How do you create a sustainable business while incorporating contrasting cultural identities as part of the organization?
For the past two weeks, a group of fellows visiting Columbia Business School grappled with these questions through the lens of Jewish and Muslim cultural history as part of the Ariane de Rothschild Fellows Program: Dialogue & Social Entrepreneurship. The program concludes today.
The fellowship, which is in its first year, is a blend of humanities and management training between the University of Cambridge, King’s College Cambridge and Columbia Business School’s Executive Education. The group of 28 Fellows is comprised of mainly Jewish and Muslim social entrepreneurs from the U.S., France and the U.K.
“The goal was to create a training program that addressed social challenges while building bridges,” says Firoz Ladak, executive director of The Edmond & Benjamin de Rothschild Foundation, the program’s sponsor. “We wanted to develop and provide practical tools for business development and work across ethnicities, nationalities and religion.”
Last Friday’s presentation by Ed Kessler, director of the Centre for Muslim-Jewish Relations at Cambridge, put the concept into action.
“What impact does it have on your work as a social entrepreneur when cultural, ethnic and religious identities begin to blur?” Kessler asked the group of fellows.
Changing the language and terminology used in an organization’s communications one fellow suggested. Another fellow said that an organization must accept, as part of its mission, that members will be part of multiple institutions.
What challenges do you see for cultural or religious organizations? Please leave a comment.
Kessler, in his lively lecture, suggested that identity conflict can be resolved when a group can successfully “renovate memory for positive reasons rather than negative reasons.” He used London’s Brick Lane Mosque, which has been at times a church, synagogue and is now a mosque, as an example of an organization that had used its past history in a progressive way.
Ladak, whose own background is in investment banking, emphasized that the program is about blending both cultural and bottom line objectives.
"We’re engaging beyond tolerance,” Ladak said. “It is about creating a new paradigm and harnessing what is best from the worlds of social entrepreneurship, cross-cultural engagement and academia.”
Professor Bruce Kogut, faculty leader for Columbia Business School’s participation in the program, added “The program is teaching the skills they need to use the power of their social values and the power of the market to further their goals.”
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