Mapping differences and strengths in the public sector: Guest Editor note

Citation

Dolan, S.L. (2013), "Mapping differences and strengths in the public sector: Guest Editor note", Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Vol. 20 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/CCM-05-2013-0082

Mapping differences and strengths in the public sector: Guest Editor note

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Cross Cultural Management, Volume 20, Issue 4

Introduction

Instead of writing a traditional academic introduction to this special issue (hereafter SI), I have decided to personalize my message. The motto of my message can be labeled: the message, the messengers, and cross-cultural global lessons: is there hope for a cultural reengineering of the public sector? There is no doubt that this motto fits and complements very well the content of this SI. I wish to explain in a few paragraphs why we have decided to publish this SI. By and large, the field of cross-cultural management has seen only marginal theoretical contributions in the past several decades. As the editor-in-chief of this journal since 2007, I continue to see the same names and the same theoretical concepts used again and again. There is no doubt that the research design, methodologies and statistical analyses used have become significantly more rigorous, but the fact remains that we are still left with minor theoretical innovations. Managers in today’s world are eager to use parsimonious and effective models; they are not satisfied by merely understanding culture; they are looking for ways and means to reengineer it, to shape it, and to make it more aligned with their respective strategy in order to develop sustainable excellence.

The concept of culture has been studied for many years by scholars as well as by practitioners. Culture is referred to as a mix of shared assumptions, values, norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of a given society. Culture is one of those terms that are difficult to express distinctly, but everyone knows it when they sense it. The concept of culture is becoming particularly important in the field of management with regard to a growing challenge that has to do with how to change it. Organizational change efforts are rumored to fail the vast majority of the time; Keller and Price (2011) reinforce the decades of accumulating research showing that roughly 70 percent of organizational change programs fail. Central to that high failure rate are huge shortfalls in developing the “soft skills” of leadership and culture. Usually, this failure is attributed to a lack of understanding about the strong role culture plays in organizations, and the failure of the respective leaders to really understand the cultural cues. In order to develop operational measures of culture which might enhance the change process, scholars such as Hofstede (1983, 1993), Minkov and Hofstede (2011), Schein (2004) and Trompernaas and Hampden-Turner (1997) came to our aid by developing, testing and validating some excellent models which have become classic in the field. All of these models have been used extensively by practitioners around the world for many years. Recently, however, attention has been placed on one key ingredient of culture – values (Schwartz, 1992, 1994; Dolan et al., 2006; Dolan, 2011). The importance of shared values in an organizational context is not new. However, the taxonomy, classification or hierarchy of values is receiving more and more attention. By and large, there is a salient assumption that when core values are shared and are congruent with the mission and vision of an entity, it results in better harmony, well-being and overall higher output (Bao et al., 2012). If values and culture alignment of employees are important in private organizations, according to a recent McKinsey report, they become productivity imperatives in the public sector (Baily et al., 2011).

Thus, I am convinced that the message transmitted in this SI is different and hopefully more useful to many academics but also to managers. I have decided to look past an apparent conflict of being an editor and at the same time SI guest editor for this journal. After all, this is the first time I have done it in the six years I have served as editor for Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal (CCM). In addition, I feel that the message of this SI warrants an innovative approach, and I wish to personally endorse the progressive work found herein.

The messengers are many researchers that have collaborated with us over the past several years. We were toying with a newly developed model of culture that we have managed to articulate and publish very successfully in several books (Dolan et al., 2006; Dolan, 2011). Recently, we were also successful in publishing tentative tests for the proposed model in scholarly journals (Bao et al., 2012, 2013). We labeled this new model of culture: the 3Es – tri-axial model of values. It is based on the assumption that the universe called “culture” includes thousands of values, or more specifically, shared values. However, they can be reduced to an orthogonal three axes in which the values are connected. A culture, thus, represents a zero sum of the configuration of these three axes, altogether making it 100 percent of the universe called culture. Albeit some possible weaknesses in the algorithms proposed, the culture configuration makes the model unique, parsimonious and applied, as we will see throughout this SI.

The essence of the values across cultures study

Our journey to empirically test the newly suggested model, started by asking the question of whether the meaning of value in one country/culture, is the same as in another country/culture. Similarities and differences depend on how people in each culture classify the values in relation to a given axis. Thus, we managed to have 28 research centers throughout the globe that have participated in this global project that we attributed the acronym “VAC” (values across cultures). Those of us who are doing cross-cultural research are familiar with the enormous difficulty of confusing levels of analysis (country, sector, region, etc.) in any cross cultural research. Consequently, in order to minimize possible biases, we have decided to focus on the public sector. The latter, yields better cross cultural comparisons. In addition, the public sector is a neglected field of study as shown by the over 90 percent of researchers in our field who focus on the private sector. For these two reasons, the public sector was chosen in all the countries that have participated in the study.

Of the 28 initial partners, we had to drop many due to failure to meet the criteria outlined in the common research design, or difficulties in obtaining a minimum number of cases enabling reasonable data analysis and some level of generalization. More potential contributors were rejected because they did not meet the rigor of quality for the manuscript, and did not satisfy the review criteria set for the evaluation of their manuscripts.

In sum, the aim of this SI is to test a new model of culture, to see the relevancy in cross-cultural comparisons, and perhaps to set the agenda for future research encompassing some elements treated here, but expanding the theory, research design and respective methodologies. We are the first to admit that the studies reported herein may not always meet the criteria of a perfectly rigorous research design. Nonetheless, this is compensated by the innovativeness of the approach. The papers reported here should all be considered exploratory. We are aware of the fact that issues of external validity can certainly be questioned, however the proposed model has evolved following many years of experience with executives throughout the world for which the approach has been hailed as “interesting”, “useful” and “applicable”. In other words, this is a classic case of high-level internal validity. We hope that this SI will plant the seeds for a culture reengineering process that is badly needed in the private sector, and even more so in the public sector.

So, VAC is an ongoing research field with over 28 global partners. It has two unique features enabling cross cultural comparisons:

1. it was designed to validate and test a new conceptual model addressing the meaning of VAC, map them, and understand culture in an innovative configurationally and parsimonious manner (the new model is hereafter referred to as the 3Es tri-axial model); and

2. data was collected in the public sector in each respective partner country which makes the cross cultural comparisons less prone to methodological biases and criticism.

Of the 28 original world partners, only nine have finally been selected to be included in this SI. These, listed in alphabetical order, are: Brazil, China, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Peru Spain and The Netherlands. A unique methodology to classify the values and map the culture configuration has been developed by the “Future of Work” team at ESADE Business School. This team has also acted as coordinator for the VAC project. Partners were encouraged, but are not obliged, to follow the proposed methodology in analyzing the data in their respective country.

More specifically, the aims of this SI are:

* to better understand the meaning of VAC;

* to test the internal and external validity of a new proposed configurationally based model for classifying values and understanding a new definition of culture;

* to specifically understand the model in the arena of the public sector, which has been understudied by scholars in the past; and

* to compare and contrast public sector values in view of enhancing culture and its respective competitiveness in the future.

The real added value of each contribution, in addition to testing the validity of the 3Es – tri-axial model, is the discussion and the implication for the redesign of public sector competitiveness in each respective country. An effective change agent or a leader needs three components in order to engage in this sort of culture reengineering: a concept, a methodology and tools. We hope that in this SI we provide a taste of these three components and that the latter can lead to effective public sector culture change; there is hope in sight.

The first paper is co-authored by Ben Capell and Kubra Canhilal (from The Future of Work Chair Unit at ESADE Business School – Ramon Llull University – Barcelona), Ruth Alas (Estonia Business School – Tallinn), Lutz Sommer (Albstadt-Sigmaringen University – Department of Business Administration and Engineering – Germany) and Carolin Ossenkop (Faculty of Economis and Business Administration – VU University – Amsterdam). This paper has been placed first in this SI because it explains in more detail the underlying assumptions, theory, the model and the methodology used by the majority of the partners in this VAC study. The title of the paper is: “Mapping values in old vs new members of the European Union: a comparative analysis of public sector cultures”. The paper contains two parts. The first part describes the need to develop another model of culture; it summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of existing models and provides a state-of-the-art description of the tri-axial model as a tool for cross-cultural analysis. Additionally, the paper explains in more detail the necessity to conduct more cross-cultural research in the public sector. The second part describes the empirical research design and methodology and reports on the results of the aggregate analysis wherein Germany and The Netherlands (i.e. old EU members countries) were compared and contrasted to Estonia and Lithuania (i.e. new EU members countries). Old EU member states have stronger orientation towards ethical values compared to new EU members states that are more oriented towards pragmatism. In addition, the level of value congruence among different employee groups is much higher. Implications for possible culture reengineering are then suggested.

The second paper was co-authored by Marc Esteve (Institute of Public Governance and Management, ESADE Business School – Ramon Llull University and the School of Public Policy – University College of London), Monica Grau (VU University –Amsterdam and the Future of Work Chair, ESADE Business School – Ramon Lull University) and Ramon Cabrera Valle (Universidad Pablo de Olavide – Seville). It is based on the most comprehensive data survey (n=3,018) of public sector employees in Spain. The study was co-sponsored by the Government of Andalusia and is entitled: “Assessing public sector values through the tri-axial model: empirical evidence from Spain”. Results reveal the domination of pragmatic values to be followed closely by ethical values at the aggregate level. But the study also shows how these values vary as a function of level of education and seniority of service.

The third paper was written by Elio Vera (CESMA – Milano), Kubra Canhilal (Future of Work Chair –ESADE and Bocconi School of Management) and Elio Borgonovi (SDA Bocconi – Department of Public Management – Milano). The paper is titled “Exploring the values in the Italian public sector using the tri-axial model”. Following a review of reported values of Italian Public sector employees, a configuration of the values based on the data collected is presented. The authors have decided to concentrate on the top 5 values selected by the sample that served to construct the tri-axial model. 100 percent of pragmatic values are reported. By default this means that no ethical or emotional values are included in the top core values. Implications are discussed in relationships to the Italian context.

China and Brazil represent the fourth and fifth papers. We were interested in mapping the values in two giants that are becoming the economic powers of the new world. The Chinese paper has been co-authored by: Wei Liu, Ying Liu and Yuanjie Bao (Renmin University of China – School of Public Administration Bejing, China) and its title suggests this is an exploratory study: “Mapping the values and culture in Chinese public sectors: an exploratory study”. In China, the authors conclude that emotional values play an absolutely crucial role among Chinese civil servants; hence they drive people to personal fulfillment and create a “life worth living” which is embedded in the Confucian culture. The latter becomes the driver for hard work. In Brazil, the paper was prepared by Andre Wakamatsu (Universidade Mackenzie – CCSA, Sao Paulo), Eliete Bernal Arellano (Insper – Business Administration – Sao Paulo) and Rodolfo de Castro Ribas Jr (Department of Psychology – Universidade do Rio de Janiero). The paper is entitled “Organizational values in the Brazilian public sector: an analysis based on the tri-axial model”. The configuration of the core values presents a certain balance between the three axes of the model which the authors conclude is very healthy. In a subsequent analysis, the authors built the tri-axial model for different ministries (offices) and showed how the model changes: more innovation in ministries such as sports, education and science and more economic-pragmatic values in ministries such as trade and industry.

The sixth paper reports on the values of employees working in the public sector in another fast developing economy – Peru. The VAC study in Peru was conducted by Rachel Shemueli Gabel (Pacific University, Graduate Business School – Lima, Peru) and Ben Capell (the Future of Work Chair – ESADE, Ramon Llull University). The authors have decided to title their paper: “Public sector values: between the real and the ideal”, First, an excellent historical benchmarks explaining the introduction of “New public management reforms” in Latin America in general and Peru in particular, including the related controversies concerning the transferability issues associated with the exportation of this management approach from more developing countries, is summarized. Then, the paper discusses the study findings which highlight a breech between the values presented in the value statements of the Peruvian public organizations (the ideal), and the values that employees reported as the most important in their day-to-day work (the real) is described. Discussion and implications follow.

The last paper, the seventh paper, which is a bit different from the rest, has focused on “Life role salience and values”. Albeit the fact that the authors have used the VAC survey and the respective data, They have decided to focus on theme that is closely connected to their main stream of ongoing research: life role and gender. The paper was co-authored by four scholars, Claartje J. Vinkenburg, Annick Y. van Hattem, Carolin Ossenkop (VU University – Amsterdam) and Joseie Dikkers (University of Applied Sciences Utrecht – The Netherlands). Contrary to previous findings, results show that there was no relation between a person’s values and life role salience.

Closing words

I wish to thank all the contributors to this SI. It has been a long process. They are spread over three continents, they tested the models and concepts in multiple languages, and they were very disciplined in following up on the various phases of the project. Without their hard work, this SI would have not been completed. I also wish to thank Nicholas Bahr, the Senior Editorial Assistant of CCM for his valuable assistance.

As a final thought, I wish to encourage the readers of CCM, to reach out with no fear and develop new concepts and models in our field. In a global and cross-cultural world we are needed more and more, and we should be courageous in doing serious research embedded with innovative ideas.

Simon L. Dolan
Guest Editor

References

Baily, M.N., Croxson, K., Dohmann, T. and Mendonca, L. (2011), “The public-sector productivity imperative”, Mckinsie Report, March

Bao, Y., Dolan, S.L. and Tzafrir, S. (2012), “Value congruence in organizations: literature review, theoretical perspectives, and future directions”, ESADE Business School Research Paper No. 239

Bao, Y., Vedina, R., Moodie, S. and Dolan, S. (2013), “The relationship between value incongruence and individual and organizational well-being outcomes: an exploratory study among Catalan nurses”, Journal of Advanced Nursing, Vol. 69 No. 3, pp. 631–641

Dolan, S.L. (2011), Coaching by Values: A Guide to Success in the Life of Business and the Business of Life, iUniverse, Bloomington, IN

Dolan, S.L., Garcia, S. and Richley, B. (2006), Managing by Values: A Corporate Guide to Living, Being Alive, and Making a Living in the 21st Century, Palgrave-Macmillan, New York, NY

Hofstede, G. (1983), “Culture’s consequences: international differences in work-related values”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 28 No. 4, pp. 625–629

Hofstede, G. (1993), “Cultures and organizations: software of the mind”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 38 No. 1, pp. 132–134

Keller, S. and Price, C. (2011), Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ

Minkov, M. and Hofstede, G. (2011), “The evolution of Hofstede’s doctrine”, Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 10–20

Schein, E. (2004), Organizational Culture and Leadership, Jossey Bass, San Francisco, CA

Schwartz, S.H. (1992), “Universals in the content and structure of values: theory and empirical tests in 20 countries”, in Zanna, M. (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 25, Academic Press, New York, NY, pp. 1–65

Schwartz, S.H. (1994), “Are there universal aspects in the content and structure of values?”, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 50, pp. 19–45

Trompernaas, F. and Hampden-Turner, C. (1997), Riding the Waves of Culture, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London

Further Reading

Dolan, S.L. and Altman, Y. (2012), “Managing by values: the leadership spirituality connection”, People & Strategy, Vol. 35 No. 4, pp. 21–26