Cross-cultural management and NGO capacity building

This chapter outlines the necessity of integrating a cross-cultural management perspective into the management of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the importance of developing leadership and organizational capacity in this kind of organizations. It considers why management and leadership are important to NGOs, and particularly why a consideration of cross-cultural management is so important. It asks how cross-cultural theory might address practical NGO management and leadership issues, focusing first on the different levels of cross-cultural interaction and how we might understand cultural differences. In particular it highlights the importance of the way human beings in organizations are valued differently between Western and non-Western cultures, explaining why uncritically exporting the concept of human resource management from the private sector or public administration to the non-profit sector is inappropriate both in many developed countries and in developing countries. We use the example of NGO management and leadership in Africa to illustrate this point.