CIICPD 2023

between departments” has been reinforcing another trend constraining the company diversity strategies and goals, a growing “monoculture”, especially in recent years. Not only an aversion to innovations within the company’s organisational units or departments, but also an aversion to products, research or technologies outside of the company was vigorously debated within the training series. This negative perception was often caused by fierce competition in the automotive industry, as seen in the following remark: I work in a technical department where most of the employees are very proud of their work. That is why there is a negative attitude towards other brands, especially Hyundai. Anything associated with that brand is bad, even though some people may like it. Feelings of patriotism or loyalty to the company or one of its departments, i.e. being proud of the local culture, the brand and its image, or bonding with colleagues from work, was one of the reasons the participants mentioned when defending their attitudes. For example, one of the participants admitted to making patriotic decisions at a national level explaining: “ When I go shopping, I prefer to buy products made in the Czech Republic.” Another one raised the point of observing similar patterns within the VW Group reiterating that “everything produced and invented in the [Volkswagen] group is the best”. While others may tend to refuse to accept external solutions based on the not-invented here bias, one participant laid down a practical reason claiming to be reserved toward others’ solutions for self-protection. While accepting the need to be “more careful about information he gets from someone outside of their department or team”, he explained that he “ trusts the information he receives from his team more than if he gets it from someone else” because he simply knows how the information was processed and sees it “better to have it verified” . An unwillingness to learn from and accept others’ solutions will more likely affect well-established companies and their employees rather than start-ups. One of the reasons could be the robust organisational structure and their established routines. Global competition, however, requires companies to be more dynamic, open-minded and flexible to keep pace with development. And indeed, many of the managers from the training realised the limitations the not-invented-here bias poses, admitting being aware they sometimes “live in a bubble” or may “be wrong” in their attitudes when restraining themselves from external resources. They also proved awareness of the fact that ignoring progress in the external world has a negative impact on innovation, may lead to a lack of improvements and stagnation in their organisation, and may even become costly. Having discussed the consequences of the not-invented-here bias, some of the participating managers admitted that they tend to reject ideas originating from outside “too quickly” . On the other hand, the participants generally concluded that the current times require both: a willingness to adopt and an ability to adjust to changes, i.e. good change management utilising the modern “soft methods” able to “beat the bias” . Indeed, as one of them pointed out, ŠA has been far from the top-rated global companies as some people might have presumed. Therefore, their employees have to learn to be open to

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