Windhorse And The Fwbo Community

In 1967, Dennis Lingwood, an Englishman otherwise known as Sangharakshita, was influenced by the teaching of Buddha and decided to establish a community called Friends of Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) in order to spread these teachings with others (Dhaka, et al., 2015). With the FWBO community experiencing growth and strong devotion, they soon developed Windhorse in 1980, which was “a London-based giftware company with the intent to make its work a context for spiritual practice and to use its profits a means to fund social causes” (2015). This organization started off as a “right livelihood” opportunity for the FWBO community by providing them with the ability to earn a living as long as it did “not violate Buddhism’s ‘moral precepts’: abstaining

And soon, “a growing tension was felt between running a successful business and promoting the welfare of those involved” (2015). According to our textbook for this course, it is important for a culturally diverse workforce to maintain focused on mutual goals and develope a positive diversity climate which in turn could lead to an increase in production and reduce the feeling of cultural discrimination (Robbins and Judge 2015). Because Windhorse was comprised of both Buddhist and non-Buddhist members, it created a diversity consisting of people from all around the world who could contribute different ideas and perspectives. If the community members of Windhorse would have recognized the positivity within their new diverse workplace, they wouldn’t have faced difficulties with finding skilled workers and losing the skilled workers they already

However, there is a similar trend where the increasing growth and success of the organization lead to “greater work pressure and people starting to feel overburdened” (Dhaka, et al., 2015). “Business operations started gaining a higher priority over the well-being and integrity of people” and the overall culture was becoming unhealthy (2015). Chapter 18 describes an organization’s resistance to change as not only coming from lower levels of the organization, but with higher-level managers who are also resistant to change (Robbins and Judge 2015). Organizations often “see change as threatening” and tend to “latch onto whatever data they can find that suggest they are okay and don’t need to change” (2015). However, there are a few tactics recommended in the book that can assist with overcoming this resistance to change: communication, building support and commitment, and developing positive relationships (2015). Windhorse could have overcome this challenge by first communicating their reasoning behind changes that were occurring within the workplace as well as giving the members an opportunity to express their concerns and contribute ideas for improvements. Secondly, Windhorse could have emphasized their community member’s commitment to the organization by helping them to emotionally commit to the challenges that they would soon be faced with. Lastly, Windhorse could have continued to build