Why do we need to track emergent culture change?

“Emergent” culture change – or how cultures quietly evolve – is an issue that has received relatively little attention. In part this is because the main bodies of measurements of culture are those of the values of national cultures begun by Hofstede and others over the last thirty years. Those values have not shown any significant change over that time period.

By contrast, culture change enforced by distinct, powerful events (e.g. a forced migration of a cultural grouping, or the imposition of a corporate culture change programme) have been written about more often.

So why should we be paying attention to emergent culture change now?

First, there’s a growing awareness that even successful corporate cultures can drift. Steve Denning makes the case in his new book that many of Toyota’s recent problems result from a shift in their culture away from the practices that had made them successful in the past. Part of this shift came out of intentional changes in strategy made by the management, but there’s no evidence they intended that the overall culture change in the way that it did. Some of the evolution was spontaneous and emergent. Leaders need to be on alert for this kind of drift and ready to engage with it, modifying it as necessary.

Second, while (as mentioned above) the values in national cultures do not seem to have changed in the last thirty years of measuring them, it seems to me that we may be entering historical moments where deep cultural change may be on the horizon.

• India and China are both experiencing a period similar to that of the Industrial Revolution in the UK. We know that rituals were strongly affected in that historical period in the UK. We don’t have measurements of values, but it seems some changes did occur.
• It may also be that the days of the US being the world’s only superpower are coming to a close. The equivalent decline in the British Empire certainly affected expressions of values and the ideas at work. This model is a beginning in working out what to look for to see that change coming.

Even if these changes don’t affect you directly, the interconnection of our globalised world means they will have an impact on you.