a global culture as a one-way process dominated by corporate headquarters, exemplified by common terms such as “cultural transfer” “and “culture dissemination.” Also, core values often originate at corporate headquarters and fail to reflect and incorporate diverse cultural influences. This approach breeds skepticism about global culture among overseas employees, who may perceive headquarters’ core values as ethnocentric and parochial.
2 Comments On: On the Rocky Road to Strong Global Culture
Behaviours and values, held in common, are indeed more necessary than ever in the enterprises of today. It follows that an MNC must seek ways to enable coherence and collaboration in their communities. But little will happen through prescription. Changes to behaviours and values occur when people learn that this is necessary to undertake their work successfully.
Removing the prompts and props that enable obsolete practices and providing appropriate tools, structures, roles and incentives will pave the route for people to learn what is useful in the work regimes of the ‘designer’ organisation.
We speak of learning by doing; this is the only way for such tranformation in a free society.
Global leaders need to strike a balance between their vision that embraces the culture of binding everyone together within the organization and the process of respecting and encouraging local and market-sensitive cultures to achieve long-term success. Effective strategy could be:
. Develop a strong team based on celebrating differences.
.Create the best set of values to build trust and understanding.
.Identify specific cultural preferences.
.Shift from a variety of different cultures to one with local presence that symbolizes different values.
.Put together stellar quality standards that are aimed at manufacturing and creating premium products.