“One of the things that we identify around culture is that if we’re not sufficiently attentive on an ongoing basis, then what we call ‘shadow cultures’ emerge – those things which become custom and practice by mistake, because we weren’t alive to them and didn’t challenge them when they first arrived.”
According to Humphreys, shadow cultures run in parallel to an organisation’s existing culture, but largely go unacknowledged or unopposed. They are the behaviours displayed by colleagues, or the privileges conferred on particular members of staff, which demonstrate “an alternative set of rules are being used”.
In the case of RZIM, this might include Zacharias’ use of a personal phone and email address instead of official work ones, or the encrypted BlackBerry he owned, from which messages were not retrievable once deleted. These kinds of “low level” concerns can be a subtle indicator of deeper organisational health issues, warns Humphreys. They should be called out in an appropriate way and “without fear of retribution or penalty”.