2015-10, Nathan, Ganesh

Corporate culture is too often equated with national culture without much regard to specific corporate culture that differ in many aspects from national culture; not all corporations have similar culture within a nation. Moreover, widely practised paradigm of 5-7-9 cultural dimensions (Hofstede (5), Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (7) and GLOBE (9)) tends to essentialize national culture; such essentialist notions of culture in practice can lead to treating employees as ‘cultural dopes’ based on the nationality of origin suppressing their agency for change and choice with singular identity disregarding multiple intersecting and shifting identities in space and time (Nathan, 2015). This sort of treatment of employees can restrict employeeship constituted by autonomy, ownership and responsibility and encourage leadership subordinated to essentialist notions of culture. Employeeship can foster personal responsibility. Against this background, this workshop attempts to provide hands-on experience putting into practice of the non-essentialist model of culture presented by Nathan (2015), bringing together practitioners, towards an understanding corporate culture and fostering employeeship.

2014, Nathan, Ganesh, Schepers, Stefan, Kakabadse, Andrew

Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI) are important in dealing with (global) governance gaps in many dimensions – economic, ecological, social and cultural. However, their effectiveness is under scrutiny by both academics and practitioners. In this Chapter, Nathan attempts to derive the minimal and common conditions – freedom as non-domination, and recognition – for input justice on deliberation for MSI, critiquing liberal deliberative democracy and advocating modern civic republicanism. He further challenges the idea of the common good and invites us to consider the common concerns of the choices. This Chapter aims to encourage debate and discussion on the possibility and plausibility of innovating governance structures based on these minimal and common conditions for input justice for (global) multi-stakeholder deliberation.

2015-05, Nathan, Ganesh

Mainly based on the article published: Nathan, G. 2015. A non‐essentialist model of culture: Implications of identity, agency and structure within multinational/multicultural organizations, International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, Vol. 15(1): 101‐124

2010, Nathan, Ganesh

Western democratic states are experiencing a backlash against the politics of multiculturalism. While a multicultural critique of liberal democracy is necessary it has all too often been rooted in the notion of cultures as separate and distinct, fuelling the backlash that regards this as a politics of division. The challenge facing liberals and multiculturalists alike is to recognise the importance of claims of culture without collapsing multicultural society into a series of discrete cultural ghettos. This book addresses the challenge by reframing the debate, moving away from the emphasis on cultural membership to focus instead on the contexts in which the particularities of minorities impact on claims for justice and recognition. We must respond to circumstances of injustice which impede minorities' capability to pursue meaningful activities in multiple dimensions – economic, social and political as well as cultural – as citizens of equal status. This book argues that it is possible to defend intercultural justice and freedom without entrenching culture, group and identity, and that it is important to do so.

2015, Nathan, Ganesh, Coutinho de Arruda, Maria Cecilia, Rok, Boleslaw

This paper attempts to provide some directions for re-theorizing the firm from a socio-political perspective to underscore how the purpose of the firm is rooted in our societal life, and hence a notion of well-being and social justice of stakeholders gains significance rather than wealth creation for shareholders as the sole purpose of the firm. This paper concludes that such an approach has some implications for responsible governance through stakeholder deliberation for social justice.