Organizations all have a culture which frames the way in which the business functions.  This culture is an outgrowth of many factors, including but not limited to the following: stage of development, the particular industry and country-specific origins. 

Organizations can strengthen their competitive advantage by both identifying their cultural capabilities and then by developing their engagement capabilities (to transfer, receive and interact with other cultures). 

I intentionally avoid the use of the term “cross cultural” in this context as this typically implies engagement between different national cultures.  Instead, I believe that a more appropriate approach is to treat culture in a broader sense as an outgrowth of a number of overlapping and interrelated factors, only one of which is related to a national or ethnic origin.

These cultural and engagement capabilities form an important, and often underappreciated, part of the social capital of an organization.  Social capital is an important asset of an organization; it can be likened to an organization’s level of “social intelligence” (Daniel Goleman). 

In order to strengthen competitive advantage an organization should determine how it can best identify its cultural capabilities and then address any weaknesses in that respect.  The organization should then assess its engagement capabilities.  In other words, can it effectively interact with other organizations—whether customers, suppliers, or other stakeholders—in order to increase its own effectiveness?

Over the coming few weeks I will be exploring these concepts in more depth and drawing a correlation of connected business capabilities. There are several key aspects of the process of building cultural engagement capabilities for an organization that I will cover in subsequent posts: 

1. Internal Assessment;
2. External Assessment;
3. Strategy Formulation & the Balanced Scorecard ; and
4. Strategy Implementation & Enhanced Cultural Engagement Capabilities

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The contents of this series are adapted from Dr. Rick Goossen’s paper on “Strengthening Competitive Advantage through Enhanced Cultural Engagement Capabilities”. For more information or for a complimentary copy of this paper, please contact Rick.Goossen@Avantage.com.

The "Strengthening Competitive Advantage through Enhanced Cultural Engagement Capabilities" by Dr. Rick Goossen series:

1. Cultural Capabilities
2. Building Cultural Engagement Capabilities - An Internal Assessment
3. Building Cultural Engagement Capabilities - An External Assessment
4. Building Cultural Engagement Capabilities - Balanced Scorecard
5. Strengthening Competitive Advantage through Enhanced Cultural Engagement Capabilities