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Careful cultural interventions can impart beliefs about collaboration that become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Organisational culture – shared assumptions, values and norms – can facilitate collaboration. Culture can fill in the gaps in formal administrative systems where collaborative actions cannot be measured and monitored. Put simply, organisational culture shapes what employees do when the bosses aren’t looking. No wonder, then, that failures of collaboration, such as those observed after mergers or in the aftermath of too-rapid expansion through hiring, are often attributed to cultural factors. Conversely, cultures are often credited with the success of organisations that do particularly well at getting their employees to work together.
How to create a culture of collaboration
This leads naturally to the question of whether and how a culture that supports collaborative efforts can be designed. One cannot simply mandate a particular set of assumptions, values or norms on the basis of authority, and expect them to persist. Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to making common cultural assumptions stick: through shaping consequences of action (which we will refer to as the “incentive-based approach”) and through shaping beliefs about what actions are appropriate (which we will call the “framing approach”). (more…)
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Assistant Vice President, Senior Manager
Leading businesses are now using Global Business Services (GBS) to create alignment among their business units. Instead of operating numerous shared service centers and managing outsourcing vendors separately, organizations can integrate governance, locations, and business practices across the enterprise to achieve transformative performance improvements. In this way, GBS serves as a single enterprise organization or network that can drive collaboration and sharing to improve delivery efficiency, effectiveness, and business outcomes.