Swing dance business relies on the idea of organizational social responsibility, better known in the business world as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The operating value is on to identify projects that reflect the scene's sense of social responsibility and to tailor projects to reflect that sense. This is perhaps a step in the right direction when it comes to the organization's position in the host community, but is extremely difficult and complex in its implementation. There are two key factors that contribute to its difficulty:
Both for profit and not for profits' main goal is still profits; they owe this to their stakeholders and or shareholders. Although profits and social responsibility are not necessarily mutually exclusive, there is frequently a price tag associated with these operations and projects and this creates a conflict: choose the project, or tailor the project to meet social responsible objectives or focus on increased return on investment? Where a project meets both objectives, the conflict is eliminated but you know intuitively that this won't always be the case.
How does the organization of a scene determine what is socially responsible and what isn't? This is seldom clear cut and in many cases different social groups have goals and objectives that are opposed to one another. The organizations can't satisfy the objectives of both groups and will be seen as irresponsible when it chooses one or the other. That is why stakeholder identification through the analysis process is important.
These issues are compounded when a members of one organization work in another with different social values. The chances of a conflict between two social groups who are stakeholders in the venture increase because of the cultural differences between the stakeholders in the home community and those in the other community. Organizations have invested lots of time developing their social media persona only to see it destroyed by one ugly conflict that gets media exposure. The results achieved by the social responsible investment are not newsworthy while the single incident that tarnishes that image is.
Organizations must take the time to evaluate what their social responsibilities are, claims to have followed all the laws, rules, regulations, and standards of the city and province they are operating in.
They further claim to have followed their own code of ethics. These ethics have been developed and implemented at significant expense in some cases. In some cases having a spokesperson answering the allegations on behalf of the companies is a way to show there is effort placed on ethical behaviour by these organizations. Whether or not these organizations have been effective in adhering to the laws of the city of province they operate in and their own codes, it is apparent to me that they have honestly tried to do so.
You can do all the right things, in your organization. But it is still not going right, things don't sit or feel correct because you are trying to overlap profit and social responsibility. Implementing the code of ethics or even best practices crafted by a social responsible organizations will inevitably inflate costs at some point during some projects. Is it possible for a scene to have two organizations that are in conflict? You bet. Remember we're dealing with people here and as everyone who has worked with others knows, a working relationship leads to differences of opinion. For a team working on a project, the project manager will ask the team members to forsake personal agendas for the good of the project. When the conflicts are operational and conducted at the executive level this approach doesn't always work. In my personal experiences, the initiation of a SWOT analysis or the mention of a scene strategic plan was enough to initiate a conflict between one another in the community. One suspects that there may have been issues between the two that pre-date, and understanding that history is important. So how does all this concern the project manager? The issues between organizations are experiencing demonstrate the difficulties it is possible to face when doing business where values conflict. These examples are extreme and can divide and make people choose even if they don't want to. In the end, it drives them away and the overall attrition rate goes up. That is if there's a mechanism to measure attrition in any socially operated community. I'm sure that not many projects will lead to an organization or social group facing allegations of physical violence. On the other hand, the underlying factors will affect any project. The question is what can a project manager do to address these factors?
What should one do?
The first step is for the project manager to understand all the issues that can affect the project, including pre-existing local issues. Is it reasonable to expect a project manager to have foreseen the conflict in the communities involved and any ongoing dispute? I would say given enough education on local issues and the likelihood that the project would only directly financially benefit members of one of the two communities, the dispute could have been foreseen. How to address the issue is another story. There may or may not have been something either organizations could have done to avoid the conflict and or dispute but they should at least have anticipated the risk of this happening and if no mitigation strategy was feasible they could then have decided whether they wanted to assume the risk. The object lesson for project managers here is that the exercise of risk identification must be expanded to include not only the risks of a culture clash between the organizations and the project and the city, but those of different stakeholder groups within the scene.
So how would a project manager go about identifying those risks?
The answer is that the investigative work required surpasses the activities we normally associate with risk identification. Speaking to members of both communities would have revealed pre-existing conflicts, dispute, examining back issues of newsletters, Facebook group discussion and interviews with locals and would be other sources for the information. The lesson here is that you may have to expand your risk identification exercise to include mining the information that would help you identify risks.
There is another issue that has plagued social clubs doing business in a capitalistic society long before anyone ever heard of organizational social responsibility, namely the issue of a clash between the laws governing the organization in the city, province or country and their laws and cultural norms running the project.
The classic example of this clash is the solicitation and payment of bribes. My experiences in many countries outside of North America and Europe the solicitation of bribes is not only legal, but is actually encouraged by the local governments. Getting a pass when the local authorities ask you questions and you don't know what to do is quite powerful and can get you out of hot water!
Laws in North America make it illegal for organizations to pay bribes. But using the system of I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine is probably the closest thing we can do in Canada. Specifically, I am referring to strategic partnership where both organizations work on mutual beneficial outcomes and possible goals. I'm not talking about aligning values here, that is what probably caused the dispute in the first place. That is not only healthy for all the organizations in the scene, but it shows solidarity amongst the leaders to the members. As good leadership will trickle down, the members will begin to practice those ideas and in time it becomes the cultural norm.
What to do when conflict and dispute happens? The effort to The answer is simple; don't find yourself in that situation. The situation described above is untenable and no project manager should be asked to expose themselves to that level of risk, regardless of your values. You can avoid this situation by investing a little time during the initiation phase of your project to investigate the risks.
What are the applicable laws of the city or province the project, or portion of the project, will be performed in? Will the project call for the playing of recorded music in classes, dances and possible outdoor events? What are the laws pertaining to conducting business when this one asset that drives your business? Sorry, you can't dance when there's no music and you don't want the authorities to fine you for not being responsible for the legal requirements of operating your business.
What are the laws pertaining to labour and human rights? Perhaps the best way to approach the investigation is to look at the project scope and your project management approach and determine which questions you should ask. Know the risks going in. Normally we think of risk identification as a project planning process, but there are some risks which will have a bearing on whether the organization wants to undertake the project, or whether you want to undertake managing the process. These are the risks that will be identified by asking the right questions. Once the risk has been identified, you can then make the decision as to whether there is a mitigation strategy that might work. If you can't identify a workable mitigation strategy, does the organization want to undertake the project? Do you want to undertake managing the project? Sometimes the situation calls for you to ask the right questions of the right people before you commit to the project.
Project managers must become knowledgeable about their organization's social responsibility policies so that the goals and objectives of their projects conform to these policies, but they must go further than that. They must determine how well those policies conform to the laws, standards, and social customs in the scene where the project work will be undertaken.
They must also investigate all the possible stakeholders to determine if there are any conflicts with the organization's social responsibility policies or with each other. There really isn't anyone in a better position to do this when you think about it. The project manager has the best grasp of the project goals and objectives and management approach so is the best qualified person to identify risks to the project.
The suggestions in this article are not meant to contradict the best practices for risk management taught by project management courses such as PMP courses or other PMP exam preparation training, but rather to augment them. The strategy you use to quantify, qualify, monitor, and control the risks once you have identified them should be the same ones espoused in my experiences.
