مفاهیم فرهنگ سازمانی برای برهم زدن و مرمت زنجیره تامین

To manage supply chain disruptions, many diverse organizational cultures must work together to restore services and help ensure resiliency. We use a model of culture taken from social anthropology, economics and public management illustrated through two interorganizational cases of humanitarian supply chain disruption: the Federal Emergency Management Agency contracting with Universe Truck Lines to deliver ice after Hurricane Katrina, and the World Food Programme interacting with the Southern African Development Community to deliver maize after the floods of 2002. We illustrate ways in which a lack of understanding of cultural biases is one explanation for poor management of supply chain disruption and how this hypothesis can help direct future research.

Supply chain partners must traverse an increasingly complex array of communication and coordination issues to maintain effective relationships with contracting, manufacturing, delivery, storage, and customer services. These issues become more obvious when organizations are faced with disruptions in their attempts to supply humanitarian aid after disasters. Efforts to better understand interactions among organizations generally rely on supply chain contracting models from behavioral economics that assume people act as self-interested, rational agents. An important reason cited for the failure of such models is that such an assumption discounts other ways of interacting and the existence of differing social and cultural preferences (Loch and Wu, 2008; McAfee et al., 2002; Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006; Mello and Stank, 2005). Studies of organizational culture address how organizations go about enacting collective preferences to further organizational missions and goals. Everyday parlance generally employs the concept of organizational culture as ‘a way of doing business.’ In this sense its usage refers to how different organizations go about resolving tasks at hand in different ways. More generally, organizational sociologists think of culture as “shared understandings that, through subtle and complex expression, regulate social life in organizations.” (Ouchi and Wilkins, 1985, p. 458). Several studies have applied cultural models to study supply chain management (Mentzer et al., 2001; Gattorna, 2006; Ryu et al., 2006; de Koster and Shinohara, 2006; Roh et al., 2008; Naor et al., 2008). Mentzer et al. (2001) outline trust, commitment, cooperative norms, organizational compatibility, and top management support as five cultural elements of shared values among supply chain organizations (Mello and Stank, 2005). Gattorna (2006) identifies four “generic enterprise subcultures” for supply chain organizations: group, entrepreneurial, hierarchical, and rational. He describes the cultures that occur in-between these four types as being dominated by one of the four types while displaying elements of one of the other three subcultures, and uses these to propose a cultural mapping scheme to assess working relationships among supply chain partners. Ryu et al. (2006) focus on a culture of collectivism in long-term orientation supply chain management in Korea. They argue that organizations functioning with a collectivist culture (such as many in Korea) have a better chance to successfully facilitate long-term relationships among supply chain partners than those functioning with a more individualistic culture that is characteristic of Western organizations. Their results are echoed by de Koster and Shinohara (2006) who compare Western European with Japanese supply chain partnerships. Their findings suggest that organizational cultures more focused on collective responsibility and consensual decision-making (such as in Japan) have slower evaluation and promotion processes but more reliable long-term supply chain relationships than those that emphasize individual decision making and responsibility (such as those in Western European countries). Roh et al. (2008) review the importance of organizational culture in accounting for productivity gaps between US and Japanese companies. They show that a “high level of congruence between organizational culture and strategic practices” is necessary for maintaining effective information flows (2008, p. 361). Naor et al., (2008) add manufacturing performance to the list of organizational attributes that depend upon cultural milieus. Their analysis of manufacturing plants across six countries indicates that organizational culture strongly influences infrastructure quality management practices and that “infrastructure quality management practices have a significant effect of manufacturing performance” (2008, p. 671). With such broad implications for supply chain effectiveness, cultural dynamics that take place among organizations during supply chain disruptions deserve particular attention. Our approach emphasizes that an organization's culture is dynamic relative to the other organizations it interacts with to maintain effective supply chains during times of disruption. To compare organizational cultures as relative to those with which they interact at any given time, we use social anthropologist Mary Douglas’ definition of a “cultural bias” as “a steady preference for one or another set of institutional forms and consequently a commitment to the kinds of knowledge that go with it.” (1999, p. 411) According to Douglas’ cultural typology, four cultural biases are defined in terms of two dimensions: GRID and GROUP. GRID refers to how rigidly rules and traditions influence decision-making and action-taking (e.g. application and use of rule structures), while GROUP refers to the tightness of interpersonal and professional ties seen through the frequency and transparency of communications and group solidarity (e.g. social solidarity groups). The four cultural biases defined through combinations of these two dimensions are thus HIGH GRID, HIGH GROUP (“hierarchist”), LOW GRID, LOW GROUP (“individualist”), HIGH GRID, LOW GROUP (“fatalist” or “isolationist”), and LOW GRID, HIGH GROUP (“egalitarian” or “communitarian”). These four cultural types echo other cultural typologies, preserving both traditional approaches to culture and improvements made by others, thus making them comparable to other typological findings.1 Insofar as “boundary effects” (i.e., the condition of being in-between two cultural biases) exist, they tend to be fleeting during times of uncertainty and transitioning from one bias to another, and stabilize quite quickly into one or another cultural bias. (For a discussion of boundary effects and their implications, see Thompson et al., 1990.) Cultural biases improve upon other cultural typologies by basing categories of organizational culture on mutually exclusive (words/actions cannot belong to more than one category), jointly exhaustive (words/actions always fit into one of the categories), and consistent criteria. For example, Hofstede (1980) used organizational attributes such as power, uncertainty, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, and long-term/short-term orientation to define culture. Although these categories serve well for many descriptive purposes, elements of an organization's culture may fit into both the “masculinity/femininity” category as well as the power category. Likewise, Deal and Kennedy's (1982) four types were the “tough-guy macho culture,” the “work hard/play hard culture,” the “bet your company culture,” and the “process culture.” Again, aspects of an organization's way of doing things are likely to fit into more than one of the terms used to define each separate culture. Douglas’ approach to cultural biases bases each of the four cultural types on the two dimensions of GRID and GROUP, which avoids this pitfall by each culture having only one combination of the two dimensions (e.g., mutual exclusivity). Another important aspect of cultural biases is that they all exist in any given organization at any time, but one tends to dominate the rest in different circumstances and interactions, such that all cultural biases are competing rationalities that organizational representatives use to make sense of the world. These aspects of cultural biases become particularly important in questions of supply chain resiliency in the face of disruption. While an organization can be identified as enacting only one dominant cultural bias at a given time, all biases still exist within the organization, with representatives constantly gauging which form of decision making would best suit any given situation (Douglas, 1999a; Thompson et al., 1990). Furthermore, organizational representatives may use one cultural bias to make decisions in interactions with one organization, while they may adopt a different cultural bias to interact with another organization. This theory predicts that cultural compatibility is most likely to enhance interorganizational coordination and management when interacting organizations share the same cultural bias, but not when they share levels of only GRID or only GROUP. For example, Loch and Wu (2008) conducted a study of how social preferences influence supply chain transactions. They found that self-interest and profit maximization models fail to predict decision making and proposed that classifying transaction preferences according to “relationship preference” or “status preference” better described their experimental findings. In the GRID-GROUP typology, preferences define the application of rule structures in getting things done (GRID) and the preferences for social solidarity among groups of organizational representatives (GROUP). Gattorna (2006) fits social preferences for thoughts or actions into his proposed assessment for supply chain “leadership style,” which in turn helps determine scores for two dimensions of an organization's (1) certainty/uncertainty in decision making and (2) competitive intensity. He proposes “focus” (the effort an organization exerts to improve its viability) and “control” (coordination and integration) as two dimensions for determining organizational culture in supply chain management. This provides a good example of how findings using the GRID–GROUP typology can also be applied and compared to findings made by using other typologies: the “control” dimension (coordination and integration) of Gattorna's resembles the GROUP dimension, while the argument could be made that “focus” could be compared to the GRID dimension (which refers to how rules provide organizational focus). However, as reviewed earlier, an important advantage of applying the GRIDGROUP typology is the mutually exclusive nature of GRID (rule structures) and GROUP (social solidarity and integration) as compared with “control” and “focus.” Our contribution to this literature is to develop and use cultural biases to characterize interactions among different organizations during humanitarian supply chain disruptions. Such disruptions are important to consider in studies of how to achieve adaptive, agile, and aligned supply chain management practices (Van Wassenhove, 2006). We identify social preferences in terms of organizational expectations and justifications for resource and risk management. We then use these to (1) determine the dominant cultural bias exhibited by each organization during a supply chain disruption, (2) identify advantages and disadvantages of nurturing different cultural biases in supply chain disruption management, and (3) discuss implications of these outcomes for interorganizational supply chain coordination and communication in humanitarian aid situations.

How does an organization's dominant cultural bias shape supply chain priority setting in terms of resource and risk management? First, an organization's dominant cultural bias shapes the way an organization uses internal rules and external standards when coordinating with other supply chain partners. This aspect of organizational culture and supply chain management is covered in depth by Gattorna (2006), who advises that detailed resource logistics are important in supply chain management but can distract from less tangible organizational management practices that need more attention: “…the potentially damaging impact of mis-aligned culture is a reality that has long been overlooked…the invisibility of culture is in stark contrast to the tangible world of hard assets, infrastructure, systems technology and observed behaviour that fills the conscious world. Most people tend to manage what they can see, while either ignoring or remaining oblivious to what they cannot see, touch, or feel. This is the problem that has plagued not only the design and operation of supply chains, but all forms of organization endeavour over the centuries.” (Gattorna, 2006, pp. 69–71). Secondly, an organizations’ dominant cultural bias shapes the way an organization identifies risky supply chain partnerships and decides whether to follow other organizations’ rule structures in decision making processes. Universe Truck Lines, for example, decided to follow the ad hoc rule dealt to them by FEMA regarding dispatch locations, which was easier given their LOW GRID, individualist cultural bias interacting with FEMA's HIGH GRID tendencies. SADC member countries affected by extreme weather events in 2002 had to gauge the risk of letting many people starve against contaminating the region's long-term agricultural recovery and market with genetically engineered maize. Such organizational decisions that are based on cultural preferences are made every day, but tend to become more visible during supply chain disruption events. What are the advantages and disadvantages of nurturing different cultural biases during crisis response and on an everyday basis? One advantage of making cultural wiles visible within an organization on an everyday basis is to educate and bring attention to other possible ways of doing business for organizational representatives. Such awareness allows better understandings to form regarding different approaches to supply chain integration and coordination. This awareness may also make it more likely that, in the event of a disruption, supply chain partners would consider cultural compatibility in their coordination tactics. An advantage of considering cultural biases in everyday understandings of organizational culture also helps to demystify what Sheffi (2005) referred to as the “paradox of standards:” the more rigid the standards are, the more flexibility they offer. For example, in the ice supply chain case, Universe Truck Lines’ dominant LOW GRID cultural bias made it vulnerable to FEMA's imposing wasteful dispatch rules upon their operations. Universe Truck Lines’ lack of rigid standards for government business contracts gave them little to no flexibility to route the ice shipments in a more efficient manner. FEMA's dominating HIGH GRID cultural bias, coupled with LOW GROUP solidarity, resulted in (what FEMA director Michael Brown frequently referred to as too much bureaucratic ‘red tape’) hampering supply chain flexibility. In the case of WFP and SADC, the lack of standards for GM food products disrupted both organizations’ ability to confidently assess risk from their respective positions as the supplier and the customer. By nurturing an organizational understanding of expectations and justifications characteristic of different cultural biases, more rigid standards for each can lead the way to greater flexibility in coordinating supply chain relationships. Disadvantages of nurturing different cultural biases can be summarized by the adage: too many cooks spoil the soup. An organization needs to be dominated by a single cultural bias to stabilize expectations and justifications so that representatives can act consistently with regard to supply chain relationships. Thus it is important to note that nurturing an understanding of different cultural biases should not be confused with enacting different cultural biases on an organizational level—shifts in an organization's dominant culture certainly occur, but frequent shifts could destabilize working relationships both within the organization and between supply chain partners. Why would early identification of an organization's dominant cultural bias inform coordination and response between organizations? By recognizing the rationale behind four different types of expectations and justifications, supply chain partners can better “work the system” in everyday business relationships and better coordinate strategies for recovering from supply chain disruptions. The United States Government Accountability Office released a report of testimony on the Department of Defense's high-risk supply chain areas (2007). It concluded that these areas could be improved through linking supply chain business operation transformations, logistics, strategy, and outcomes. Svensson (2002) suggested that risks to inbound and outbound logistics among subcontractors and customers can be measured and evaluated by four dimensions: service level, deviation, consequence, and trend. Cultural biases offer a mutually exclusive approach to dimensions that can help organizations keep these sorts of ‘big picture’ considerations in view without losing sight of the devil in the details.