The Development of Managerial Culture

A Comparative Study of Australia and Canada

Arthur J. Wolak

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781349501878, 9781137475619
• eBook ISBN: 9781137475633
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

The Development of Managerial Culture examines the differences in underlying values and cultural distinctions in managerial cultures in Australia and Canada. It offers commentary on differences in attitudes to managerial culture and industrial relations through a comparison of national character development to provide context and insight for readers

1

Culture and Values

When considering national characteristics, individual idiosyncrasies should never be confused as representative of the society or its general culture as a whole.¹ While societies reflect different personalities at the individual level, the most common in a particular nation tends to approximate its national character. Dimensions of culture advanced by Hofstede, Trompenaars, and Hampden-Turner, among others, prove helpful in making assessments among different cultures at the macro level—for example, comparing Australia and Canada—more so than analyzing trends at the micro level, such as cities like Sydney and Melbourne or Toronto and Vancouver, though geographical distinctions are often evident even at this level.

Values are arguably at the root of national character. But in order to discern which values, cultural differences that separate Australia from Canada are crucial to consider because the large cohesive Irish population in Australia and the achievements and influence of leaders of Irish descent represent powerful influences on Australian managerial culture, more so than in Canada.

Discerning the Irish from the British

Non-British European immigrants represented a very small minority in nineteenth-century Australia and Canada. Among colonists, the English were the largest in number, and, therefore, English ideas and customs provided these new and developing nations their primary characteristics. Excluding the unique position of the French province of Quebec, it was English—not any of the Celtic languages of the British Isles—that became the dominant language of Australia and Canada. Likewise, it was English Common Law, not the separate and distinctive law of Scotland, that formed the basis of Australian and Canadian law (with Quebec, once more the singular exception, favoring the Civil Law tradition). However, in Australia, observes English-born Australian academic Geoffrey Partington, “The English majority dissolved into unhyphenated Australians even more quickly than the minorities.”²

Others from the British Isles found their way to Australia and influenced the country, but not in the same manner as the English and Irish. While the Welsh contributed to Australian culture, the impact did not vary significantly from the contributions made by those from London, Cornwall, and North or East Anglia, whereas the Scots, asserts Partington, “typically took a little longer to dissolve and were highly prominent, especially in business and the professions, in all of the Australian colonies, but they had no distinctive political or ideological program.”³ However, due to the events taking place in Ireland and the domestic issues in Australia, such as the lack of funding of Roman Catholic schools, a substantial number of Roman Catholic Irish in Australia retained their identity as “Irish-Australians” and held on to a distinctive program to a much greater extent than the other settler populations.⁴

The Irish dynamic differed in Canada. While the Irish represented the single largest immigrant group in nineteenth-century Canada, most came prior to the Great Potato Famine. Fewer than half of the 450,000 Irish emigrants who arrived in British North America between 1825 and 1845 were Catholic, and among the Protestant majority most were Anglican.⁵ Moreover, the Irish who came to Canada in the nineteenth century, much like the English and Scottish immigrants of that era, did not find a fully developed society, and, therefore, observes Canadian historian David Wilson, “In the half-century before Confederation, English Canada was a highly malleable cultural entity, within which the Irish, English, and Scottish shared the basic assumptions that English was the language of everyday life and that some form of the British tradition of representative government was desirable.”⁶ The Irish, English, Welsh, and Scottish “worked out a kind of mutual cultural accommodation, with each group contributing to and drawing from the economic, social and cultural characteristics of the others,” asserts Wilson, and helped found the greater society into which subsequent immigrant groups would acculturate during the twentieth century.⁷

Before considering the Irish contribution to national identity and culture in greater depth, the Irish need to be discerned from others who left the British Isles to settle in Australia and Canada, in order to account for their impact on managerial culture and values. While there is no single proper definition of “Irishness,” Irish psychoanalyst Bea Gavin observes that the word embodies a “shared sense of history, a common language, music, humour and the experience of large-scale emigration.”⁸

Despite the multilayered complexity, Irish Catholic influence is apparent in the Australian setting. While Irish Catholics perceived themselves to be the original dwellers of Ireland, Protestants represented the English and Scottish colonists who came to Ireland when it was under the rule of the British; hence, in the words of Canadian historian Peter Toner, it has become “common practice to refer to Irish people as either Catholic or Protestant,” even though “religion itself has never been much more than the easiest determinant of a group affiliation that consists of many factors.”⁹

While Irish Protestants blended more easily into Australia’s ruling British society, Irish Catholic assimilation was less prevalent, leading to a strong, independent voice in Australia. “Whereas much Irish national culture may be assimilated, this cannot be the case with Catholicism, as no one would seriously argue that Catholicism can be assimilated into Protestantism,” explains Australian Irish historian Colm Kiernan. “If Catholicism in Australia is ethnicity, that opens the way to a significant ethnic presence, in that from early times there have been Catholic churches and Catholic schools in Australia.”¹⁰ Irish Catholics did indeed retain a strong identity that had a profound impact on Australia’s cultural identity.

In Canada, Irish Protestants stressed the importance of the “British connection” to facilitate distance between them and their “Catholic compatriots,” asserts Toner, since “both groups were rich in cultural traditions, but with significant differences,” notably the Irish Catholic tendency to “keep alive traditions of being Irish,” whereas the Protestants generally glorified “their contributions to British civilization.”¹¹ This was not limited to Irish Protestants or the English in Canada’s evolving society, since the significant Scottish population also proved a powerful force in helping forge a strong and enduring connection to Britain as a distinctive source of Canadian identity.

In large part, it was the Presbyterianism spread by Scottish Protestant clergyman John Knox that helped create the character of the disciplined Scot who contributed so greatly to the corporate life of Canada. In comparisons made between the composition of the Canadian “elite” and the general Canadian population, Canadian sociologist John Porter observed that of the various “Protestant groups the Anglican church had the greatest representation,” but the Scottish “Presbyterian church was also over-represented.”¹² The Canadian elite, largely comprising of Canadians of English and Scottish descent, reflected and helped perpetuate Canada’s national character, which owed so much to preserving some of the most important aspects of the British cultural identity.

As the analysis of such notable Australian historians as Russel Ward and Patrick O’Farrell suggests, Australia’s national character appears to have been the product of a plethora of influences including Irish, Roman Catholic, convict, and British working class that melded into a collective Australian identity. Even the trade unions and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) played a critical role.¹³ However, Irish Catholics were always prominent in the ALP, and labor factionalism had a sectarian aspect to it.

The antagonism between Catholics and Protestants was a regular feature of social and political life from at least the 1860s through the 1920s, with its effects felt well into the 1960s. “A predisposition to sectarianism came to Australia in the mental baggage of many migrants,” observes Australian historian Mark Lyons. “For Protestants of fundamentalist or evangelical faith, particularly those from the north of Ireland, Catholicism was not only an erroneous and superstitious creed, but one whose adherents actively sought to force Protestant nations back under the rule of Rome.”¹⁴ However, given that attitudes of many Catholics had been shaped by the popular movement for Irish independence since the mid-nineteenth century, combining religion and nationalism into a unified identity, clashes with Protestants were inevitable, with the consequence being the preservation of a distinct Irish Catholic identity that helped shape Australia’s character. By the early twentieth century, a significant number of Catholics turned to the ALP, thus forging an important political–cultural link that endured for decades.¹⁵

Proposing that the Irish played a huge role in the development of the Australian identity does not minimize the impact of other ethnic communities to the development of Australia or Australian culture. Rather it reflects the predominant character of Australia, pointing to a strong Irish influence that makes this observation appropriate. For instance, the Scots, notes Australian historian Malcolm Prentis, certainly made a significant contribution to Australia, having “been prominent in pastoral pursuits, politics, poetry and education.”¹⁶ However, their influence on the Australian personality is less pronounced.

Although settler societies in both Australia and North America were primarily Protestant, strong Roman Catholic minorities, particularly Irish, were present. Thus, the Irish, especially Irish Catholics, exercised a robust influence on Australia as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1 Culture and Values
• 2 National Character
• 3 Class and Identity
• 4 Australia’s Irish Factor
• 5 Australian versus Canadian Managerial Styles
• 6 Labor Power
• 7 Australian and Canadian Managerial Culture: A Summary
• Bibliography
• Index