Red_Cross

The International Committee of the Red Cross has helped a vast number of people since its establishment. It offers humanitarian aid to people all around the world in spite of country, race and gender and so on, but a main debate that the International Committee of the Red Cross remains “very Swiss” still raises a large number of people’s concern. Finding out an effective and proper way to reinforce the corporate culture and regroup the “very Swiss” appearance seem to be the key priorities of the ICRC since a new plan has implemented in 2007. This paper will firstly focus on analysing some challenges that the ICRC is currently confronting, and then diagnose what the corporate culture is, thirdly indicate how the ICRC’s corporate culture may obstruct or help the implementation of its new plan, and finally examine and illustrate the implications of its human resources management. Challenges The Red Cross is facing various challenges on the aspect of human resources management. In what follows, the paper will explain those challenges from a historical extent. First of all, a point of view that the most of the people who are emigrants remain westerners whereas the policy of immigration since 1992 tended to be more open for all nationalities was argued by Kim and Schneider (2009). This possibly led the public to hold a jaundiced view that the International Committee of the Red Cross presents a “Swiss shape”, which is running in the opposite direction of its humanitarian principle of impartiality. At the second place, Kim and Schneider (2009) also suggested that the ICRC does not always pay a lot of attention on their implementation of operations in terms of the sense of danger and urgency. The managers should hence be highly and well trained and learn how to effectively cooperate and coordinate with every individual. Moreover, because of the matter of fact that the positions of expatriates always change year by year, the ICRC has less time to make staff well trained and fully developed (Kim & Schneider 2009). Thirdly, based on the previous experience of working at the Red Cross, staff pointed out that they usually work without well planning. The staffs were basically trained by interpersonal networks, and their salary, social welfare, health cover, etc., are not too much into the organisation’s consideration. Lastly, Kim and Schneider discovered that men still play a dominant role in the management team of the entire organization. Overall, the current challenges of the ICRC can be concluded in the following points: clarifying its social roles and basic duties; developing and training useful staffs; well considering the human resources development and managing more females into the top management team (Kim & Schneider 2009). The International Committee of the Red Cross Culture It is necessary to clarify what the culture is before any further analysis of the culture of ICRC. This paper tends to apply the “corporate culture” which was mentioned by Peters and Waterman (1982): “The attempt to create one (inspirational/ motivational) vision of what the organisation is and what it stands for’ to argue that why it is important an organisation wishes to shape employees”. Hence the definition of organisation was given and corporate culture restricted what individual, every unit and group should do within a whole party. Furthermore, Kim and Schneider (2009) also claimed that the ICRC is subject to a common heritage of the seven basic principles which have been announced at the 20th session of the commitments in 1965. The seven principles can be seen below: * Humanity (offering helps to the wounded without discrimination) * Impartiality (absolutely led by demands, in disregard of race, nationality, gender, etc.) * Neutrality (no debate of political, religious, racial nature) * Independence (the principle of action in its own) * Voluntary Service (no profit purpose) * Unity (the entire Red Cross organisation is open to everyone) * Universality (sharing responsibilities and equal values to all society) These basic common principles of ICRC administer everybody who is in the Red Cross and somehow finalise people’s thinking and values. I argue that a strong sense of corporate culture dominates the ICRC’s culture. In the following, the reason for defining so will be demonstrated. In addition, the advantages and disadvantages causing by the strong corporate culture to the Red Cross will also be examined. Two factors can be seen as the main reasons why the ICRC’s culture became remarkably strong. These two factors are long-term discussion and history-rooted. To start with, the establishment of the Red Cross dates back to year 1859, when Swiss businessman Henri Dunant aimed to propose strategies to limit the sufferings from the war after witnessing the War of Italian Unification. Since then, the frequency of war all around the world has strengthened the common Red Cross principles during such a long time. Moreover, the basic points of these principles were determined by a plenty of people instead of minority. One of the typical examples is, according to the ICRC Annual report of 2008 (cited in Kim and Schneider 2009), that it was not until December 2005 yet after six years of negotiations, which is a sign of the Red Crystal is one of the symbols. Shaw, Sansbury and Barry (2007) pointed out that because of the fact that culture is rooted and strengthened in most people’s beliefs and values and it has been practiced and perfected for a long time, the ICRC’s culture hence be proved strong. ICRC Culture: assists or hinder the implementation of new strategy On the other hand, even such a strong corporate culture can help the International Committee of the Red Cross to unit people and ensure that their actions comply with these rules and principles, several experts such as Willmott (1993) have begun to doubt that the passive influence of this kind of culture. This can be concluded into a point: shortage of diversity. Kim and Schneider (2009) suggested that the Swiss culture dominated the ICRC’s culture in the beginning, later on it extended to a wide western background culture. Take languages as an example, although English and Lingua Franca have been universally acknowledged in contemporary society, a person who has the knowledge of French will still be given a prior consideration on promoting to top management in ICRC. Furthermore, as hereinabove mentioned that the number of Latin and Asian expatriates begun to ascend while still 92% of whom are westerners. The exclusion of other ethnic groups is also reflected in the choice of its sign, as Israel demanded, using one of its signs has been rejected. Besides, if, externally, we say ICRC maintains a biased view of races outside western society, its internal management issues also include the issue of gender discrimination. As can be seen from the gender balances chart (cited in Kim and Schneider 2009), it is clear to reach a point that males still account the majority of portion in terms of the top management team. However, I rather to believe that this is a kind of discrimination of sex insomuch as that explanation of such female domination have not been offered. Burrel and Dale (2000) suggested that creativity and diversity will be limited or lost while the danger of stiffness may be increased without gender equality and cooperation between men and women. This paper is not going to discuss if the powerful corporate culture is excellent or poor whereas some of the weaknesses of the implementation of corporate culture are given hereinbefore. Furthermore, this paper argues that to some extent, a strong culture is conducive to unite people and to maintain a consistent approach. In the following text, how the ICRC’s culture assists the implementation of new strategy will be examined. The International Committee of the Red Cross designed a series of new strategies, the establishment of a set of management priorities and action plans have also been pointed out by Kim and Schneider (2009): * As its most important task, the Red Cross will constantly develop an “all-victims and all-needs approach” in armed clash. * Establishing a partnership between the National Societies. * The ICRC confirmed its ambition is still the problem of international humanitarian law related to the reference body. * The ICRC will continue to advocate its position as a sternly humanistic, neutral, independent and fair organisation. It is obvious to see how the ICRC’s culture helps the implementation of new strategy. The “all-victims and all-needs approach” illustrates a prevalent viewpoint which is on the basis of one of the seven common principles: universality. Taking this into mind, people sharing this culture will create emotional support and strengthen their convictions while practicing. Kim and Schneider (2009) believed that according to the common principles, uniting people and providing humanitarian assistance are required within ICRC. Implication of Human Resources Management This paper has pointed out the problems of Human Resources Management, including recruitment, training and development, welfare and career development. So some questions on how to improve its management of some of the effects will be given accordingly. At first, as Levy (2005) claimed that the International Committee of the Red Cross is still “very Swiss” appearance due to the majority of foreigners in Switzerland, which reduces the diversity of the ICRC, thus the Red Cross should manage more non-Swiss to participate in the work place. With the internationalisation increasingly developing, more and more of a non-Swiss-style development raise in the meanwhile, we believe this trend must continue to increase, particularly the number of foreign emigrants from Asia, Latin America and Africa. Secondly, due to the problem of less clear content of work for each person, as Kim and Schneider (2009) evaluated that human resources management team should establish specific principles and training methods to make sure that everyone does his or her job properly. Thirdly, the selection of foreign nationals should set up a double standard: the knowledge and experience, because they are essential. Knowledge and experience of the people can have a better understanding of local conditions, how to effectively provide assistance and how to make a better interpersonal communication. Lastly, I believe that the International Committee of the Red Cross established a strong corporate culture is equally necessary. Through the establishment of accountability and ethical standards, the management team should be a good example of their subordinates, and the level of penetration into the culture at all levels, so that everyone will be consistent with each other better (Weber 1922). Conclusion This article has been to understand what challenges are for the ICRC, what its culture is and how it helps implement the new strategy, and how some issues and problems of human resources management. The challenge is to focus on diversification; management does not consider the relatively clear and the staff are lack of career development and welfare. His history and time frames, this paper believes that its culture is powerful and conducive to unite people and their consistency, but it may rise rigidly and reduce divesity. Facing such strong corporate culture and challenges and suggestions, for example, ascending variety of emigrants, clarifying the right work position have been given, Dale, K. & Burrell, G. 2000, ‘What shape are we in' Organization theory and the organized body’ in J. Hassard; R. Holliday, and H. Willmott (Eds.) Body and Organization, Sage, London, pp. 15-30. ICRC. 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