Summary : Behind culture there are one thousand things, more or less objective or real to explain with more or less sincerity what prevent organizations and people from changing. Enterprise 2.0 faces the same kind of problems even if it’s not specific to it. Acknowledgement : it’s an real concern that can be counterbalanced by corporate culture in some cases. There are many and varied solutions to override this issue but all are imperfect and none is universal. However, a difference as to me made between the impact of culture on behaviors than can be offset overtime with the right incentives and what has to deal with cultural identity that people will over try to protect against any change.
During the last Enterprise 2.0 summit I gave a talk about cultural boundaries and their impact on enterprise 2.0 and the transformation processus. This post is the occasion to sum up some of the discussions that followed my presentations as well as some thoughts I gathered from insightful posts that have been published since then.
To begin, we have to admit that this problem is as old as the world and did not wait for the raise of enterprise 2.0 to impact organizations. It’s a kind of usual suspects that’s pointed at every time something new is being implemented within a defined human, geographic, linguistic scope.
• A double importation issue seen from Europe
The question, in Europe, is that even before thinking of implementing enterprise 2.0 within european boundaries, it’s a north american concept that has to be imported. That’s easier in some countries for two reasons. The first is that the concept and many implementation strategies rely on positive thinking, what’s far from being a common attitude here. Then comes a systematic reaction towards what comes from overseas. The famous “it comes from overseas so it won’t work here”. What means many things. The first is rather a protectionist reflex, the second is a lack of self-confidence (“we won’t be able to make it work”). Note that the same arguments may be used wherever the change comes from. To be more specific on the second point, as I mentioned here, I see things changing and, as time flies, european organizations realize that they can make it, what has an interesting chain effect.
So that’s a concept that has to be “Europeanized” in terms of wording and levers before thinking to spreading it.
• A question that’s not only European.
Europe is not the only part of the world where the values that come with enterprise 2.0 may be problematic. In fact, problems will rise every time something has to be adopted and shared within people who have another identity (culture, language etc..). Maybe that’s a real concern in europe but the same kind of thing can be experienced inside one unique country. And let me tell you things may be much more complicated when we’ll have to deal with some asian countries.
• A false problem [Read more...]
You can find the "original" french version of this blog here

