Cultural Identity Value Intersectionality Calculous (CIVIC) An inductive study of British Army cultural sensemaking

Inductive PhD study, sponsored by the British Army and researched by a serving officer, to develop understandings of cultural value intersections within British Army organisations, from the internal, grounded perspectives of people that live that experience. The project application of an interpretivist social constructionist philosophy enabled the combination of Pike’s (1982) emic theory, that the people inhabiting a culture are best placed to understand it, with Crenshaw’s (1994) idea of interlocking power systems, and rejection of the analytical treatment of cultural axis in isolation, to develop Cultural Identity Value Intersectionality Calculous (CIVIC) as a sensemaking framework. Using the inductive reasoning of grounded theory, the project’s participatory research design enabled the audience-centric development of CIVIC as an intuitively usable framework for the emic sensemaking of audiences’ own Identity Value ‘Theories of Action’ and say/do gaps (Argyris & Schon, 1978). This addresses a gap in contemporary British Army capabilities, enabling volunteer participants to articulate their lived-experiences of organisational cultural dynamics (Schein & Schein, 2017) in terms of risks (Gigerenzer, 2002) and behaviour motivations (Atkins, West & Michie, 2014), within anthro-complexity (Snowden, 2020), to inform leadership initiatives and develop the force. This work highlights the importance of cultural intersectionality within the British Army, from the perspectives of the soldiers with that organisational lived-experience. It consequently delivers: (1.) Approach. An audience-centric risk-based approach to the sensemaking of cultural intersectionality; (2.) Method. A straight-forward, risk calculous method of systemic reasoning, using CIVIC to score participants’ cultural risks and build their agency for positive change; (3.) Knowledge-base. A thematic knowledge-base of qualitative evidence from the workforce grounded perspectives. This will enable the British Army leadership of tomorrow to leverage the best from a better informed, proactive, and contextually integrated future force, tackling cultural misconceptions and enabling competitive advantage within anthro complexity, through empowered organisational agency.