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If we are going to reform the ADF, ‘culture’ isn’t the answer
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If we are going to reform the ADF, ‘culture’ isn’t the answer
How does any organisation identify its own blind spots? One of the most significant changes made to the ADF in recent times was about who could work, not how they did so.
By Samantha Crompvoets
Credit:Dean Sewell, ADF
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Why do we so often reach for culture to explain organisational issues? Perhaps because it is intuitive to do so. It provides a signpost for organisation-wide characteristics and matters of importance. But does it provide clarity or obscurity when it comes to really understanding a problem? Does it lead to accountability, or is it a barrier to the taking of responsibility? How do you even know when you’ve achieved cultural change? Should we in fact be considering other ways of analysing and addressing dee
paper, is that when more people adopt a
non-controversial practice, it will become increasingly widespread due to growing awareness and legitimacy. To understand how
controversial practices propagate,
Peggy Lee and I studied the boom-to-bust of reverse mergers. We found that, predictably, increasing adoption of RMs boosted awareness and, in turn, help spread the practice further.
However, the very same awareness also sparked and fuelled concern among third parties – media, investors and regulators. The controversial practice then became increasingly seen as a threat to existing institutionalised practices. That, plus the entry of low-status adopters, eventually stymied reverse mergers and caused them to wane. Similar factors have now converged in the froth of SPACs.