What is culture? The answers may be changing
What is culture in today's fast-paced, "flat", interconnected, 24-7 world? And does it matter? What's next?
Those questions and many more occupied the attention of some 50 Greater IBMers around the globe recently. They were taking part in a Greater IBM THINKForum — a Web-and-audio event where experts and Greater IBMers explore and debate ideas in a live Webcast.
Gunter Dueck
Melissa Cefkin, an IBM Research anthropologist from Almaden Laboratories in California, and Gunter Dueck, an IBM distinguished engineer, philosopher, and author based in Mannheim, Germany, kicked off the meeting. After their contributions, Greater IBMers located in Mexico's Santa Fe and Mexico City were able to join the discussion, as were participants in California, North Carolina and Austria.
Hear it, read it
Because the discussion was lively and covered a lot of viewpoints, we are making a recording of the hour-long conference available in addition to providing a transcript (PDF, 76KB) that you can download to your desktop.
Cefkin presented a brief history of how our understanding of culture evolves (that included some side trips into eye twitches — or was that a wink? — the use of laptops while others are talking, the meaning of showing the bottom of your foot, local impact of hiring practices by IBM and others in structured cultures such as that in India, and Webs of meaning that we create and others impact).
One observation during her introduction was that "By learning to view culture as something that's more emergent, we can begin to recognize it really as a resource to all of us."
A culture on hold?
Dueck emphasized the importance of conflict, economic pressures, and other outside influences that can often cause even large, successful organizations to put their cultural ideals on hold.
As an example, Dueck recalled the stress that IBM was under when Lou Gerstner took the company's helm in 1994: "... just do something, stop bleeding, then the culture changed a little bit to stress and aggression a little bit. And we are now on an upturn now and reinventing ourselves."
Throughout it's history, IBM has been a stalwart example of diversity and up-right action, he said, at one drawing this analogy for viewing the company's public image: "So if IBM is a person you would like to have it as a son in law, say. IBM is very serious, beautiful, process oriented. And it has a strong feeling for responsibility for the world and for our customers."
Melissa Cefkin
Enduring values as a continuous stream
He also observed, "What I feel is there is a big difference between the proclaimed culture ... we want to have and a culture that we live day by day. I think we have still the IBM culture, like in China they have the culture for many, many centuries, and of course they had 60 years of communism, and now they maybe come to the old ancient culture back again.
"So what I want to say is that there is, culture is changing day by day or month by month or by the centuries or decades, but there is ... also an internal continuous stream in those cultures."
To hear more of what Melissa Cefkin and Gunter Dueck brought to the discussion and the contributions from participants in the satellite locations, you are invited to hear the recorded program. You also have the option to download the transcript (PDF, 76KB).
More coming: More Greater IBM THINKForum events are planned in coming months. If you have comments on this event or suggestions for THINKForum events you would find valuable in the future, please write gibm@us.ibm.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
To learn more about our guest speakers, there is information on the Web: