Ahmad M. Salih

From a transactional lens, culture is related to, or built from people’s accumulated actions over the years. These actions, however, change in response to motivations and threats internally and externally. This notion does not fit with the static approach to culture as discussed earlier. Many examples can be illustrated here; Price and Thompson refer to how individuals may take a unified stance against an external threat while they may not be in agreement, and adopt contradicting positions in normal days. Mars (2008) provides the example of the lady CEO who adopts different behavioural stances at work and home.

What I want to say here is that life is dynamic and so we are. Therefore, stereotyping or providing cultural scoring according to certain dimensions may not work. This approach has already been put under great level of scrutiny by many scholars and practitioners such as Brendan McSweeny.

The work of Mary Douglas in the 1970s and that of Michael Thompson afterwards introduced a new perspective to the way we look at culture. Mary Douglas offered an alternative approach to understanding culture and called it The Cultural Theory. Douglasian Cultural Theory is deeply rooted in anthropology and applied in social structure where the relationship between the individuals, in general, and their surrounding environment is organized and governed. the theory is based on two social dimensions called ‘Group’ and ‘Grid’ where people focus their ideas and interests. If we draw this on a matrix, the X axis or the horizontal co-ordinate represents “Group”, while the Y axis or vertical co-ordinate represents “Grid”. The group axis measures the degree to which people are tied to their community or affiliations, and the extent to which people are restricted in thought and behaviour by their commitment to their social unit. A collective type of mind can be found at the right-end side of the axis- where community boundaries are of paramount importance. People at this end devote a lot of their time interacting with other unit members, which requires long-term commitment.

Each individual is expected to act or behave on behalf of the collective whole, while the unit is expected to act in the normative interest of its members. Individuals experience a hierarchical culture. The ties to the group become weaker as we move toward the left-end side of the X axis. Individuals at this end enjoy freedom from group ties and boundaries. They can negotiate their culture independently without being constrained by, nor reliant upon, any significant group. The low group experience is a competitive, entrepreneurial culture.

On the Y axis grid, we find an index that measures the extent to which individual behaviour is constrained by role differentiation, regardless of any enrolment or membership in any group. When moving to the top end of the grid axis, we find rules and classifications governing gender, age, and family. These rules define how people relate to one another and therefore limit their life chances and opportunities; here, people experience strong grid cultures. This limitation is attenuated when we move down the grid axis where people ere have the freedom to find jobs based on their merits; here, people experience weak grid cultures.

Now, the group and grid setup has resolute with five main cultural spaces or ways of life only;hierarchical, competitive, egalitarian, fatalistic and, at the center, lies the autonomous culture or the hermit (see figure 1, taken from salih, 2017). These five cultural spaces the only cultures that people need to understand and apply wherever they go.

Will continue the discussion in the next blogs about each culture in detail and show how Douglasian Cultural Theory was integrated within the overall framework of Cultural Intelligence.

Talk soon!

Organization, nowadays, exaggerate in overloading project managers with role’s requirements and obligations. Unfortunately, many organizations do respond proactively to the market development in the same speed markets grow. As clients become more and more sophisticated in their structure, consultants maintain the same old image about project managers thatchy inherited twenty years ago. 

If we map the main project management obligations, we can then, somehow, imagine the dilemma. Project managers, basically, are required to manage clients’ relationships and expectations, resources, time, budget and risks. For a simple project such as a small building or utility line, a project manager can manage and full all mentioned obligations. However, on the other extream, in the case of a mega or even giga project where the client is represented by multiple stakeholders, the project manager finds herself handicapped. This is because, focusing only on managing the client relationships can eat up all her time and maybe more. This is when a more than one layer in project management will be required. I.e. assigning a project director to deal with the client and project manager to follow up on other tasks.

The point is, if not organization figure out how project management, as a practice and culture, can be set, they will keep reacting to clients’ demands and face failure. From my experience, I can say it is not easy siren this is a multi-level change and goes unto the higher level of authority within the organization. Building a project management practice is linked to enhancing the organizational structure, establishing a dynamic set of procedures that adapt to the type of project and, of course, providing the right support to the project manager.

More in the coming blogs.

In my first blog, I raised a concern about the issue of culture and how we blindly accepted stereotyping nations and groups of people just because we see it easier to justify our understanding to human behaviour. Following that cultural intelligence, when it was formed at the beginning of the 21st century, has fallen in the same trap. Cultural intelligence or CQ, promised to solve the previously discussed dilemma. CQ, which is rooted in the psychology domain of knowledge claimed to focus on the individual as the unit of analysis instead of relying on anthropological surveys that generalize facts about human being. However, CQ, in the writings of Christopher Earley and his colleagues, or David Thomas and his colleagues did not pay attention to an important aspect related to the core of their paradigm, which is culture. What does it mean and how can it be represented or interpreted.

When CQ was formalized, it gave a big hope to organizational HR departments to create training programs that can prepare those who are given international assignment to deliver their work smoothly. For somebody to adapt to as many cultures as possible and become a cultural chameleon, as CQ allegedly assume, must learn all the different culture she or he encounter and change her or his behaviours accordingly. This is, unfortunately is a a dilemma. In literature, it called the dilemma of losing the absolutes. It means that if someone learns a new culture, she or he ends up losing his own one. Therefore, many scholars and practitioners reached a conclusion that the cultural chameleon is just a myth.

In view of the above, the need to have a brand new look at culture and cultural intelligence has evolved in the past few years. The basis for this new look or approach must abandon stereotyping people, groups or nations. It should also refrain from treating people based on their geo-ethnic origins, and third, it needs to look at human behaviours from more than one anger, or in other words, study it from more than one lens as Murdock advised back in 1971. Murdock called for engaging more than one knowledge domain to understand human behaviours. i.e. anthropology, sociology and psychology. According to him, we must not rely on one knowledge domain in studying human behaviours. This is because studying individuals’ actions through the lens of anthropology, for example, would lead to relying on having generalized characteristics of the supra-individual conducted via anthropological analysis. This approach proved to be insufficient as it ignores the social and personal effects, and results in having anthropological and sociological mythology that Murdock refers to. Alternatively, relying only on psychology as the field of study provides a better advantage over anthropology and sociology because it focuses on experimental techniques. It puts it in a better position to understand and discover the mechanisms of human behaviours. However, focusing only on the individual as the unit of study and ignoring the environment leads to psychological mythology. From there, Murdock advised that both directions need to be followed; discovering the mechanisms of human behaviour and the environmental conditions that surround that. Engaging one discipline at a time would either lead to reductionistic mythology in the case of psychology, because of its narrow focus on the mechanisms only, or cultural/social mythology in the case of anthropology, because it ignores the findings on the mechanisms of human behaviours reached by psychology. 

I think by now, we have framed out the issue of studying, using and interpreting culture in a more detailed manner. what is next is I will be presenting the alternative that developed and published many papers, chapters and books about. Stay tuned.

For the past decades, management studies and practices were stereotyped with cultural dimensions developed by some scholars such as Hofstede, Fons Trompenaar, the GLOBE project and lately Erin Meyer. These dimensions, although simplify the way we look at culture but are problematic at the same time and lead to serious dilemmas. Judging people based on their national background although seems an easy way to understand how people think or behave but might not be realistic. looking at others based on their geo-ethnic background means stamping them with static images that they can never get out of it. This approach contradicts with any change management theory or practice. If we consider culture as a static phenomenon means we can never change ourselves or others which is against human nature. The second factor that affects our understanding to culture, is what does culture include? Does it include values, habits, traditions, folklores, kitchens, eating habits, etc.. By putting everything on culture without any distinction is not fair and makes not good for us.

The impact that organisations and academic institutions suffered, and keep suffering, from following the above paradigm led to a lot of frustration and ineffectiveness in many of the training programs that they prepare for leaders for one simple reason; what individuals are taught differs from what they find on the ground. Especially in nowadays world where working outside ones homeland has become the new norm. Furthermore, as many organizations and educational institutions have decided to move into the digital space, treating culture the same old way would definitely won't work. Consumer behaviours need to be understood in an explorative manner. Judging how consumers may react to certain product need to be stopped and restudied to figure out what best suit them, etc.

The above questions I raise in this blog are basic and they are raised by both academics and practitioners and alternatives are proposed but how we accept those new alternatives, this is the 1 million dollar question. However, for this blog, I would stop here. The aim is shake our understanding and create a discussion about the subject before illustrating some working solutions.

Appreciate receiving your comments and see you soon.

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