Synopsis: Leaders in organizations are left in continual dilemma whether - to develop the cooperative spirit among the diverse groups - they need to strictly impose the standards and norms of group behaviour, or be lax about them.
What makes people altruistic? A suitable answer is yet to be found to this mystery. Helpfulness, some say, comes from within. Perhaps because of a particular genetic trait inherited through generations, people are prosocial towards relatives, friends and even strangers.
Others hold that people behave in prosocial ways only because they are forced by the norms to do so. The cultural practice of rewards for those maintaining the bar and punishment for the norm-breakers, ensure that people of any particular society adhere to accepted standards of social behaviour, and think twice before deviating from them.
Cultural variations
Leaders in organizations are left in continual dilemma whether - to develop the cooperative spirit among the diverse groups - they need to strictly impose the standards and norms of group behaviour, or be lax about them.
Researchers investigating the issue have found wide cultural variations in social attitudes. That means populations across the globe do not all follow the same principles. Some societies show little overall willingness to punish, other a greater readiness to do so. Some cultures also fault excesses in generosity in the same way as selfishness.
Codependence?
In multicultural society or in any company aspiring to a global presence, the problem is of integration, and getting members of a crosscultural workforce to work together. What should be the basis of cooperation across communities in society? How are managers and supervisors to get individuals of the majority race and culture to cooperate with other minority groups?
Wilson and Lumsden propose that prosocial behaviour is carried forward by sociobiology. Genes and culture are co-dependent, meaning that they have a mutual influence on one another. The theorists say that ‘gene-culture coevolution’, is crucial to developing the appropriate neural network of the mind.
Thereby, people of different cultures in the same environment can also evolve together to behave in a common fashion. The cultural information driving the process are the stories, beliefs, and ceremonies shared symbolically among the individuals constituting that society.
The rules
Certain primary and secondary "epigenetic rules" control organizing the genetic patterns. These lead to the genomic expression of the “coevolution”:
· Primary epigenetic rules are inflexible. They imposed restrictions in line with the individual’s genetic inheritance. This information shapes the formation of the external senses, and their sensory range. As a result the scope is set from the initial filtering of inputs to perceptual abilities involved in the functioning of vision, hearing, taste, and smell.
· Secondary epigenetic rules selectively transmit variants of cultural information. These develop the unique individual traits and capacities like temperament, personality and beliefs.
Changing cultural opportunities shifts the balance of responses between the primary and secondary rules, and hence exerts important effects on the capacity of the individual mind for self-organization. Thus altruistic behaviour can spread through the population of society irrespective of kinship between groups.
Cont’d 2…games people learn
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