Page 451 - Cultures and Organizations

416 IMPLICATIONS

nebulous. Such organizations can escape from ineffectiveness and waste
only by the development of a strong organizational culture at the level of
shared practices (see Chapter 10). A viable system of performance evalua-
tion is critical. Differences in nationality within these organizations again
affect both the process and the content of the organization’s work: the way
the organization’s bureaucracy functions and the projects the organization
decides to undertake. As in the case of national politics, process is pri-
marily linked with power distance and uncertainty avoidance, and content
relates to individualism and masculinity.
Ad hoc international actions such as joint military interventions and

peacekeeping missions are fraught with cultural conflict potential, not only
between foreign military personnel and local populations but also between
nationalities within the foreign forces. The success of such actions calls for
expert culture management skills. 36

Economic Development, Nondevelopment, and
Development Cooperation

The nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century was the
age of Europe; Europeans and their offspring overseas were the “lords
37
of humankind,” who colonized most of the outside world while wealth

flowed from outside to inside. World War II was the breaking point that
completely changed the relationships between continents and between rich
and poor countries. In the thirty years after the war, nearly all former
colonies became independent. Freedom from want became recognized as a
fundamental human right, and around 1950 programs of development aid

were gradually started, financed by the rich countries and with the poor
ones as receivers. Between 1950 and 2000 the equivalent of more than a
trillion U.S. dollars of public money from the rich countries was spent on

the development of the poor ones.
In Chapter 5 it was shown that the percentage of their gross national
income that governments of rich countries have allocated to development
cooperation varies considerably (in 2005 the United States spent 0.22 per-
cent of its GNI, while Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway,
and Sweden each spent more than 0.7 percent) and that this percentage was
strongly correlated with the rich countries’ femininity scores. Develop-
ment assistance money is allocated according to the (psychological) needs
of the donor countries more than according to the material needs of the
receivers.