A forum for Hawaii's
business community to discuss
current events and issues
A forum for Hawaii's
business community to discuss
current events and issues
Which West is best | Corporate culture in startups
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Disagreements between the United States and United Kingdom on the one hand and Germany and France on the other have continued to hamper the Bush Administration's efforts to forge a broad coalition dedicated to disarming Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein. A recent book by Robert Kagan, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, explains this conflict in terms of the very different post-World War II histories of Europe and the United States.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY DAVID SWANN / DSWANN@STARBULLETIN.COMBy David McClain
Kagan's work, "Paradise and Power: America vs. Europe in the New World Order," crystallizes a new and surprising foreign policy dilemma for Asian countries: Should they tilt toward the United States or Europe in their relationship with the West? Recent developments in North Korea may suggest to many Asian leaders which way to nod, but the choice for Hawaii is more complicated.
Kagan's essential idea is that since 1945 Europe has been preoccupied with leaving behind a bloody past that produced several centuries of strife culminating in two world wars. The Common Market has evolved into the European Community and now the European Union, with its own currency, the euro. Inevitably, this political and economic unification -- a "paradise" by European historical standards -- has made Europe inward looking. In the process, the validity of the projection of military power as a tool of foreign policy has come into question. Hence the reluctance to invade Iraq, and the preference for relying on more United Nations inspections.
In contrast, the United States has found itself in a much rougher neighborhood, manifested in the Cold War and several hot conflicts, from Korea to Vietnam to the Persian Gulf. The United States and most of its citizenry can't imagine having a foreign policy quiver without the power represented by the military arrow, and have come to believe that this arrow must be used from time to time if the deterrence it represents is to be credible. The Bush Administration feels this is one of those times.
Ironically, Europe's ability to look inward and pursue its paradise has depended on America's power, particularly until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus the United States is particularly perplexed that two of our traditional allies on the European Continent are reluctant to support our preferred approach to Saddam.
What is Asia to make of all this? Certainly both Europe and the United States have influenced Asian societies as they entered the modern age from about 1850 onward. Arguably, the European influence was stronger through the end of World War II, while the American influence has been greater since. But after more than a quarter century of pell-mell economic development, around the time of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, anti-Western (or perhaps more correctly, pro-Asian) sentiments suggested that the very disparate countries of Asia were developing an identity of their own. Economic, political and even security cooperation among Asian nations rose steadily through the end of the 1990s and into the current decade, though the momentum was slowed by the after-effects of the financial crisis, and the nature of these collaborations began to change with the rise of China and the economic stagnation in Japan.
For Asia, the War on Terror has been a rude reminder that it will be many decades before they can aspire to a European-style paradise. Their neighborhood remains a rough one, a fact underscored by North Korea's recent belligerency.
I expect, therefore, that most of Asia - with the probable exception of those parts of Southeast Asia closely connected with Islam - will tilt in its foreign relations with the power-oriented United States rather than the paradise-seeking Europe. For Hawaii, itself a paradise and possessed of a Polynesian heritage, but also America's most Asian state and an outpost of U.S. military power, the issues are more complex. This time, my guess is that most of our citizens will identify more with power than with paradise - but Kagan has framed a debate that will continue to resonate in these unique islands.
David McClain is dean and First Hawaiian Bank Distinguished Professor of the University of Hawaii College of Business. He can be reached through the College Relations Office: cro@cba.hawaii.edu.
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Research tells us that fully 70 percent of the fundamental values and beliefs that guide our behaviors later in our lives are inculcated into our personalities before we reach first or second grade. Corporate culture should
not be neglected when
nurturing Hawaii startupsBy Irwin Rubin
This does not mean that who we are is irrevocably set in stone as a result of our early childhood experiences. An open inquiring mind enables beliefs and prejudices to change with changing circumstances. We always have choices about how to behave. But it does mean that learning new a habit, particularly one that will be replacing an existing one, is very difficult because it requires the unlearning of an existing ingrained habit first. Changing old habits creates more resistance to change than learning a new habit tabla rosa.
The same principle is true when it comes to organizational cultures. Many large corporations find themselves needing to dramatically change their organizational personalities if they are to survive and grown in an increasingly uncertain market place.
They are not in the position of starting fresh to create a new culture. In many cases, they have decades of proud tradition. In striving to define and successfully inculcate new cultural dimensions into the organization's blood stream - itself an incredibly challenging task, as many can attest - they have the added challenge of not throwing out the baby with the bath water.
In discussing this issue recently over lunch with a colleague, we realized a potentially untapped unique contribution Hawaii's small business community could make. New entrepreneurial start-ups - of exactly the kind we are striving to attract and develop here in Hawaii - need to be viewed in a manner analogous to youngsters in the formative years. The roots of their organizational personalities are being set in motion in their early stages of growth and development. These corporate cultures are clearly known and documented to be a major factor in determining long-range sustainability and success in the marketplace.
The problem, however, is that this natural process of culture development is going unmanaged for several reasons.
One, the excitement of being involved in something new and promising encourages the founding personnel and their generally small cadre of employees to sweep a lot of normal growing pains under the carpet. In so doing, the organization is inadvertently creating a weakened foundation from which its culture will emerge - not unlike what would happen if we built a home on a termite infested set of cross-beams.
Two, very few small start-ups have the discretionary capital needed to fund organizational development. All of their time, energy and resources seem to have to be earmarked for survival. When asked about the need for activities like team building, conflict resolution training and the like, many will agree whole-heartedly as to their importance.
And in the next breath they will make a verbal commitment to put them higher on the priority list ... as soon as circumstances permit. Two dangers exist in this very normal pattern: (1) many a small entrepreneurial venture fails because of the termites it has ignored in its human foundation. And (2) should the organization succeed, it will then have to face the even more expensive and time-consuming challenge of remaking an existing culture.
If the powers to be in Hawaii - e.g. our Chamber of Commerce and state government - are really serious about nurturing the creation and sustainability of new ventures, some thought could be given to how best to support the development of strong and healthy organizational cultures in their formative years.
Such efforts would not only help to create stronger small businesses, but could also be expected to shed some new insights on how larger corporations might go about the process of culture change, one small unit at a time.
Irwin Rubin is a Honolulu-based author and president of Temenos Inc. His column appears monthly in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Reach him at temenos@lava.net or visit www.temenosinc.com
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