PADDLING YOUR OWN CANOE
<1412 words> My summers in Nova Scotia are defined by the number of kayaking adventures I can pack into a week. Sometimes I go out alone – for quite long trips – ‘quite long’ in my books usually means several hours, not several days or weeks. Most often I am joined by friends or family […]
Fairness is simple. Bring culture into it and bedevil everything.
The way of breaking through cultural barriers to fairness is to return to our human origins. Fairness is the default position; culture is the way in which we express and judge it. The more culturally divergent a workplace is the less likely it is we’d have consensus on what constitutes ‘fairness’.
This paper explores Brown’s human fundamentals via Pinker; Frans de Waal’s research on the moral behaviour of animals; and then human culture via Hofstede, with a view of stimulating HR to look at how they ‘do’ fairness differently. What is being done currently doesn’t quite meet the human standard of fairness.
And so, how does one set that standard? The answers are in your approach and your level of cultural competence.
Some ideas are offfered on how fairness might be viewed and enacted differently – if someone has the curiosity and courage to do it.