Theme: Organizational Contexts

Topic: Culture Clash - Organizational culture and local culture during a disaster relief operation

Issues: International aid organizational Culture; local culture; cultural conflict; corporate social

responsibility; crisis management; disaster relief.

Problem or Opportunity

Culture plays a critical role in managing a relief operation. Culture diffrentiates the

approach in humanitarian relief operation organizations. Schipper, L. (2014) defines culture as

social institutions, customs and beliefs that people hold, or characteristics that bind groups of

people together. During relief operation, culture can be manifested in things such as religious

beliefs, traditional beliefs, values, importance placed on social structures, customary livelihood

choices and settlement patterns. In some societies, cultural characteristics may be the

determining factor in whether people will be adversely affected by the diasater. In her article,

Schipper, L. (2014) identifies the case in El Salvador where Inter-American Development Bank

and several humanitarian NGOs carried our risk reduction projects in early 2000s; the program

was only accepted by the iberation theology catholics. The other evalngelical protestants refused

to be part of the said project due to their beliegs which fronted for a more passive and fatalistic

perspective of risk. Before the conduction of an international humanitarian program, it is

pertinent that the perpetrators of the said program engage in preliminary research, and in this

case as a way to ensure that their activities do not stand to clash with the cultures of the people

involved in the humanitarian act.

Every organisation has one or several information cultures, its own ways of dealing with

information, which are impacted by the environment in which it operates and the cultural

background and competencies of its employees. While one strand of the literature has presented
information culture as a characteristic that some organisations possess and that is conducive to

good information management, another strand affirms that all organisations have an information

culture. Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006) singles out the fact that most

organizational stakeholders have been reluctant in issuing their reliance on culture as a possiblel

determinant of economic phenomena. Such reluctance is as a result of the broad and vague

channels with which culture can get into the economic discourse. However, contemporary

studies reveal that different individuals possess different beliefs and preferences thus systematic

differences caused by the aforementioned factors could possibly result to economic phenomena.

The author suggests inclusion of a culturally based explanation into economics as a way to widen

people’s perspective and enrich their understanding of economic phenomena.

Historically, logistics has played a critical role in humanitarian assistance as the linking

point between preparedness and response distribution and procurement, and headquarters and the

field (Maghsoudi & Moshtari, 2020). Any time there is a crisis humanitarian logistics (HL)

assists in disaster relief operations. HL encompasses a variety of activities, including

procurement, assessments, transportation, resource mobilization, last-mile distribution, and

warehousing. The findings fronted in the research by Maghsoudi, A., & Moshtari, M. (2020)

highlight challenges faced by humanitarian practitioners in their quest to conduct successful

disaster relief operations. The challenges such as needs assessment can significantly affect the

result of the humanitarian program and such an assertion comes from the fact that the emergence

of various actors can impede the success of the relif/humanitarian program. Lack of coordination

between the humanitarian actors and the aforementioned emerging parties, which is often as a

result of cultural difference bring forth challenges that significantly affect the success of a given

humanitarian programs. Indeed, culture clash is one a factor that stands to determine the success
or failure of a humanitarian project in play and thus needs to be included in the preparatory

stages of any project.

References
Frings‐Hessami, V., & Oliver, (2022). Clashes of cultures in an international aid organisation:

Information cultures, languages and the use of information systems. Journal of

International Development.

Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). Does culture affect economic outcomes?. Journal

of Economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.

Maghsoudi, A., & Moshtari, M. (2020). Challenges in disaster relief operations: evidence from

the 2017 Kermanshah earthquake. Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain

Management.

Schipper, L. (2014). The case for recognising the role of culture in reducing disaster risk.

CDKN’s blog series: rethinking a new global agreement for disaster risk reduction.