Organisations and their Climate of Cooperation

We have all heard about how some organisations with great products have ran into unknown problems then fall into mysterious decline, despite being the stronger among competitors or dominating larger market shares. 

We have also heard of the start-ups which overcame challenging odds from survival to thrive, to achieve success in a mature market. Often, these start-ups achieved their success with nothing more than a small dedicated pioneer team, a bright idea and plenty of grit to work things out.

It is not so much about how well resourced an organisation needs to be, or how well-thought through strategies may guarantee success. It is also not about how the possession of state-of-art technologies or hiring the best talents may guarantee a firm of success. These factors may increase a firm’s probability of achieving some of its objectives, but by no mean guarantee success. 

Organisations are difficult to study and understand. The organisation itself, and the people within it, changes constantly. The rate of change and its magnitude varies from gradual and manageable, to lightning paced and revolutionary. Adding to the complexities are differences among the sizes of organisations, their respective industries, complexities, market positioning, areas of focus, competition and resources at disposal, to name a few.

The climate of cooperation is however, one of the few areas where it is possible to draw reference from and to make comparison across different organisations.

On the enterprise level, behaviours within an organisation may classify into one or more of seven categories. Beginning from cooperative to conflicting behaviours, the seven organisational climates that all organisations may identify with are Collaborative, Cooperative, Coordinating, Co-existing, Cautious, Conflict-prone and Combative.

It will be possible for an organisation to experience one dominant climate of cooperation while another experience a multitude of all seven in varying degree at different levels of the hierarchy or across business units.

Collaborative

A Collaborative climate grows when people within an organisation views their participation as shared responsibility and obligation as a member of the group. People engaged in a collaborative work environment are more willing to come together to share their knowledge, pitch in help and offer resources or assistance proactively. This may happen when they are approached or because they came to be aware of another’s call for assistance. 

An organisation with a Collaborative climate is not free from conflicts or tension. What stands out for this group, is the common world view about the inevitability of conflicts, chaos and uncertainties, and the shared belief that other colleagues would strive to approach differences through communication and constructive resolution efforts. 

A Collaborative climate does more than make the working environment a happier one. It creates a sense of belonging among people and does wonder for talent attraction, retention and employer branding. The efficiencies of organisations are also optimised when organisational synaptics form as a result of the increase in organisation wide communication and cooperation.

Cooperative

A Cooperative climate describes an organisation when its people within come together to work towards goals, or to resolve challenges for which the parties have common vested interest in. The people may have come together voluntarily, or they might have been asked. The parties may generally contribute their best to the task but not go beyond their call of duty or boundaries of the immediate task on hand. 

For most organisations, the journey towards a Cooperative climate is a realistic and attainable goal, albeit there will be some challenges for the organisation to address. The reality of conflicts, competing ideas and resources makes cooperation difficult. On most days, we may agree that it is often easier to identify reasons to hold on to our perspectives and hesitate, than to find incentives to make us put aside our own interests to jump and accept another idea. This is even more true when the size and complexities of organisations grow, especially when operations have extended across multiple geographical regions and involve diverse cultures. 

An open and inclusive communication culture and practice will be an important pre-requisite for a cooperative climate to begin and sustained. Without which, the continuous dialogues and conversations necessary to facilitate the exchange of information and perspectives crucial to allying concerns and doubts before the arrival of mutual understanding, will be hampered.

Coordinating

The people within a Coordinating climate tend to observe and adhere to the guidance of the organisation’s policies, systems and processes for their behaviours and level of commitment. Most people who find themselves working in this organisational climate find themselves often falling back onto formal policies and procedures to guide their decisions and involvement. Within the bureaucratic organisation, this level of cooperation is a basic one and the parties working together may not necessary be forthcoming or proactive to volunteer their knowledge, experience or other known solutions to projects, tasks or problems. 

A common mindset within a Coordinating climate may be ‘I’ll just do my job.” The incentive to help one another is low and there may be an increased in tendency for the organisation’s participants to enact and behave according to game theory’s zero-sum games scenarios.

The nature of cooperation in a Coordinating climate tend to anchor upon the organisation’s structural and system’s configuration. Just like how clutches support and help an injured patient to move about, a Coordinating culture can help an organisation move forward, but it will not get the organisation far. The risk of overreliance on the design of the organisation’s structure, systems and processes is increased, especially when the quality of decisions, deliverables and outcomes will be depended on how formal systems are setup to guide internal activities. An organisation can expect standard outcomes to come from a Coordinating climate environment, but it may need to lower its expectations for innovative and jaw-dropping surprises to come from its people under most circumstances.

Co-existing

The people working in a Co-existing climate commonly appear apathetic to each other in their workplace. The degree of trust among colleagues is low, and most prefer to maintain passiveness and approach with reservation during co-work with another. The majority may prefer to be left alone or work in silos. When situations require them to work with another whom they do not have enough trust with, we anticipate them to contribute professionally, but stopping at what is their minimum professional obligation. The duration of most joint effort tends to be short. As a result, the business activities and inter-human relationships within the organisation tend to be transactional and surface.

The mentality of ‘not my problem’ towards considerations and challenges outside of the immediate project or task might be known to some members in the work group who may choose to ignore and omit their mentions, leading the organisation to incur many preventable errors and mistakes. 

Cautious

People working in a Cautious climate do not trust one another much in general, except for small in-groups where trust and rapport has been established prior with. The formation and presence of in-groups will rise especially within segments of organisations where moderate to high levels of tension and hostility are experienced. 

The participants will actively engage in passive and avoidance behaviours to steer away from potential conflicts projects or scenarios. When working in groups, the participants may contribute the bare minimum, or at times withhold information, resource and support to their colleagues on deliberate. Some of the underlying possible reasons for these behaviours which may be due to distrust, reluctance to cooperate, soldiering, or the perception of loss in a zero-sum game lens.

Conflict-prone

The level of tension feels high and uncomfortable to people working within a Conflict-prone climate. Within such work environments, people may gather and form themselves into larger and stronger fractions for psychological safety. As a side effect to this phenomenon, the organisation may experience a higher level of decisions and actions made on the high of emotions. Irrational to say the least, there will be business decisions made based on zero-sum game thinking, aimed at weakening or frustrating the wants or progress of a rival fraction, made at the expense of the greater good of the organisation. 

For neutral members of the organisation whom had opted to not participate in any fractions, they will find themselves engaged in avoidance behaviours to stay out of conflicts. Once caught in the crossfire of a conflict however, they may feel compelled to recover lost psychological safety by aligning themselves to an existing fraction which offers more protection as compared to the limitations of an ordinary social in-group. 

When left unchecked and allowed to continue, the level of frustration among the organisation’s participants will escalate to dangerous level. The increase in staff turnover will be an indicator that leaders should pay attention to. Should the organisation reach a phase when institutional knowledge is being lost at a faster rate than they can be transferred to or build by the remaining and new replacement employees, this will mark the beginning of a regressive spiral for the organisation when other systematic failures will kick in.

Combative

The Combative climate is the worst and most damaging situation that can happen to an organisation. Most people in the organisation will be experiencing high levels of tension as either participant in active or passive conflicts, or from collateral damage stemming from other colleagues’ conflicts. The focus in a combative climate is likely to concentrate on activities that undermine the opponent(s), frustrate the progress of work, or are aimed at weakening the opposition’s strength of influence. When an organisation allows this climate to continue unaddressed, a cycle of destruction will rapidly disrupt the work of others who seek a conducive work environment. 

Everyone is at risk in a Combative organisation – from the CEO and senior management whose Board of Directors will not entertain such nonsense, to external stakeholders such as the suppliers, service contractors and customers who depend on the stability and reliability of the organisation to complete their value chains, to the ordinary rank-and-file staff who seeks psychological and physical safety in the workplace. 

While there is no one study that can draw conclusions on how the engagement level of an organisation’s employees influence the type of cooperative climate within organisations, the general hypothesis is that a higher level of positive employee engagement between an employee with the company, will result in a higher probability of willingness to engage in cooperative behaviour by the employee.

The question of whether mutual trust must exist between the people within the organisation is often inferred to be necessary for cooperation to occur. In his book “The Evolution of Cooperation”, political scientist Robert Alexrod [1] wrote about how soldiers from opposing armies locked in trench warfare during World War 2, engaged in cooperative behaviours. While soldiers from the two armies hated each other, the antedate revealed that cooperation is possible so long as there is a basic level of trust – even between enemies. 

This revelation will come as a relief to leaders who struggle to keep their organisations on course and seek to improve the climate of cooperation.

While having the people within an organisation to like each other is great, leaders may take joy in knowing they need not get everyone up on that level of affection before higher levels of cooperation may happen in the organisation.

As a quick take-away for resolution action, leaders may take the five steps below to manage and improve the climate of cooperation within their organisation:

1. Engage and address the problem(s) within the organisation in open and inclusive conversations.
2. Identify the common grounds that everyone in the organisation has vested interest in and align the people to them.
3. Establish and introduce the organisation’s rules of engagement or set boundaries to manage conflicts within tolerable levels
4. Identify the ‘Peace-keepers’ and the ‘Protesters’ within the organisation. Empower the first and engage the latter to understand why and what is creating the resistance.
5. Address the issue(s) and move to contain any escalation from the root cause(s).

No matter how big or complication a situation, there are always that few major root causes which had sparked off chain effects of both desirable and undesirable nature. It is their accumulation that affects the cooperation climate in the organisation. 

If your organisation’s climate falls onto a cooperative state higher on the scale, good for you. Give your people a pat on their back and keep up the good work.

If you realise after reading this article that the current climate in your organisation falls on the lower end of the scale, take heart in knowing you can still make things right. 

A stitch in time saves nine.  

Start talking to your people today to find out what’s wrong. Chances are your staff will be willing to share, so long as you make time to listen.

Reference:

1. Axelrod, Robert (2006), The Evolution of Cooperation (Revised ed.), Perseus Books Group

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organisation, employer or company.

Acknowledgement and thanks to Henning Westerkamp from Pixabay for the cover image.