Mediation: Is There a More Promising Future? The Case of the Cairo Business Community

Abstract

In an era of economic distress, some organizations have found refuge and growth potential in cooperation. Mediation, a highly recommended cooperative concept, has been enabled in certain countries but not all. Some applications lacked local cultural support making it, despite government efforts, a failure to launch. In this article, we investigate attempts to launch mediation in the Cairo Business Community (CBC). This study enabled us to revisit how Egyptian culture was prototyped by Hofstede and to question its representativeness. Hofstede has consistently described Egyptian culture as being highly cooperative / collectivist but our observations indicate that this culture is now more of an individualistic / competitive type, due to the tremendous economic difficulties that Egyptian society is going through. These difficulties and their impact on culture are at the heart of the explanation of the failure to launch mediation in the CBC.