Can Organizational Culture Help Explain Recent INGO Scandals?
In recent years, leading international nongovernmental organizations (INGO) such as Oxfam International, Save the Children, Amnesty International, MercyCorps and others have been implicated in scandals about sexual abuse and other forms of abuse of power and harassment. In this ‘pracademic’ essay, just published in the peer-reviewed journal Nonprofit Policy Forum (Open Access, yes!), I suggest focusing on organizational and sectoral culture as an explanatory variable for these crises, which are particularly hard-hitting for purportedly value-based organizations. In the case of NGOs, these are driven by six factors:
(1) particular individual leadership traits that may be prevalent especially in the emergency and humanitarian relief related sector
(2) the effect of power on leaders’ perspectives and behaviors
3) a culture of silence that makes it hard for NGO staff to speak up about toxic workplace behaviors
(4) the presence of deep power structures within NGOs which are not openly acknowledged and therefore addressed
(5) the myth of own innocence that leads NGOs to treat wrongdoing as aberrations instead of systemic problems; and
(6) a culture of limited individual and team-level accountability practices.
The extent to which these cultural failures can be addressed through formal policy and (self)regulatory measures is limited, given that culture is primarily about informal, covert belief systems. NGOs will have to do sustained and disciplined culture work themselves if the roots of the scandals are to be taken away.
A couple of warnings and notes: this essay is on the longer side. And I do not claim I am an expert in sexual harassment and abuse, either in the workplace or when NGOs interact with program impacted people. I am an expert in organizational effectiveness, dynamics, and culture as it relates to NGOs, and have a background in gender and gender and leadership as well. It is from those perspectives that I have written this essay. What I do is drawing links between organizational phenomena well researched in other sectors (public/government and private) and what can happen equally in NGOs, based on my 30 years of experience in the sector.
The other essays in this special issue of Nonprofit Policy Forum – written by well-known academics – are also available if you are interested.
Your comments on my essay are very much welcomed.