Page 11 - Harnessing the Strengths

x ■ Background

colleague is thinking the exact same thing about them. The
result: a culture clash. This costs time, money, and a great
deal of frustration. In the most extreme cases, these clashes
can even mean the end of the organization.
This is a serious problem, especially because of the
ever-increasing importance of cooperation in a world
characterized by globalization and the growing number of
entrepreneurs entering the international market. As a result
of mergers and acquisitions, more and more companies
are faced with situations in which employees are exposed
to events involving “unfamiliar” colleagues at a growing
speed.
It is important to keep in mind, however, that cultural
tensions are not limited to people from different countries.
They play a role whenever people come into contact with
each other. This phenomenon can even be observed within
families: half of the children in big cities in the Netherlands
have at least one parent with a non-Dutch nationality. Ten-
sions are part and parcel of family relations. Families who
do have the same nationality can also experience large dif-
ferences. Examples abound of confl ict arising in stepfam-
ilies when a new partner enters the home, bringing with
them new ways of doing things that can create resistance.
The same principle applies to companies. In some cases,
the culture differences exhibit themselves in the form of the
sometimes-confl icting interests of various departments: the
production, sales, fi nance, and marketing departments, for
example. These divergent interests can lead to a plethora of
problems, from suspicion and a bad working atmosphere
to an increase of absences due to illness and large margins
of error in production. As you can see, differences can have
far-reaching effects.