Practicing Organization Development: A Guide for Leading Change: A Third Edition

THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN GLOBAL OD

Let us return to the role of culture in global OD. The topic of culture is huge and exists at multiple levels, for example, national cultures, corporate cultures, etc. This chapter focuses on the role of national culture values. Culture serves to shape the other elements of legal and economic development. Does culture make a difference in terms of how we practice OD globally? There are three answers: yes, no, and maybe. There has been a considerable amount of work on matching national cultural values to the core values of OD. The basic question is not “Can OD be successful in different countries with different values?” That has been answered by the work of Golembiewski cited earlier. The yes it works, no it ...