Page 450 - Cultures and Organizations

Intercultural Encounters 415

the quality and survival power of economic and ecological systems
will have to be found.
■ Concepts of human rights cannot be universal. The Universal Decla-
ration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 was based on individualist
Western values that were and are not shared by the political leaders
nor by the populations of the collectivist majority of the world popu-

lation. Without losing the benefits of the present declaration, which
in an imperfect way presents at least a norm used to appeal against
gross violations, the international community should revise the dec-
laration to include, for example, the rights of groups and minorities.
On the basis of such a revised declaration, victims of political and
religious fundamentalisms can be protected; this protection should
prevail over national sovereignty.

Public and nongovernmental organizations that span national bound-
aries depend, for their functioning, entirely on intercultural communication
and cooperation. Most international organizations are not supposed to have
a home national culture; key decision makers usually have to come from
different countries. Examples are the United Nations with its subsidiaries
such as UNESCO and UNIDO, the European Union, the International
Labour Organization, and the World Council of Churches. Others have an
implicit home culture related to their past: religious organizations, such
as the Roman Catholic Church (Italian) and the Mormon Church (Ameri-
can), and humanitarian organizations, such as the Red Cross (Swiss) and
Amnesty International (British).
Confederations such as the United Nations and the European Union by
definition should not have a dominant national culture. This mandate is less

a problem for the political part of such organizations, in which people are

supposed to act as representatives of their own countries and to settle their
differences by negotiation. It is, however, a considerable problem in daily
operations in which people are supposed to represent not their countries
but the organization as such. Organizations can function only if their mem-
bers share some kind of culture—if together they can take certain things
for granted. In the daily operations of the UN and the EU, few things can
be taken for granted. Personnel selection, nomination, and promotion pro-
cedures have to take into account arguments other than suitability for the
job. Key persons may be moved before they have learned their jobs; often
objectives are unclear, and where they are clear, means-ends relations are