As globalization, privatization, and consolidation increase, many companies find the integration of organizational cultures an urgent necessity. The need to successfully integrate cultures presents complex management challenges —whether because of a merger or acquisition, creation of a new unit, or deployment of work teams to other countries.
While you can't see or touch an organization’s culture it exerts a constant pull that often holds things in place. Like gravity, culture is made tangible by its effects; it can be seen in the behavior and practices of an organization’s management and employees. When two different cultures are required to work together, the effects, while often catalytic, can sometimes be disruptive and can undermine morale, productivity, and profits.
Most managers attempt to bring about cultural integration through top-down initiatives that are aimed at influencing behaviors and practices. These programs often fail because they address the effects of culture, leaving its causes unseen and unchanged. BBT, a full-scale consulting firm, works with its clients to create initiatives in which people can successfully step outside their familiar frameworks to identify and address the embedded attitudes, assumptions, and ways of thinking that drive behavior and hold an organization’s limitations in place. In doing so, participants gain the freedom to act in new ways, and to forge a new culture based on common goals and values.
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