There is one word that has stayed with me since writing my recent article on organizational culture: cultivate. I chose it deliberately because I realized that many of the words we commonly use to describe organizational change no longer capture what organizational culture actually is. We often speak about implementing change, embedding values, or measuring culture, as though culture were something that could be designed, delivered, and completed. My own experience, both in multinational organizations and within higher education, has led me to a different understanding. Organizational culture has always seemed to me far more dynamic and profoundly human. It develops through relationships, evolves as people and organizations evolve, and reflects the countless ways we respond to one another over time. For me, cultivation better captures this reality because it reminds us that positive academic cultures are never finished. They require continual attention, collective responsibility, and a willingness to nurture something that must grow, adapt, and ultimately endure.
The metaphor of cultivation has also reshaped how I think about organizational change. When we cultivate a garden, we understand that growth cannot be commanded. We can prepare the conditions, nurture new possibilities, remove barriers, and care for what has been planted, but we cannot simply demand that everything flourish overnight. Organizational culture feels remarkably similar. Universities can develop ambitious strategies, thoughtful policies, and inspiring visions, yet these alone cannot guarantee the kind of culture they hope to create. Equally, cultures rarely deteriorate or improve in a single event. They evolve gradually through the accumulation of everyday experiences, relationships, and shared practices. This is why I find cultivation such a hopeful metaphor. It reminds me that enduring organizational change requires patience without encouraging complacency. It acknowledges that meaningful transformation unfolds over time through shared commitment, reflection, and care, creating cultures capable not only of flourishing but also of enduring.
Thinking about cultivation has also prompted me to reflect more deeply on the role of care in organizational life. Too often, care is portrayed as soft, optional, or somehow separate from academic excellence. I have never accepted this distinction. Throughout my career, I have come to see care not as the opposite of rigor, but as one of the conditions that enables rigor to thrive. Care creates environments where people feel trusted to ask difficult questions, challenge assumptions, admit uncertainty, and pursue ambitious ideas. It encourages collaboration rather than unnecessary competition and dialogue rather than defensiveness. In this sense, care is not simply an interpersonal quality demonstrated by a few compassionate individuals. It is an organizing principle that shapes how academic communities learn, work, and grow together. Cultures of care are therefore not created by avoiding challenge; they are created by ensuring that challenge takes place within relationships characterized by trust, respect, and a shared commitment to helping both people and scholarship flourish.
This understanding continues to shape both my work and Positive Academia’s aspirations. My vision has never been to create universities that are simply happier or more comfortable places to work. Rather, it is to contribute to academic communities where people and scholarship flourish together and where organizational cultures can endure periods of change, uncertainty, and complexity. Such cultures cannot be created through institutional reform alone, nor can they rely solely on the goodwill of individuals. They emerge when organizational structures and everyday human actions reinforce one another, building trust, a sense of belonging, and a shared purpose over time. Every university is already cultivating a particular kind of culture, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The question is therefore not whether culture is changing, because it always is. The more important question is what we are helping it become. Perhaps cultivating positive academic cultures begins not by asking what our universities should become tomorrow, but by reflecting on what we are nurturing together today, so that our academic communities can continue to flourish and endure.