Organization identity and the dialogic process of recreating corporate values

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In SvD 19 April 2013, Näringsliv.
Conflict and powerplay between Volvo Cars and Geely.
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro 2013

‘Five conflicts stirring Volvo in China’
Just recently this headline in war fonts headed the front page of the business section of one of Sweden’s most respected morning news papers. It was obvious that something had changed.

As one of many who keep a keen interest in the economic and geographic spatial reconfigurations of the global automobile industry, I did not expect a smooth process of acquisition of Volvo Cars by Geely from 2010 onwards.

Research literature charts a five times more likely narrative of a failed attempt at mergers and acquisitions than one of success. In the case of the Swedish then American owned Volvo Cars being acquired by Chinese Geely, language, culture, values and outlook on life per se are but the tip of the ice-berg to the multiple foundational layers of differences that need to be disentangled in this corporate marriage.

In studying Chinese and Swedish leadership and management styles, a field of research that I’ve worked with since 2004 (Cordeiro-Nilsson 2009), to say that China and Sweden have different cultures, is perhaps an appeal too much towards lex parsimoniae, where culture is here defined as a set of values, both explicit and implicit, shared by a collective of people with a shared ideology or mental framework that manifests itself in material action.

The overall picture is far more complex than what the media can at any one point in time represent. What is reflected in the media is often the result of much polishing and trimming of editorials and underlying narratives. And what is happening between Volvo Cars and Geely as reflected in the Swedish media, is but a synchronic snap-shot of a process that is inherently longitudinal in character. Organizational relations are ongoing dialogic processes that can be assessed in a more balanced perspective when placed in the context of a longitudinal timeframe, of years and decades past and what is also to come. As such, media representations of Volvo Cars – Geely relations need to be understood in the context of the larger socio-economic and political relations that have been built over time between their organizations, between Sweden and China.
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Complex systems theory and the biological organization

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An abstraction of Michael Conrad’s (1970) Biological Organization on Clare W. Graves’ (1980) Levels of Existence.
Text and Photo © CM Cordeiro 2013

In reading about self-organizing structures for the relevance of theory applied to the field of international business (IB), I thought the ideas expressed by Michael Conrad in his paper entitled, Statistical and Hierarchical Aspects of Biological Organization (made accessible via NASA) was interesting when also applied to the theoretical constructs of Clare W. Graves’ Levels of Existence.

Conrad discusses the differentiation and uncertainty associated with the organization and variability in a biological organization’s compartmental structures, that are expressed in terms of certain entropy measures. In his paper, he tries to ascertain the most efficient operative level of a biological system, landing on the principle of static equilibrium that he uses vector models for representation.
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Lateralizing of influence between states as a means of preserving power

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The evening’s contemplation… the opening paragraph of Joergen Oerstroem Moeller’s article, “Economic Integration: the Future for Asia” in the Diplomatist’ special issue published on the occasion of the ASEAN-India mid-December 2012 meeting in New Delhi.

His article addresses what in my view is the need for a heterarchous organizational structure in state / regional governance, as a system to manage heterochronous developments within and between states. Where and how heterarchy can be effectively accomplished and operationalizable is a discussion point.

Throughout his numerous articles, Moeller’s perspective is consistent – lateralization of decision-making may on the outset seem a dissipation of power, but in reality, it could be the only way to preserve power. What is perhaps needed is a re-conceptualization of ‘power’ in the contextual understanding and recognition that the world shares one destiny.

“Over the last half century economic transactions have jumped out of the nation-state box and take place globally, while the political systems put in place to control economic activities are still mainly national and domestic. This schism between international economic transactions and national political systems exposes the impotence of policy-making and thereby undermines the legitimacy of the political system in the eyes of the citizens. This spills over into scepticism about the advantages of economic globalisation. The choice for politicians is to share decision-making with other nation-states or to lose influence, which is difficult to explain as it looks as giving away powers while in fact it is the only way to preserve power.” ~ J.O. Moeller, 2012.

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller is Senior Fellow, Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Diplomatic Academy. He was former Danish Ambassador to Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, Australia and New Zealand. He is also author to one of my favourite reads, How Asia Can Shape the World -From the Era of Plenty to the Era of Scarcities (2011, ref. video panel discussion of the book at SMU Singapore, chaired by Kishore Mahbubani).

A multifractal system perspective of culture in international business

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A plot of a multifractal wavefunction at the Anderson transition in 3D can be found as Fig. 1 of Vasquez, Rodriguez, and Roemer’s (2008), “Multifractal analysis of the metal-insulator transition in the 3D Anderson model I: Symmetry relation under typical averaging”. arXiv:0807.2217v1 [cond-mat.dis-nn]:

Coming from a social sciences background and continuing in the line of transformative theories, I could liken the wave particle duality to researcher’s interference, where the act of observing would in itself render a certain bias to the data collected and observed phenomenon simply because the observer becomes an entity to be considered in that which is being investigated and studied. Related then to this uncertainty principle is how in the field of international business, the concept of culture which is one of the most sensitive of concepts to be influenced by researcher perspective, where each researcher embodies his/her own values and belief systems, continues to be dominated by the western cultural dimensions construct in an era of increasing globalization and of advancing information communication technologies that render a blurring to traditional geographical boundaries. Social media platforms for example create an entirely new type of virtual landscape, bringing together people from different parts of the world, with different languages, values and beliefs.

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Transformative theories – when international business can benefit from quantum mechanics

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Pictures from Jason Padgett and Q.A.T.
Text and Photo © CM Cordeiro 2012

An evening thesis:

Beyond the eastern Yin Yang perspective of culture, visually represented above in a metaphoric nomogram, is the concept of a pluralistic, aperspectival view of the concept of Multiculturalism, that to some extent, I would liken to the “most favoured nation” (MFN) clause following bilateral trade agreements in the norms of GATT and WTO, which is that of reciprocity and non-discrimination. What I find interesting in these visual representation from quantum mechanics is how the aperspectival fallacy often referred to as “aperspectival madness” is negated / neutralized via a heterarchial construct – an organizational construct deemed most advanced and most difficult to achieve, that I would to some extent, liken to multilateral trade agreements in international trade and a true understanding of Multiculturalism that encompasses the reductionistic view of the Yin Yang concept, though not vice versa.

Bibliography
Van Den Bossche, P. 2008. The Law and Policy of the World Trade Organization, Text, Cases and Material, 2nd edition. Cambridge.

The Yin Yang theory, a non-confrontational approach to culture

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Me, together with Professor Tony Fang, Stockholm University, School of Business. As I am right now working on a collaborative research project with Professor Fang, it was nice to listen in on his guest lecture at the Department of Applied IT, at the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012

Tony Fang, who is Professor of Business Administration at Stockholm University, gave a guest lecture today at the Department of Applied Information Technology (IT), on his concept of a Yin Yang perspective to culture. In today’s Internet culture, where collaborative work can be done through Dropbox, Skype and via emails, that he was in Gothenburg proved a good opportunity for us to meet in person.

His talk was hosted by Professor Jens Allwood and Dr. Nataliya Berbyuk Lindström of the Department of Applied IT located at Campus Lindholmen, that is part of both the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology here in Sweden. And it was at Campus Lindholmen that I found myself spending the better part of this day in the company of old friends.
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Managing complexities, extending Singapore’s national defense strategy of “auftragstaktik” to its socio-cultural fabric.

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I read with interest, Peter Ho’s RSIS working paper no. 248 on “Governing for the future: what governments can do”.

It is a paper based on an adaptation of his speech delivered at the Australia-New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) Annual Conference 2012 in Wellington, New Zealand on 26 July 2012. Mr. Peter Ho is Senior Advisor to the Centre for Strategic Futures and Senior Fellow in the Civil Service College. He serves as an Adjunct Professor with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. He is a Senior Fellow of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and was formerly the Head of the Civil Service in Singapore.

In brief, Ho outlined in his paper, how accelerating changes in the 20th century, for example such as population growth, rapid urbanisation in combination with technological innovation has come to result in complex interconnected environments that in turn give rise to unpredictable trajectories and “wicked problems” (Horst and Webber, 1973) or interesting problems that have no immediate / obvious solution.

Globally, there are many international diplomatic talks that revolve around “wicked problem” issues such as climate change, food, water and energy supply, all preferably within a sustainable economic development framework. At a local level in Singapore, Ho cited the example of the complex nature of extremist religious pursuits that led to the need for new warfare strategies that counter forces both material and cognitive in order to keep the nation secure and how Singapore was under the constant challenge to disarm extremist ideologies.

But whether facing global political-economic environmental changes or ideological extremism, Ho’s point was governments that have the agility and capacity to act swiftly in such circumstances will benefit and thrive in today’s complex environments. And my perspective is that it is in this aspect that Singapore’s regional geo-political position and albeit seemingly contradictory socio-economic policies have most of the time benefited the country and its people on multiple levels.

As a national security strategy in coordinating counter-terrorism for example, Singapore has continuously worked towards and adopted a multi-layered, integrated and holistic “Whole-of-Government” (WOG) approach, leveraging on the diverse strengths of existing agencies and ministries at various levels from strategy and policy to operations.
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Gödel’s theorem and executive education: reflections from the Chinese automobile industry’s strategy in talent management

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Part of what makes being in academia so exciting for me is the very incompleteness of each project as expressed in Gödel’s theorem, here not referring strictly to its origins in mathematical logic of incomplete axiomatic systems, but rather used in a general linguistic sense of how research by definition, lies in a perpetual state of unfinish, the completion of which would warrant it redundant.

It is this continuous dialogic and dialectic process of thought, creativity and innovation of ideas, a journey that continuously reveals and uncovers what was previously obscure or even unknown that I find oddly comforting – finding familiarity in the unfamiliar, a constant in the flux of things.

As part of a collaborative publishing effort with friends from the IESE Business School in Barcelona from the International Faculty Program (IFP) of 2011, where colleague Peter Zackariasson was an editor, I contributed a chapter to the book entitled, New Perspectives in Management Education (Amann et al. eds, 2012) entitled “Chinese Wisdom. World Quality” Looking East for brand innovation and change management: reflections from a study on Geely automobile 2007-2011. It was a paper that reflected upon brand innovation and change managment in China’s Geely automobile from the years of 2007 to 2011. It was also during this time that Geely acquired Volvo Cars from American Ford in 2010, landing China the single largest foreign acquisition, at the same time (McDonald 2010, Wang 2011) setting up several technological and knowledge platforms for China that lent support to the country’s efforts in the aggressive acquisition of knowledge in general.

Although American owned, Volvo Cars continued to carry a strong Swedish heritage in quality and branding where many of their engineers continue to sit in Sweden today. This meant that the acquisition of Volvo Cars by Geely was under sharp and curious observation both East and West, not in the least by Swedish academics and researchers from the disciplines of management science and international business (IB).

Having previously studied the Swedish management style in comparison to the Singapore Chinese management style (Cordeiro-Nilsson 2009), a hypothesis of mine with regard to Geely’s acquisition of Volvo Cars was that the strict vertical hierarchy and authoritarian leadership style of the Chinese might end up severely clashing with the more lateral, egalitarian and consensus seeking leadership style of top level Swedish management, even if under the steering of American Ford. It made interesting observation to see how these differences in management ideology of which one had its roots in centuries of authoritarian dynastic rule, compared to the more individualistic developments of the occidental cultures, might be construed and subsequently manoeuvred in a cross-cultural setting.
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The Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg – and the tiger economy of Sweden

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The Swedish East India Götheborg III was launched in 2003, in Gothenburg, Sweden.

In 2003, launching of the Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg III
Photo © JE Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC 2003-2011

My personal involvement in the Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg III project was so early that I had not myself realized it back then. In the project newspaper GotheborgsPosten that was distributed in 360,000 copies throughout the entire western Sweden in 1996, it was outlined that one of the research objectives that would be targeted was Swedish-Chinese Business Communication. The Professor that in 2003 would arrange for me to receive the Anna Ahrenberg Research Funding Scholarship to help me start a PhD research (graduated in 2009) in doing precisely that, was interviewed. Strange indeed are the paths of life. Today, I go off to work everyday by ferry straight across Wargö Håla, the historic departure point of the Swedish East Indiamen in the western Swedish archipelago. In fact the house in which we live features one of the ship’s actual water provision wells in our very garden.

Currently at work, at the University of Gothenburg School of Executive Education AB, prevalent topics of discussion circle around Swedish-Chinese business relations and the future of work prospects with Sweden’s competitive growing economy that earned acknowledged nods from Swedish leaders, specifically that of its Finance Minister, Anders Borg, of the country being a Nordic tiger economy (ref. Di, DagensPS and Epoch Times). All this showing that the Swedish East Indiaman still has a relevant role to play, more so today than ever in its importance of growing global contacts. Its shared goodwill initially created by the East Indiaman Project is everywhere present.

In the media recently, a passionate discussion has arisen about what to do with the ship, now when its initiating ideas have been completed – the ship built and it has traveled to China and back. What now?

Many suggestions including turning it into a museum, an amusement park and why not – firewood – have come forth. Personally not even at today’s energy prices does the idea of firewood sound very brilliant.

Eventually, the original Founders of the project have chosen to step forth, and in this weekend’s local newspaper GP, have briefly presented their views of how the ship could continue to earn its keep and do much more than that.

The following article were published in GP, in January 22, 2011, as part of the ongoing debate about the future of the Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg III ship.

H.R.H. the King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden disembark the Goteborg III and officially set foot on Chinese soil.

H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf and H.M. Queen Silvia, disembark the Gotheborg III in Canton, China, 2006.

From the point of view of Anders Wästfelt and the Think Tank Gotheborg, the ship is far from done sailing:

In view of the past few days defensive debate in the media and our City Council, on the future of the East Indiaman Gotheborg, it is time to lift our eyes beyond the horizon. In the right hands the Götheborg III – our ship – is a regional and national asset with huge potential.

She has great future tasks, functioning as a symbol of our community, an inspiration for continued work and as a source of financial revenues. She is well-built and with proper maintenance, she can sail for another 20-30 years.

The project to build a replica of the 1700s Swedish East Indiaman began in 1992 as a private initiative. It was well thought through and enjoyed the support of international shipbuilding expertise, the best marketing specialists, lawyers, economists, politicians, sinologists, university faculties as well as members of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Swedish Trade Council.

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United Nations Association of Singapore (UNAS) – Celebrating its 40th Anniversary

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Kamal Malhotra, UNAS 40th Anniversary Gala Dinner, Singapore.

At the UNAS 40th Anniversary Gala Dinner 2010.
The tables such as this of the Guest of Honour, Mr. Kamal Malhotra, was decorated with flags from the countries represented at the table.
Raffaele Di Nardo, Patrik Tan and CM Cordeiro for CMC © 2010

The United Nations Association of Singapore (UNAS) recently celebrated their 40th anniversary with a charity gala dinner, with the event opening with a Welcome Speech by Dr. Tham Seong Chee, who is President of the UNAS. The event was held at the Shangri-La Hotel and the purpose was to raise funds for the association’s educational and humanitarian efforts.

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At the United Nations Association of Singapore, UNAS 40th Anniversary Gala Dinner, Singapore. In a black and gold underlay gown by Francis Louis Ler of Amor Meus, 36 Purvis Street in Singapore.

The main goal for UNAS when it was formed was to build awareness and support for the United Nations and its ideals. As such, this event marked Singapore’s milestone in its efforts in continued support of the United Nations and their international programs.

The Guest of Honour this evening was Mr. Kamal Malhotra, UNDP Resident Representative for Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei and UN Resident Coordinator for Malaysia.

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