Crippling Epistemologies and Governance Failures: A Plea for Experimentalism

CHAPTER 3: Corporate culture and governance

We require a framework for dealing with the unforeseen. — david m. kreps (1990: 90) Crippling epistemologies may be endogenously generated by the evolving traditions in the human sciences, or fuelled by a post-secondary education enterprise that focuses exclusively on episteme to the detriment of techne and phronesis, but they may also be ascribable to a broader cultural environment that discourages risk-taking and innovation. Such an environment tends to reward conformism and does not foster deviance or entrepreneurship. In the case of the social sciences, it is not clear how important the cultural milieu has been in the consolidation of a culture that puts an emphasis on method and has failed to develop social sciences capable of dealing with the major social issues of interest to the citizen. My hypothesis is that the cultural milieu has played a significant role in supporting the dynamic conservatism that has helped to consolidate the traditional mindset, and that it explains the extent to which the key institutions and organization producing and funding research in the social sciences have played a rearguard role. CHAPTer 3 Corporate culture and governance PART I: CRIPPLING EPISTEMOLOGIES 77 CuLTure AS SOuL The notion of culture is opaque and elusive. It refers to what one might regard as the “soul” of an organization , the nexus of broad and faceless forces that shape the way in which an organization or a society perceives the world, reacts to changes in the environment or challenges from competitors or partners, and governs itself. The concept of culture connotes the ideas, customs and skills of a people or a group that are transferred, communicated or passed along from one generation to the next, and their shared beliefs, behaviours and systems of meanings. In general, a culture is an appreciative system that is both enabling and limiting. It encompasses both a set of readinesses and capacities, and a set of constraints under which the organization labours when faced with unforeseen challenges (Vickers 1965). Culture is “collective programming of the mind” (Hofstede 1991). In addition, the corporate culture of organizations such as universities is permeated by their national culture . Business organizations also cannot escape the burden of a national culture. In a country that systematically celebrates individualism, it would be surprising to see a collectivist corporate culture. This does not mean that corporate culture is in all respects a mirror image of the national culture, but they share a large segment of common entrenched beliefs. The corporate cultures in the Americas are quite varied, and are rooted in very different histories and experiences. Even Canada and the United States have corporate cultures that have somewhat different contours, despite their great similarities. Canada’s corporate culture appears to stand somewhere on a continuum that spans the whole range from the more individualistic US corporate culture to the more communitarian corporate cultures of continental Europe and East Asia (Courchene 1995). The differences are particularly evident when gauged by the level of tolerance for uncertainty: Canada, like the countries of Latin America, is much 78 CRIPPLING EPISTEMOLOGIES AND GOVERNANCE FAILURES more risk-averse than the USA and less likely to accept change. The next section defines key dimensions of corporate cultures and suggests that these dimensions often aggregate into syndromes revealing different forms of neurosis. Subsequent sections show how corporate culture operates as a cognitive and ethical prime mover in society and the economy, and how it underpins productivity, innovation and resilience. It is then conjectured that the corporate cultures in the Americas are beginning to converge, albeit somewhat uneasily, and little by little. The concluding section of this chapter comments briefly on the reasons why corporate cultures as mindsets and sextants cannot be easily modified, and why converging dissensus may have to suffice. THe PALIMPSeST OF COrPOrATe CuLTure Corporate culture, like national culture, is a work in progress. It develops as the context changes, but it maintains a certain hard core of common views that ensures the coherence and permanence of certain key directions of the organization. This hard core mobilizes resources in a meaningful way in times of crisis, and provides a sort of extra-rational capacity to react instinctively to unforeseen challenges. But it also, at times, prevents the organization from shedding ineffective practices deeply anchored in the core. Around this hard core of basic assumptions, deeply rooted in the collective mind, is a large surrounding network of values, beliefs and artefacts (Schein...