Being flexible and accommodating diversity: The challenge for multinational management
This article presents an opposing view to the current populist position that corporate culture can be utilised to bind the multinational together. It critically examines the appropriateness of corporate culture as a 'soft' control mechanism, concluding that highly committed, inculcated managers (believers) may actually be a barrier to the goals of flexibility, responsiveness and innovativeness in the face of rapidly changing, diverse global operations. However, the calculatively compliant manager is not proferred as an alternative. Rather, we argue that the quest for conformity to a given corporate culture may be counterproductive. The real challenge for multinationals is to develop mechanisms that encourage mixed voices and messages, and support a diversity of perspectives. It is suggested that multinationals might even look at the university model, in which it has long been recognised that knowledge advances in a climate of critique and dissent.
Year of publication: |
1997
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Authors: | Welch, Denice E. ; Welch, Lawrence S. |
Published in: |
European Management Journal. - Elsevier, ISSN 0263-2373. - Vol. 15.1997, 6, p. 677-685
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Publisher: |
Elsevier |
Saved in:
Online Resource
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