[Editor’s Note: This is the last part of a four-part series by Dr. Rob Kleinbaum. Here are parts 1, 2, 3. A PDF version of the entire editorial is available, courtesy of Dr. Kleinbaum, here.]

Serious consideration needs to be given to a radically different organization that would give people overall business responsibility and accountability and increase their contact with markets and the external world. The current direction is to move away from integrated business responsibility by creating strong functions with weak business units, and the problem is compounded by making the transition slowly, so there is continual confusion and conflict over who is responsible for what. The company is doing this to “leverage its global strengths” but the real effect is to create an organization where fewer and fewer people are actually running a business or have contact with the outside world and control is becoming more and more concentrated in a few people.

[Editor’s Note: This is the third part of a four-part series by Dr. Rob Kleinbaum. Parts one and two are still available.]

What is fascinating about GM, and offers some hope, is that it really has two cultures. The one described above is an accurate depiction of the culture in North America and Western Europe but there is another in the rest of the world that is very different. The culture of GM’s operations in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Middle East, Russia and Eastern Europe, is much more progressive and it is in these areas that GM is doing very well. On almost all of the measures listed above, they would come out on the progressive side. Working for GM in Asia Pacific, Latin America or the Middle East, you would think you were in a completely different company. People are very forward looking, they are capable of making the tough decisions, they are business focused, debate is tolerated but discipline is enforced, relations with their labor force and dealers are usually positive, and authority is genuinely dispersed to the smaller business units within each of the regions.

[Editor’s Note: This is the second of a four-part series by Dr. Rob Kleinbaum. Read the first part here.]

The scholars Lawrence Harrison, Samuel Huntington and their colleagues have addressed the fundamental question of whether culture “matters” in how societies develop and make a compelling case that it matters a great deal.  They have also outlined the specific traits that lead a society to progress or prevent it from doing so and their work provides a rigorous way to think about culture that is based on substantial evidence. These traits seem applicable to a private enterprise, especially one that is larger and older than many countries.

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GM has developed a plan, currently before Congress, which is supposed to demonstrate its long run viability. The company is looking at its products, brands, manufacturing footprint and capacity, health care, and “structural costs”, while negotiating with the UAW to further reduce labor costs. All this is well and good but it is almost certain that GM is not addressing an issue that, in the long run, could be more important than all these others: its culture.