Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
Does a corporate name change equal a cultural change?
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By Jason Lim
On Aug. 27, Daum and KakaoTalk shareholders approved a merger of the two companies into a new one that will be called “DaumKakao.” Most analysts believe that this merger is a “no-brainer,” as KakaoTalk’s leading mobile presence in Korea could act as a pipeline for Daum’s content and ads to reach those who are increasingly moving to smartphones and tablets as their main gateway to the Internet.
Bloomberg quotes Ahn Jae-min, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities Co., who wrote, “Daum’s value as an Internet portal, its search engine, display advertisement and game businesses create a considerable synergy effect with Kakao’s mobile messenger and mobile service. This will enable them to gain considerable influence over South Korea’s Internet portal market, which has been dominated by Naver for the past decade.”
But it’s pretty apparent that reclaiming the Korean market is not the endgame. Korea’s already saturated and rapidly aging market doesn’t provide the needed growth potential. DaumKakao wants to go global. And it is far behind the curve at this point, behind the likes of Naver’s Line with its 400 million users compared to KakaoTalk’s 145 million.
That’s why it’s interesting to note that DaumKakao recently announced that the new company would require all its employees to use English names (whatever that means) for intra-company communication. In other words, the employees will have to choose and call one another by their respective English names. In fact, KakaoTalk already does this, with its chairman of the board going by the name of Brian and its CEO going by Vino. By the way, isn’t Vino Italian?
In any case, according to DaumKakao, this policy will represent a horizontal communication regime that will “greatly enhance collaboration and increase personal initiative.”
But if English names are the solution, then what was the problem? It’s not clear from DaumKakao’s public pronouncements, but if we reverse engineer what it said so far, then we can guess that DaumKakao’s leadership believes that it needs to encourage a culture that’s less rigid, hierarchical and position-based into one that’s more fluid, matrixed and interest-based. Not to put words into their mouths, but we can safely guess that company leaders want an organizational culture where out-of-the-box thinking and innovation are encouraged and nurtured, rather than seen as a threat.
But if cultural change is the goal, then can the use of English names really be an effective agent of change? Maybe.
Korean names are so position-based in that people call each other by the roles they play in the organizational context that’s in play. For example, you are Deputy Director Kim rather than Kim Chul-soo. You are known and called by your title. At home, a wife calls her husband “Daddy” if the couple has children, or uses some other term of endearment reserved exclusively for wife and husband; she won’t usually call him by his name (unless she’s angry at him).
Since names are so embedded into predefined roles based on organizational hierarchy that’s inevitably pyramidal, communication behaviors are just as codified. In other words, Korean names trigger a cultural norm that’s necessarily rigid and “inside the box.”
Insofar as English names can give employees a conscious pause before falling into the default cultural norm, DaumKakao’s experiment definitely bears watching. However, names are not the only trigger for cultural norms. As anyone who has worked in Korea can attest, the Korean language has multiple levels of formality depending on the who, what, where, when and how of a situation. It’s not just the endings of words. It’s the actual word and sentence structure that change depending on with whom you are communicating.
That raises the question: If you call someone by their English name but then follow up with the formal language that just as effectively defines the hierarchy and associated norms of behavior, what have you really changed?
But if you do away with the formal language and accepted syntax altogether, then how would Koreans communicate with one another in a professional setting? You would be asking them to relearn a whole new way of engaging with one another outside of their native cultural context. That isn’t workable either.
It’s apparent that English names are not it by themselves. It’s probably just a single element in DaumKakao’s bigger strategy for cultural change that it believes is critical in getting it to the next level on a global stage.
The risk is that people can only take so much change at once. You are already asking people to adapt to the merger of two companies with its attendant tensions and ambiguities. Then you are asking people to change how they are called and identified, something that goes to the heart of self-identity and even self-worth. As they are adapting to huge changes, you are also asking them to perform at an even higher level and succeed against the world’s best competition from the starting gate.
I am not saying that it can’t be done. But it’s not going to be easy.
Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. He can be reached at jasonlim@msn. com, facebook. com/jasonlimkoreatimes and @jasonlim2012.