Understanding of Cultural Divergence for Creating Cultural Convergence of Innovation
– A Case Reflection throughout an Innovation Focused Enterprise Development Project
Hong Wu
Høgskolen i Østfold, avdeling for ingeniørfag
Abstract
Researchers argued innovation focused enterprise development is a process of complex interactions
with a company internally and externally, associated with many actors and key elements, such as
contractors, academia, competitors, partners, networks, etc. The interactions between these actors
and processes driven by key elements usually have far more complicated implications beyond the
formal structures and borders of each company, and are therefore considered no longer as purely
internal or mechanical matters. One of the crucial issues is understanding of cultural divergence on
these actors, whom all have their own cultures, reflecting by attitudes and values. An innovation
culture, usually representing convergence of actors, will not easily created unless the issues of
cultural divergence has been addressed and discussed.
This paper is writing about cultural divergence of involved actors for a research project, cased by an
innovation focused enterprise development process within and around a particular business
company in Southeast Norway. The project is a part of large research program for regional
innovation development (VRI) of Norway, funded by Research Council of Norway (NFR) and the
regional government. The VRI program intends to creating innovation activities throughout
collaboration between the key actors, thus research institutions, business communities and regional
governments, and for this particular case, a research team, the enterprise management, the
production unit and employees. The research team uses an action research approach, thus analysis
and observation combined with action initiative and a process related research stay in the case
enterprise.
One of interesting observations, throughout the action initiative and the process of the research stay,
is highly cultural divergence for the actors, that appear to be a major obstacles and critical element
for the project progress. The analysis and process reflection suggest mutual understanding and
spending time for getting familiar with involved actors are unavoidable steps for successfully
project conducting.
Key words: Cultural divergence, enterprise development project, innovation activities, cultural
convergence.
Regional innovation focused enterprise development
The Scandinavian management thought with the Norwegian industrial democratic approaches has
been a debate issue for many scholars, argued for and against. The international researchers,
through their own case-studies and analysis, argued for or argued against, the industrial democratic
approaches and applications in organization development process upon different aspects, for
instance, optimum balance of power between managers and employees depends on circumstances
(C. Orpen, 1977) argued for diversifying of industrial democratic applications in different actors
and locations in favor of power balancing. Other researchers for example Pinyo Rattanaphan (2010)
argued for appreciative inquiry, coaching and knowledge management as organization development
interventions implemented in favor of organizational learning. It seems there is no unique model
that covers all the aspects of organizational behaviors, but the practical observations have own
counts case-by-case.
The current study intends to analyze the implementation innovation process through the Norwegian
industrial democratic approaches into a small and private business company. The analysis focuses
on a cultural aspect, thus the cultures of different groups in the organization. The case company was
sampled from their participating in a larger research program in collaborating with regional
government, research foundation and few other business companies in the related business
communities.
The program was called VS2010, later VRI (Value stimulating Regional Innovation) and it was
engaged to help improve the culture and climate of cooperation at the cased enterprises. The project
would seek to streamline the production and simultaneously initiate the desired development of the
organization. Action research approaches are introduced as the major research tools and the
Norwegian industrial democratic approaches are used as basic theoretical references.
The case company that researcher team works with
The current study was cased within a small and private business company, Southeast of Norway and
the company is producing packaged beverage in few modern and automatic production lines. The
major characterized nature of this business is a process industrial related in a high volume and
automation based planet. The competition in the market is high and there are few competitors all
with high volume but little profit margin so the key survival element is efficiency on the production.
There is therefore always requirement for increasing efficiency from the top leadership, while there
is limit space for none-direct profit related project such as introducing of the Norwegian industrial
democracy approaches.
The company was the one of the first few companies that jointed the VRI research program and yet
it is also one of only fewer companies are still participating in the program. Though the company
was not observed as a typical implementing arena for the Norwegian industrial democracy, based on
early stage observations, summarized as:

The first dialog conference was conducting in 2005, but there is no significant improvement
or following process observed (according to researcher team's notice)

There is a trade union club for the employee, but no driven force and real function in
practice issues and no meetings and actions

There is a clear and relatively large distinction, both physical and metal/attitudes, between
the employers and employees, as both parts are not in the same location and not seeing each other
daily.
The project at the case company initiated in 2005 and it was meant to be approached and researched
similar methods used as other VRI research projects and case companies, most of them belong to
package industries or subcontractors in the region. The essential goal was to improve the company’s
productivity through the Norwegian industrial democracy approach, including several implementing
methods, as dialog conference and resource grouping, particularly through better cooperation
between production workers and management, and more decision involvement from the workers.
The project was defined as a single company focused action research project, under the category of
company research project on VRI research program.
However, the real situation appeared after the project initiation seemed to be anything else than
what research team expected for Norwegian industrial democracy outcomes. There has been
introduced and applied classic industrial democracy practices or methods, experienced from other
case companies such as dialog conferences for whole staff, formal project meetings with top
company leaders and union representatives, even project information meetings with operators and
production workers to motivate their engagement to this project. Despite of these actions, the
management seemed not being directly interested in the industrial democracy approach and
production workers were not engaged neither. The direct industrial democracy approach seems not
to be a very attractive optional for the case company. The research team has debated many times
over the validity of this case project and necessity of letting the company taking part in the VRI
research program or drop off this case. However, there are the contra-dictionary events to be
observed and relevant issues for this project to be debated:

The project has been “survived”, thus engaged in, almost longest compared with other VRI
company projects, indicating the interests of participating from the company

The productivity and efficiency has been increased significantly nearly 20% during the
project period, succeeded what industrial democracy intended to reach for

There have been significantly attitudes changes after 5 years in VRI project, both among the
production workers and management regarding industrial democracy importance and applications.
Though the formal industrial democracy approaches seem not to be the best option for this case
company, there has always been a process and pushing for industrial democracy applications in the
company. The alternative approaches as informal industrial democracy process has been
experimented and evaluated during the project period. A few observations and reflections are
noticed and these data materials might lead us into the research questions in terms of industrial
democracy applications, alternative solutions and reflections.
When initially the researcher team entered the case company, there was an intention to build up an
organizational culture of industrial democracy. The researcher team designed a quite detailed plan
to implement a cultural changing process, starting with company's quantitative goals such as a
project for increase the efficiency of the plant further by 20%. The main activities are well defined
as implement development initiatives that are underway, participate in industry-oriented college
commitment.
The initial research questions asked by the researcher team
The research focus at this stage was examining on the interaction between actors in the enterprise
development project, such as how established practices and processes that are associated with this
interaction. Which actors and alliances are key to the creation of enterprise development projects?
What are the regional effects we see from business project? What processes are central to
understanding the interaction between actors and structures in the projects?
In 2006, the company renewed one of the productions with completely new machine equipment and
the installation project and following process became interesting research objects. The research
team initiated a face-to-face interview based survey on respondents from management and
production. Few conference papers were written on basis of the data interpretation and analysis.
One of these was a technology transferring sounded issue, indicating the necessity of time spending
and resource budgeting for successful technology transferring, such as competence upgrading,
training and simply getting used to the new machine and production line. The description below
was rendering from the analysis on the survey in 2006.
Reflecting and grouping the survey informants is a further and concrete step to question or verify
the crucial point in technology transfer, in this case, new installation of machine on the production
line. As introduced early: The ability to use the technology depends according to Levin (1997) on
mangers’ and workers’ understanding of what knowledge is built into the machines and tools and to
achieve necessary skills and motivation to operate it efficient. This is the crucial point in technology
transfer.
There are totally 8 respondents to be interviewed, whereof 1 from management and rest 7 are from
plant production lines. The analysis of interview materials has been focused on mangers’ and
workers’ understanding of what knowledge is built into the machines and tools and to achieve
necessary skills and motivation to operate it efficient. The organization of data materials are
following the 4 sections of the interview guide, as backgrounds (9 questions), initiation of this
technology transferring project (8 questions), organizing and managing the project (17 questions)
and organization’s adaptation for this technology transferring (13 questions).
All the informants are introduced into the survey and informed about the background of the case:
Installation of a new Technology in a juice producer plant. The backgrounds of the project was a
reorganization and outsourcing process at an earlier competitor, now customer and partner. The
actor at the end of comment citation indicating their representing or department in the organization.
The background of the new installation project
“A big project initiated by a direct inquiry from company A December 2005 on outsourced
production capacity.” Production. The project was important because of the increase in production
volume and the opportunities implied. With cost of production equipment, supplies and industrial
commodities at the same level in the market productive capacity and efficiency factor is the main
competitive edge.
“We could have rejected the deal, but then we would have no added value and economic growth in
the company. The deal gives us opportunities in the increased volumes produced.” Management. It
was an ambitious project with a time horizon close to impossible. From the signed contract to
production start on the new production line we are talking about four months, to meet the needs in
the marked
“I doubted if it was possible – everything had to be done inside a very short time limit.”
Management. The by far most important partner in the project was the processing and packaging
solution company delivering this new production line. They were responsible for the technical
solutions, installations and in-house training. A critical point would be to by a new production line
in time.
Initiation of this technology transfer project
As written earlier the background of the project was a reorganization and outsourcing process at an
earlier competitor, now customer and partner. It was also an ambitious project with a very short
time horizon. To make this a mission possible resources and priority were given the project.
“It was a priority project.” Management. The project took place in a small company with a
workforce of less than 20. The organization of the project and who to be involved were in many
aspects given in this scenario; including the head of the laboratory, the production manager, market
manager and managing director. The empirical material shows that
“A small organization and given who to participate in the project.” Management. The informal and
flat organization model is emphasized among all the subjects and assessed as both strength and a
possible problem for the company.
“The process took three months. Flat organization model. Fast decision-making process but also a
possible problem when owners dominate the management and the company.” Management. The
employee representative and the employees were informed just days after the formal agreement
were signed, but not involved in the actual decision making or design processes.
“The employee representative was oriented about the project the day after the agreement.”
Production
Organizing and managing the project
Once the contract has been signed, there was an information meeting for employees and local trade
union was also informed about the project. There were also followed by a number of activities to
initiate the project. As survey informants commented, there have been assigned project groups both
for commercial and technical issues, and the production managers also could initiate the project
with relative short notice. Though there seemed to be no tradition to involve the employees into the
project in an early, this has also been accepted both by management and production personnel. The
following citations illustrated the mentioned summary.
•
“There has been assigned two project groups, one for commercial and another for technical
issues” Management
•
“The company has a simple organization structure, rather characteristic as informal
meetings with a horizontal organizational structure” Production
•
“There has been held totally 5 project meetings” Management
•
“The most employees were not much involved in the project” Production
•
“The employees could not influence or participate in the choice of technological solutions
for the project.” Production
Distinctive views on a best way to do project suggested by different organizational levels
However, the distinction and disagreement seem to appear between management and operator level,
regarding a best way to accomplish to project, and understanding of employees involvement for the
whole project, especially at an early phase. The following citations have indicated clearly different
views of the same issues, whether concerning the decision making process, organizational structure
as a whole, the involvement of all employees to the project, the importance and necessity of training
activities.
“The project should be set up as first priority and involve in everyone in the company and giving
the information after signing the contract’…if you are not involving in the decision making process,
you just sit there and waiting, a bad culture.” Operation
“The whole process spent 3 months; we have a horizontal organizational structure and quick
decision process, but at the same time a possible problem that the company owner dominates the
management and the process.” Management, this statement indicates common understanding from
the management on this point of view forth issue
“There would not be delayed if the employees were participated or involved in more, neither would
be worse to keep this project secret for the employees and they did not have such expectations or
network for.” Management, this citation shows apparently disagreement with production manager
on this point of view
“I believed the process would be delayed if all employees and local trade union are involved in the
project since there would be more people to involve in.” Production
“Training activities for the new installation machine has been a poor dimension. There was no
training course before the machine was installed in the factory, so the company management should
have to priority the training package with machine subcontractor.” Production
Despite of top-down communication format, the employees made good efforts at all
Despite of top-down communication format, the employees appear to be cooperative and
understandable, or at least say, acceptable for this format of communication. The handling of most
critical project phase in summer 2006 confirmed this fact. As we can see the citation below, the
employees made good efforts for restructuring of shifting arrangement, from 2 to 3 in order to save
the situation for the company.
“The most critical project phase was at beginning of May 2006, when we have no products at our
restore, at the same time it was high season and new orders are coming and on top of that we have
the new machine to deal with. The employees were agreed to restructure from 2 to 3 shifts in the
summer to save the situation, so here management and employees stood at the same side.”
Management
Organization’s adaptation of this technology transferring
Once a technology transferring process has occurred in an organization, it usually follows by
significant impact for the organization and its environment. As a result, an organization’s adaptation
has to be made in order to meet the technology transferring. For this adaptation process, it is
essential for everyone in a company to understand this process and thus important to motivate all
employees to work together to handle the changes resulted by the process.
A common observation/picture of the current situation
In a changing organization development process, it is vital to approach a common view, at least a
common understanding of current situation in order to act cooperatively. The research team has
asked the same questions for different actors in the organization, and received same and different
responses on different issues. As for the company’s structure, culture, the ways of communication
and starting new projects, as well as daily routines, there seems to be a common observation/picture
of the current situation. The following citations from the interview survey have demonstrated this
trend:
•
•
•
•
“It is a nature reaction among the employees that the project would result more work to do.
We succeed because our production managers were engaged in for extra shift
work……motivation of money for extra shifting work.” Management
“There was less negative reaction than what we expected among the employees for this
project. Project started quickly and rumors spread fast.” Production
“In September/October were employees able to operate equipment and technology
completely.” Production
“The daily control followed by the shift itself as self-organized, due to our professional and
good shift leaders.” Production
Different opinions and views on the adaptation process and the project organization
A common observation/picture is not necessarily a common understanding, so the following
citations illustrated clearly disagreement between management and production on the same issue,
for instance, the view of success for this project.
The company should not use this project as a model for further project, we should have tried to buy
more time to initiate project, and at least training activities should have be taken place earlier.”
Production
“The company should use this project as a model for further project, especially tempo of the
project, and we did very well, the other companies would not be able to do the same project, great
satisfaction with our customers.” Management
The need of employee involvement into the project and need for an involving culture
Though many informants, including management claimed the organization has a horizontal
structure and this is an efficient structure to do the task, there is however a need of employee
involvement into the project and need for an involving culture. As the following citations have
indicated, it is not an entire healthy process that employees are not able to receive the information
that they feel their desire to receive, and this is a negative element for job motivation. There is
apparently a need for further communication and dialog inside of the company, especially when
operation workers made their improvement suggestions for increasing productivity, but not been
able to receive encouragement and feedback.
•
“There has been done very little for create ownership attitudes among the employees. This is
a family company with no tradition for employee involvement.” Production
•
“There has been a built culture…..that management is located in another building……have
no information until you absolutely must get……we have meetings with management about the need
for information, but nothing happened.” Operation
The summary of 2006 survey has outlined the following indication on the case company's situation
and observations in that stage of a Norwegian industrial democracy project and implementing
outcomes:




Distinctive views on a best way to do project suggested by different organizational levels.
Despite of top-down communication format, the employees made good efforts at all.
Different opinions and views on the adaptation process and the project organization.
The need of employee involvement into the project and need for an involving culture.
The conclusions from this survey were made clearly then:

Technically, the project was successfully completed and carried out with positive results

Organizationally, there is different understanding and interpretation of the project

Culturally, there is a clear need for adapting and up building for team culture for the
company and this was actually clearly written in the project proposal
The last conclusion is an interesting observation that naturally leads a spin-off questions to further
research and discussing for the research on this project:
How much organizational cultures are taking account for practical implementing of the Norwegian
industrial democracy? What cultural elements and dimensions need to be considered and what will
it be cultural impact for each involved actors in this project?
For further discussing on the addressed questions, there is a need to introducing cultural studies and
their findings as well as relevant theoretical argumentations. The current study will primarily focus
on quantitative based cultural dimension study findings and the theoretical argumentation for
convergence again divergence of a culture.
The cultural dimensions and their convergence versus divergence debates
The Dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede (1980) suggested cultural dimensions to quantify and
compare the cultural differences among over 10 countries in the world. The initiative 4 dimensions
he suggested were:
 PDI Power Distance (A High Power Distance ranking indicates that inequalities of power
and wealth have been allowed to grow within the society. A Low Power Distance ranking
indicates equality and opportunity for everyone is stressed.)
 IDV Individualism (A High Individualism ranking indicates that individuality and individual
rights are paramount within the society. A Low Individualism ranking typifies societies of a
more collectivist nature.)
 MAS Masculinity (A High Masculinity ranking indicates the country experiences a high
degree of gender differentiation. A Low Masculinity ranking indicates a low level of
discrimination between genders.)
 UAI Uncertainty Avoidance (A High Uncertainty Avoidance ranking indicates the country
has a low tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. A Low Uncertainty Avoidance ranking
indicates has less concern about uncertainty and has more tolerance for a variety of
opinions)
Lately he developed another dimension as:

LTO Long-Term Orientation (High Long-Term Orientation ranking indicates the country
prescribes to the values of long-term commitments and respect for tradition. A Low Long-Term
Orientation ranking indicates the country does not reinforce the concept of long-term, traditional
orientation .)
This LTO is however limited only within 23 countries, so data is not fully available for many
countries, nor for Norway yet. According to Hofstede's 4 cultural dimension, Norway, as well as
other Scandinavian countries have very high IDV values, modest low PDI, very low MAS and
modest UAI. This profile is also clearly indicated by the Norwegian industrial democracy thought
that providing great work freedom and self-organized work tasks, thus highly IDV, reducing power
distance between managers and production works with low PDI, equal opportunities for everyone,
means low MAS, cooperation and planning thus UAI.
The summary of 2006 survey showed however the Norwegian cultural dimensions, IDV, PDI, MAS
are not fully applied in the case company, particularly not at the production workshop. This is a
crucial indication that might explain the problems and needs for further improvement. If the
production workers are not able to master their daily tasks, it will be many obstacles, latent or
obvious, for increasing production efficiency. According to cultural scholars, the workforce
performance is strongly related to their values, attitudes and group culture. The definition and
correlation between these elements are described below:

Values - belief, conscience, idea, a mental standard or norm of a person. For example,
freedom, equality, discipline, responsibility. Usually values are established by a person's early
learning and they are not easily changed.

Attitudes - meanings, opinions, or viewpoints using by people who want to express their
belief, or their idea, standards or norms. Attitudes can either be expressed by a person (personal
opinions), or a group people (group opinions). An attitude can also be crossed by several values. For
example, the attitude "I enjoy my work" may indicate both the value of responsibility and the value
of freedom (at work). A typical example of attitudes can for instance be that people like their
circumstances around them or not, or people agree or disagree on one particular issue or others, or
some one prefers being associated with people or others not.

Culture - a complex system or order which is emerging among a group of people who have
common values and attitudes, and other social elements, such as rules, customs, and traditions.
Culture always reflects a group people, as small as a family, or as large as a nation, even as a
religion group which somehow larger than a nation, e.g. cultures from Islam, Christianity, or
Buddhism.
The relationships between values, attitudes, and culture can be presumably considered as the
follows: Culture possibly causes people's values which again determine their attitudes, for
example, their attitudes toward daily working tasks, or responsibility to the working tasks, which
again, reflecting workforce performance.
Cultural convergence versus cultural divergence
Adler and Doktor (1989) analyzed main conclusions from a great number of cultural studies for
business organizations and management, and found out there are mainly two categories among
them. These are named for the theory of cultural convergence and the theory of cultural divergence,
respectively.
Cultural convergence argues for a common culture and uniqueness of a culture, a typical example is
creating a organizational culture within multinational business company. The advantages in
convergence is standardizing and uniqueness so it is an easy and structured line to follow and
implementing of organizational culture, a way of centralizing culture. Cultural divergence argues
against this cultural centralizing and uniqueness approach, and prefer local solution and interpreting
of a culture.
Both two categories have their own argumentation and reasons, and it is a paradox and contradictionary issue, also in practicing cases. On one side, we can notice a clearly developing trend in
cultural convergence as there are more and more multinational organizations applying their
organizational cultures across over countries' borders, say, McDonald fast food culture, Toyota
quality culture, etc. On other hand, the cultural implementations in each country or organization
must also meet their local circumstances and to be adapted into their local version, such as, same
MacDonald menu might be different focuses in different countries and Toyota's same quality
philosophy must have different context in different countries.
This paradox and contra-dictionary issue seems also apply the current case company, that on one
side, there is a clear need to creating an innovative and unique organizational culture, particular
addressed a team culture for production efficiency. On the other hand, the 2006 survey indicated the
different views and understanding among the different levels of the organization, in terms of team
culture, ways of doing a project, adaptation of the process. It seems no common understanding
between different levels of the organization, so it is therefore hard to create a common innovation
culture.
Further observation by the research team also indicates a cultural distinction between researchers
and company managers, so the first task researchers need to do is establishing common
understanding, recognizing and languages with the case company. This is a necessary step for
entering the case company and establishing field research arena. Many researchers experienced
already difficulties at this stage since researchers speak academic languages and company managers
speak industrial languages. It takes learning curve for researchers to learn industrial languages and
interpreting observation into academic languages for analysis. Action-Research approaches are used
for reducing this distinction.
Action-Research approaches in a cultural understanding context
Action research is by definition, an interactive inquiry process that balances problem solving
actions implemented in a collaborative context with data-driven collaborative analysis or research to
understand underlying causes enabling future predictions about personal and organizational change
(Reason & Bradbury, 2002). In another words, it is not only a traditional research on data analysis
and data interpreting, but also experimenting solution and suggestions to the problem, so the
research can sees as a dynamic process, rather than static observations.
Description below is citation from Wikipedia (action research) about action research processes, that
many methods have evolved that adjust the balance to focus more on the actions taken or more on
the research that results from the reflective understanding of the actions. This tension exists
between
•
•
•
those who are more driven by the researcher’s agenda and those more driven by participants;
those who are motivated primarily by instrumental goal attainment and those motivated
primarily by the aim of personal, organizational, or societal transformation; and
1st-, to 2nd-, to 3rd-person research, that is, my research on my own action, aimed primarily
at personal change; our research on our group (family/team), aimed primarily at improving
the group; and ‘scholarly’ research aimed primarily at theoretical generalization and/or large
scale change.
Action research challenges traditional social science, by moving beyond reflective knowledge
created by outside experts sampling variables to an active moment-to-moment theorizing, data
collecting, and inquiry occurring in the midst of emergent structure. “Knowledge is always gained
through action and for action. From this starting point, to question the validity of social knowledge
is to question, not how to develop a reflective science about action, but how to develop genuinely
well-informed action — how to conduct an action science” (Torbert 2002). In short, performing
action research is the same as performing an experiment, thus it is an empirical process.
Systems Model of Action-Research Process. (Prokopenya Viktor 15 May 2008. GNU)
According to systems model of action-research process (Prokopenya Viktor, 2008), the action
between the research planning and results plays a crucial function for the output. The input part
including preliminary diagnosis, data gathering and feedback of results are not solely independent,
but as a part of feedback from later stage of action and output, together generating learning and
knowledge database. The action is consist of learning process and action-planning with action-steps
so the whole process is rather dynamic changing than static data collecting.
This is what the research team experienced throughout this VRI project in the case company, that
primary intention and methods of implementing the Norwegian industrial democracy was not fully
successful. The later observation indicated the cultural distinction between the involved parts as
different levels and groups within the case company, but also between the research team and the
company. The intention of the VRI project was creating a team culture, an uniqueness of attitudes
among the employees for increasing production efficiency, but in real practice, lack of cultural
understanding, especially understanding of cultural divergence might be the largest barricade for the
VRI project.
The case reflection for this action-research approach in a cultural divergence understanding context
is that cultural building is something long term issue and it takes time and resources to creating a
common innovation or whatever wished culture. This is something not be done by few meetings or
short term actions, but rather long term process, that need to be patient and involved with actors.
Furthermore, cultural divergence means variety and local knowledge and all these need time to
learn for whoever outsiders. Action-planning and action-research are the benevolent tools for such a
long term process. Within feedback during the process, the research focus and approaches can be
redesigned according to changing circumstances in the case company, but the most essential about
all, upgrading and collecting of knowledge underway. In that way, the knowledge accumulation is a
dynamic process rather than a static measurement or observation.
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