Cultural diversity across groups, organizations, regions and countries will be more visible in the world of tomorrow. This will result in tremendous amount of pressure on leaders to prepare their organizations for the future by taking advantage of the diversity inherent in the organization. The article explains the different characteristics of "such a learning organization".
There is much speculation about the direction in which the world is heading with cultural diversity being visible across groups, organizations, regions, and countries. Almost all of us would converge on the idea that the world of tomorrow will be much different, more complex, faster paced and more culturally diverse than what it is today. This means that the leaders of the organizations have to become perpetual learners in order to survive (Schwartz, 2003, Michael, 1991).
However, when we pose the issue of perpetual learning in the context of a cultural analysis, we are faced with a paradox. Culture, by definition, is a stabilizer, a conservative force and a process by which the uncertain external environment can be made predictable (Schein, 2004). There are many consultants who believe that "strong" cultures are desirable for an effective and better performance in the long run. But, strong cultures are hard to change and are stable. This brings to the fore an interesting paradox - if the world is becoming more turbulent and thus requires more flexibility and learning, then does a strong culture become a liability in this diversity intense culture around us? |
