Cultural Competence and Institutional Contradictions: The Hydropower Referendum

Abstract

This study explores a corporate campaign to pass a referendum to enable the development of a hydropower plant in a small Swedish community. In the changing institutional context that grounds this case, the organization needed to develop communicative practices that embodied “cultural competence,” a set of processes identified as critical for the legitimacy and success of business organizations in the emerging global/intersectoral environment. Findings suggest that the MNC's communication strategy captured important components of cultural competence. However, institutional contradictions impeded enactment of the strategy and resulted in delegitimizing paradoxical communication. The results indicate that organizational awareness of institutional change and culturally competent strategy are insufficient without special attention to contradictions and resultant communicative paradoxes embodied within a particular institutional context. The importance of a reflective communication approach that engages contradictions and tensions in the surrounding micro–macro institutional contexts is underscored.

Keywords:

• Institutional Change
• Cultural Competence
• Contradictions
• Paradox
• Organizational Communication

Notes

1. The technical advisors, who are employees of the court, have technical or scientific education. The particular members provide expertise within the area that the case or matter concerns. They are not employees of the court, but work per assignment. Lay judges do not adjudicate in Land and Environmental Courts.

2. The evaluation also included analyses of 205 news and debate articles published in the printed local newspapers, and two surveys studying residents’ attitudes to communication that are not included in this study.

3. Letter accompanying Communication Strategy, July 3, 2006.

4. Interview communication manager, February 13, 2009.

5. Interview communication manager, February 13, 2009.

6. Communication Strategy, 2006.

7. Communication Strategy, 2006.

8. Members of this committe were the communication manager of the hydropower company, the communication consultant, the local information assistant, and the municipal director.

9. Interview information assistant, January 28, 2009.

10. Observation of Communication Committee meeting February 25, 2008.

11. Interview information assistant, January 28, 2009.

12. Interview technical manager, February 16, 2009.

13. Observation of Communication Committee meeting February 25, 2008.

14. The Swedish Institute (2011). Facts about Sweden. Openness. Http://www.sweden.se

15. Observation public meeting, February 19, 2008.

16. Interview communication manager, February 13, 2009.

17. Report “Vojmå River—a study on communication and democracy”, 2009.

18. Interview communication manager, February 13, 2009.

19. Interview communication consultant, January 28, 2009.

20. Interview communication consultant, January 28, 2009.

21. Interview communication consultant, January 28, 2009.

22. Interview project manager, February 13, 2009.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Catrin Johansson

Catrin Johansson (PhD, Uppsala University, 2003) is an Associate Professor at Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall

Cynthia Stohl

Cynthia Stohl (PhD, Purdue, 1982) is Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The manuscript is a collaborative effort based on a research project at Mid Sweden University, initiated in 2009 when the first author was a visiting scholar at the Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara. A previous version of the manuscript was presented at the National Communication Association Annual Convention in San Francisco, CA, in November 2010