CONSULTING AND CULTURE

In helping clients to plan and implement change, the consultant needs to be aware of the power of culture. Culture is normally defined as a system of collectively shared values, beliefs, traditions and behavioural norms. “Culture is the collective programming of the human mind that distinguishes the members of one human group from those of another group. Culture, in this sense, is a system of collectively held values.”1 Or, in the words of the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, “there are truths on this side of the Pyrenees that are falsehoods on the other”.

Culture has its roots in the basic conditions of human life, including material conditions, the natural environment, climate, and ways in which people earn their living, and in the historical experience of human communities which includes interaction with other countries and cultures. People develop a culture that helps them to cope with their environment and maintain the cohesion and identity of the community in interacting with other communities. In developing countries, in particular in rural areas, traditional cultures reflect the people’s poverty and respect for the forces of nature. Culture tends to be deeply rooted in people’s hearts and minds, and cannot be easily changed.

5.1Understanding and respecting culture

The problem with culture is that although it is omnipresent and its influence on the functioning of organizations and societies is very strong, it is difficult to identify and grasp, since it is nowhere precisely described. It includes taboos – values that people respect, but about which they do not normally talk and sometimes resent talking. Individuals and communities may be unaware of their culture because they have not learned it as a structured subject or a technical skill. Values and beliefs that make up culture evolve over generations, are transmitted from generation to generation, and are normally acquired unconsciously, early in people’s lives – in the family, at

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Management consulting

Box 5.1 What do we mean by culture?

Culture is composed of many elements, which may be classified in four categories: symbols, heroes, rituals and values.

Symbols are words, objects and gestures that derive their meaning from convention. At the level of national cultures, symbols include the entire area of language. At the level of organizational culture, symbols include abbreviations, slang, modes of address, dress codes and status symbols, all recognized by insiders only.

Heroes are real or imaginary people, dead or alive, who serve as models of behaviour within a culture. Selection processes are often based on hero models of “the ideal employee” or “the ideal manager”. Founders of organizations sometimes become mythical heroes later, and incredible deeds may be ascribed to them.

Rituals are collective activities that are technically superfluous but, within a particular culture, socially essential. In organizations they include not only celebrations but also many formal activities defended on apparently rational grounds: meetings, the writing of memos, and planning systems, plus the informal ways in which these activities are performed: who can afford to be late at what meeting, who speaks to whom, and so on.

Values represent the deepest level of culture. They are broad feelings, often unconscious and not open to discussion, about what is good and what is bad, clean or dirty, beautiful or ugly, rational or irrational, normal or abnormal, natural or paradoxical, decent or indecent. These feelings are present in the majority of the members of the culture, or at least in those who occupy pivotal positions.

Author: Geert Hofstede.

school, through religious education, at work and by socializing with other members of the community.

A management consultant faces the same problem. His or her personality and value system have been moulded by the culture in which he or she has grown up, worked and socialized. Yet the consultant may be unaware of it. For as “the last thing that a fish will discover is water”, often culture will be the last thing that a management consultant, otherwise an outstanding expert in a particular technical field, will discover.

Being culture-conscious

In management consulting, a concern for culture is as important as a concern for the specific technical problem for which the consultant was brought in. But what can consultants do to be sure that they are culture-conscious and that neither their behaviour nor their suggestions clash with the organizational culture?

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