A recent debate on social media in Nigeria has raised an interesting question about organisational culture. Some prominent leaders have questioned the growing practice of employees addressing senior colleagues on a first-name basis, arguing that it is foreign to African traditions of respect for age, experience and seniority. Some have gone further to suggest that even where organisations encourage first-name relationships, employees should defer to the cultural expectations of their ethnic groups.
I find the debate fascinating, not because I believe calling senior colleagues by their first names is inherently right or wrong, but because it raises a much bigger question: when societal culture and deliberately created organisational culture collide, which should prevail?
Organisations spend considerable time defining values, leadership behaviours, ways of working and the cultures they believe will enable their strategies. If these organisational expectations must ultimately surrender whenever they conflict with prevailing societal or ethnic traditions, what exactly is the purpose of deliberately creating an organisational culture?
“Employees do not leave their societal culture at the reception desk every morning. They arrive carrying assumptions developed through families, schools, religious institutions, communities, ethnic traditions and national experiences.”
