Handout-7-organizational-culture-final.docx

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” -Mark Twain One of the primary responsibilities of strategic leaders is to create and maintain the organizational characteristics that reward and encourage collective effort. Perhaps the most fundamental of these is organizational culture. Organizational Leaders - are confronted with many complex issues during their attempts to generate organizational achievements. A leader's success will depend, to a great extent, upon understanding organizational culture. Many of the problems confronting leaders can be traced to their inability to analyze and evaluate organizational culture. -Schein Difficulties with organizational transformations arise from failures to analyze an organization's existing culture.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE DEFINED "A set of common understanding around which action is organized, finding expression in language whose nuances are peculiar to the group" (Becker and Geer 1960) "A set of understandings or meanings shared by a group of people that are largely tacit among members and are clearly relevant and distinctive to the particular group which are also passed on to the new members" (Louis 1980) "A system of knowledge, standards for perceiving, believing, evaluating and acting.... that serves to relate human communities to their environmental settings" (Allaire and Firsirotu 1984) "The deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are: learned responses to the group's problems of survival in its external environment and its problem of internal organization; are shared by members of an organization" (Schein 1988) "Any social system arising from a network of shared ideologies consisting of two components" (Trice and Beyer 1984) Two components: 1. Substance the network of meaning associated with ideologies, norms and values 2. Forms the practices whereby the meanings are expressed, affirmed and communicated to members

Two major camps that exist in the study of organizational culture 1. First camp views culture as implicit in social life. 2. Second camp represents the view that culture is an explicit social product arising from social interaction either as an intentional or unintentional consequence of behaviour. Also, it is most relevant to the analysis and evaluation of organizational culture and to cultural change strategies.

Three levels of culture according to Schein (1988) 1. Behaviour and Artifacts most visible and observable level of culture, consisting of behaviour patterns and outward manifestation of culture. All may be visible indicators of culture, but difficult to interpret 2. Values underlie to a large extent determine behaviour, but they are not directly observable, as behaviours are. 3. Assumption and beliefs is the deepest level in which underlying assumptions grow out of values, until they become taken for granted and drop out of awareness.

Group or cultural unit- additional aspect that complicate the study of culture in which it "owns" the culture. Organizational Culture is created, maintained or transformed by people. Leaders at the executive level are the principal source of the generation and re-infusion of an organization's ideology, articulation of core values and specification of norms. Organizational Values express preferences for certain behaviours or certain outcomes. Organizational Norms express behaviours accepted by others.

What relevance does organizational culture have to leaders? One of the most perplexing issues facing leaders within the organization can be classified under one rubric, change. Leaders in an organization are being challenged to think differently to: 1. Reconceptualize the role their organization plays 2. Reconceptualize the goad of their organization 3. Reconceptualize how people in their organizations will work together to achive goals The term reconceptualize is emphasized here because the 21st century challenges for strategic leaders in this country involve interpreting that appears to be the same world in radically different ways

ORGANIZATIONAL SUBCULTURE Sociologists Gary Fine and Sherryl Kleinman discuss how distinct society are composite of interacting subcultures rather than a single overarching culture. Organizations consist of subgroups that have specific characteristics and a sense of identification. Within organizations, people can easily classify themselves and others into various social categories or groups based on identification with their primary group work, occupation or professional skills, union member, or age cohort. (Ouchi 1980, and Ashforth and Mael 1989)

Subgroups in organizations can do and create subcultures that compromise specific networks and meaning; yet at the same time, they remain associated with the ideologies and values of the organization’s leadership

A research led by Meryl Louis (louis, posner and Powell 1983) demonstrated the benefits of subgroup interaction to newcomers “learning the ropes” of the jobs. Survey respondents in their first job experience reported that 

were:

Interaction with peers The most important in helping newcomers to become effective employees.



Interaction with their supervisors; and,



Interaction with senior co-workers

“What is the content on interpersonal interaction in work settings?” asked to get a grasp of how cultures are formed or promulgated.

Sonja Sackmann

John VanMaanan and

Found that subcultures were bound to form on

the

basis

of

functional

domains;

principally in their biased knowledge of events in the organization, in their biased explanation

of

cause

and

Steven Barley Discovered that the content of interaction is behavioral ad cognitive in nature.

effect

relationships, and in their patterns of behavior.

Organizations do not, however, always have homogeneous subculture. The explicit social products produced by subcultures within the organizations can be widely diverse and even results in countercultures.

A key to a counterculture’s success is the group’s ability to demonstrate how its idiosyncrasies are consonant with the Countercultures

core ideologies, values and norms of the dominant culture.

Can have both productive unproductive outcomes.

Cultures provide members with a reliable means to interpret a highly ambiguous environment. It is the leader’s ability to specify the features of the environment that are relevant to the organization and then provide the supporting assumptions and rationale for its operating strategies. The leader’s cultural messages should address ambiguities that are beyond the scope of any organizational subculture to explain to employees. Sonja Sackmann found that the top management team “defined and framed the slice of reality in which organizational members behave in their role as employees”

Functional subcultures shared the top manager’s conceptualization: 

How tasks were accomplished in the organization



How employees could advance



The ways employees related to each other



The way adaptation and change were accomplished



How new knowledge was acquired and perpetuated

Leaders should recognize that their cultural messages should specifically address cultural ambiguities associated with subculture practices within the organization, and limit their attempts to distinctions that are important to subculture’s identities.

CULTURAL FORMS 

According to Trice, cultural forms functions as the linking mechanism by which network of understanding develop among employees.

and

   

  

act as a medium for communicating ideologies, values and norms enable leaders to transmit messages address the emotional aspects of organizations Janice Beyer and Harrison Trice: Cultural Forms not only aid sense-making through the meanings they convey; they also aid the sense-making process through the emotional reassurances they provide that help people persist in their coping efforts. Forms provide a concrete anchoring point, even if the meaning they carry are vague and only imperfectly transmitted. Also, many cultural forms involve the expression of emotion and, by this ventine of emotions, help people to cope with stress. Federal Agencies are replete with cultural forms that serve these purposes. Challenges of strategic leaders: creating and orchestrating cultural forms that can foster change and have longevity beyond their tenure. Cultural Forms that have longevity by their nature such as rites and ceremonies reaffirm the organization's core ideologies, values and norms.

CULTURE AND THE NEW EMPLOYEE – COMMUNICATING THE CULTURE How can leaders detect the desirable and undesirable characteristics of organizational culture? Productive cultural change will occur if leaders correctly analyze the organization’s existing culture, and evaluate it against the cultural attributes needed to achieve strategic objectives.

1. Leaders must first possess a clear understanding of the strategic objectives for their organization and identify the actions needed to reach those objectives. 2. Conduct an analysis of the organization’s existing ideologies, values and norms. a. Are existing explanations of cause and effect relationships, and acceptable beliefs and behaviors applicable to the organization’s achievement of strategic objectives? b. Are organizational members facing ambiguities about the external environment and internal work processes that can only be clarified by organizational leadership?

Formulating Strategies for Transforming Cultures in Organizations Strategic Leadership needs to be transformational if it is to serve the organization Transformational Leadership     

Must operate from a foundation of high morality and ethical practices Have a fundamental understanding of the highly complex factors that support Must personally act in accord with productive values and beliefs They must teach others to do the same Must promulgate the culture

The key method strategy leaders should follow to transform cultures is to teach symbolically. 

Involves the artful crafting of: new stories, new symbols, new traditions, and new humor.

Culture is deep-seated and difficult to change, but leaders can influence or manage an organization’s culture. Cultural change isn’t easy, and it cannot be done rapidly, but leaders can have an effect on culture. Specific steps leaders can employ (according to Schein):      

What leaders pay attention to, measure and control? Where do you think people will focus their effort once it becomes accepted that a slick presentation is what the leaders are looking for? Leader’s reactions to critical incidents and organizational crises. Deliberate role modeling, teaching and coaching. Criteria for allocation of rewards and status. Criteria for recruitment, selection, promotion and retirement.

The military academies are organizations which change over one fourth of their membership every year, which should provide an opportunity for changes to the organizational culture as new members are brought in. The catch is, however, is that the socialization of those new members rests in the hands of those who are already part of the existing culture. How could the military academics make systemic culture changes not negated by the socialization process new members go through? 

Organizational design and structure.

Modifying the organization’s basic structure may be a way of changing the existing norms, and hence the culture. For example, a culture of mistrust between the leaders and the members of an organization may be exacerbated by a “line” structure that discourages vertical communication. 

Organizational systems and procedures.

The simplest definition of culture is “that’s the way we do things around here.” Routines or procedures can become so embedded that they become part of the culture, and changing the culture necessitates changing those routines. we can all think of organizations where a weekly or month meeting takes on a life of its own, becomes more formalized, lengthy, and elaborate, and becomes the only way information moves within the organization. Changing the culture to improve communication may only be possible by changing the meeting procedures or eliminating the meetings altogether. 

Design of physical space, facades, and buildings.

The impact of the design of buildings on culture can easily be illustrated by considering the executive perks in an organization 

Stories about important events and people.

This is a way of perpetuating culture in an organization, in that it helps define and solidify the organization’s identity. By what events and stories they emphasize, leaders influence that identity. 

Formal statements of organizational philosophy, creeds, and charts.

This is the way leaders most often try to influence their organizations, and encompasses the vision or mission statement and statement of the organization’s (or the leader’s) values and philosophy. By themselves, however, formal statements will have little effect on the organization’s culture. They must be linked to actions to affect culture.