Organization culture

1. What is organization culture ?

Organizational culture is an idea in the field of Organizational
studies and management which describes the psychology, attitudes, experiences, beliefs and
values (personal and cultural values) of an organization. It has been defined as "the specific
collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and
that control the way they interact with each other and withstakeholders outside the
organization
organizational values also known as "beliefs and ideas about what kinds of goals members
of an organization should pursue and ideas about the appropriate kinds or standards of
behavior organizational members should use to achieve these goals. From organizational
values develop organizational norms, guidelines or expectations that prescribe appropriate
kinds of behavior by employees in particular situations and control the behavior of
organizational members towards one another.
Organizational culture is not the same as corporate culture. It is wider and deeper concepts,
something that an organization 'is' rather than what it 'has' (according to Buchanan and
Huczynski) Organizational behaviour: an introductory text" A Huczynski, DA Buchanan -
2007 - Financial Times/Prentice Hall}.
They may wish to impose corporate values and standards of behavior that specifically reflect
the objectives of the organization. In addition, there will also be an extant internal culture
within the workforce. Work-groups within the organization have their own behavioral quirks
and interactions which, to an extent, affect the whole system. Roger Harrison's four-culture
typology, and adapted by Charles Handy, suggests that unlike organizational culture,
corporate culture can be 'imported'. For example, computer technicians will have expertise,
language and behaviors gained independently of the organization, but their presence can
influence the culture of the organization as a whole.
The Blame culture This culture cultivates distrust and fear, people blame each other to avoid
being reprimanded or put down, this results in no new ideas or personal initiative because people
don’t want to risk being wrong.
Multi-directional culture This culture cultivates minimized cross-department
communication and cooperation. Loyalty is only to specific groups (departments). Each department
becomes a clique and is often critical of other departments which in turn creates lots of gossip. The
lack of cooperation and Multi-Direction is manifested in the organization's inefficiency.

Live and let live culture This culture is Complacency, it manifests Mental Stagnation and Low
Creativity. People here have little future vision and have given up their passion. There is average
cooperation and communication, and things do work, but they do not grow. People have developed
their personal relationships and decided who to stay away from, there is not much left to learn.
Brand congruent culture People in this culture believe in the product or service of the
organization, they feel good about what their company is trying to achieve and cooperate to achieve
it. People here are passionate and seem to have similar goals in the organisation. They use personal
resources to actively solve problems and while they don’t always accept the actions of management
or others around them, they see their job as important. Most everyone in this culture is operating at
the level of Group.
Leadership enriched culture People view the organization as an extension of themselves,
they feel good about what they personally achieve through the organization and have exceptional
Cooperation. Individual goals are aligned with the goals of the organization and people will do what
it takes to make things happen. As a group, the organization is more like family providing personal
fulfillment which often transcends ego so people are consistently bringing out the best in each other.
In this culture, Leaders do not develop followers, but develop other leaders. Most everyone in this
culture is operating at the level of Organization.

Carmazzi's model requires application of his Directive Communication psychology to evolve the
culture. While the idea of having a Leadership Enriched organization is inspirational, it would
require substantial Leadership resources to develop. The concept of Evolving the culture assumes
that "Every Individual in the organization wants to do a good job", and the behaviours that result in
poor performance are manifestations of psychology the group or organization has created through
policies, leadership and poor communication.

Strong/weak cultures
Strong culture is said to exist where staff respond to stimulus because of their alignment to
organizational values. In such environments, strong cultures help firms operate like well-oiled
machines, cruising along with outstanding execution and perhaps minor tweaking of existing
procedures here and there.[3]

Conversely, there is weak culture where there is little alignment with organizational values and
control must be exercised through extensive procedures and bureaucracy.

Where culture is strong—people do things because they believe it is the right thing to do—there is a
risk of another phenomenon,Groupthink. "Groupthink" was described by Irving L. Janis. He defined
it as "...a quick and easy way to refer to a mode of thinking that people engage when they are deeply
involved in a cohesive ingroup, when members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to
realistically appraise alternatives of action." This is a state where people, even if they have different
ideas, do not challenge organizational thinking, and therefore there is a reduced capacity for
innovative thoughts. This could occur, for example, where there is heavy reliance on a central
charismatic figure in the organization, or where there is an evangelical belief in the organization’s
values, or also in groups where a friendly climate is at the base of their identity (avoidance of
conflict). In fact group think is very common, it happens all the time, in almost every group.
Members that are defiant are often turned down or seen as a negative influence by the rest of the
group, because they bring conflict.

Innovative organizations need individuals who are prepared to challenge the status quo—be it
groupthink or bureaucracy, and also need procedures to implement new ideas effectively.

Deal and Kennedy

Deal and Kennedy[5] defined organizational culture as the way things get done around here. They
measured organizations in respect of:

 Feedback –quick feedback means an instant response. This could be in monetary terms,
but could also be seen in other ways, such as the impact of a great save in a soccer match.
 Risk - represents the degree of uncertainty in the organization’s activities.

Using these parameters, they were able to suggest four classifications of organizational culture:

 The Tough-Guy Macho Culture. Feedback is quick and the rewards are high.
This often applies to fast moving financial activities such as brokerage, but could also apply to a
police force, or athletes competing in team sports. This can be a very stressful culture in which to
operate.
 The Work Hard/Play Hard Culture is characterized by few risks being taken,
all with rapid feedback. This is typical in large organizations, which strive for high quality
customer service. It is often characterized by team meetings, jargon and buzzwords.
 The Bet your Company Culture, where big stakes decisions are taken, but it
may be years before the results are known. Typically, these might involve development or
exploration projects, which take years to come to fruition, such as oil prospecting or military
aviation.
 The Process Culture occurs in organizations where there is little or no feedback.
People become bogged down with how things are done not with what is to be achieved. This is
often associated with bureaucracies. While it is easy to criticize these cultures for being overly
cautious or bogged down in red tape, they do produce consistent results, which is ideal in, for
example, public services.
Organizational culture and change
There are a number of methodologies specifically dedicated to organizational culture change such
as Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline andArthur F Carmazzi's Directive Communication. These are also a
variety of psychological approaches that have been developed into a system for specific outcomes
such as the Fifth Discipline’s “learning organization” or Directive Communication’s “corporate
culture evolution.” Ideas and strategies, on the other hand, seem to vary according to particular
influences that affect culture.

Burman and Evans (2008) argue that it is 'leadership' that affects culture rather than 'management',
and describe the difference[9]. When one wants to change an aspect of the culture of an organization
one has to keep in consideration that this is a long term project. Corporate culture is something that is
very hard to change and employees need time to get used to the new way of organizing. For
companies with a very strong and specific culture it will be even harder to change.

Cummings & Worley (2005, p. 491 – 492) give the following six guidelines for cultural change,
these changes are in line with the eight distinct stages mentioned by Kotter (1995, p. 2)3:

1. Formulate a clear strategic vision (stage 1,2 & 3 of Kotter, 1995, p. 2)

In order to make a cultural change effective a clear vision of the firm’s new strategy, shared
values and behaviours is needed. This vision provides the intention and direction for the culture
change (Cummings & Worley, 2005, p.490).

2. Display Top-management commitment (stage 4 of Kotter, 1995, p. 2)

It is very important to keep in mind that culture change must be managed from the top of
the organization, as willingness to change of the senior management is an important
indicator (Cummings & Worley, 2005, page 490). The top of the organization should be
very much in favour of the change in order to actually implement the change in the rest of
the organization. De Caluwé & Vermaak (2004, p 9) provide a framework with five
different ways of thinking about change.

3. Model culture change at the highest level (stage 5 of Kotter, 1995, p. 2)

In order to show that the management team is in favour of the change, the change has
to be notable at first at this level. The behaviour of the management needs to
symbolize the kinds of values and behaviours that should be realized in the rest of the
company. It is important that the management shows the strengths of the current
culture as well, it must be made clear that the current organizational does not need
radical changes, but just a few adjustments. (See for more: (Deal & Kennedy, 1982;
Sathe, 1983; Schall; 1983; Weick, 1985; DiTomaso, 1987)

4. Modify the organization to support organizational change

 The fourth step is to modify the organization to support organizational change.

5. Select and socialize newcomers and terminate deviants (stage 7 & 8 of Kotter, 1995, p. 2)
A way to implement a culture is to connect it to organizational membership,
people can be selected and terminate in terms of their fit with the new
culture (Cummings & Worley, 2005, p. 491).

6. Develop ethical and legal sensitivity

Changes in culture can lead to tensions between organizational and individual interests,
which can result in ethical and legal problems for practitioners. This is particularly
relevant for changes in employee integrity, control, equitable treatment and job security
(Cummings & Worley, 2005, p. 491).

Change of culture in the organizations is very important and inevitable. Culture

innovations is bound to be because it entails introducing something new and substantially
different from what prevails in existing cultures. Cultural innovation[10] is bound to be
more difficult than cultural maintenance. People often resist changes hence it is the duty
of the management to convince people that likely gain will outweigh the losses. Besides
institutionalization, deification is another process that tends to occur in strongly
developed organizational cultures. The organization itself may come to be regarded as
precious in itself, as a source of pride, and in some sense unique. Organizational members
begin to feel a strong bond with it that transcends material returns given by the
organization, and they begin to identify with in. The organization turns into a sort of clan.

Entrepreneurial culture

Stephen McGuire[11] defined and validated a model of organizational culture that predicts
revenue from new sources. An Entrepreneurial Organizational Culture (EOC) is a system
of shared values, beliefs and norms of members of an organization, including valuing
creativity and tolerance of creative people, believing that innovating and seizing market
opportunities are appropriate behaviors to deal with problems of survival and prosperity,
environmental uncertainty, and competitors’ threats, and expecting organizational
members to behave accordingly.

Elements of Entrepreneurial Culture

 People and enpowerment focused

 Value creation through innovation and change
 Attention to the basics
 Hands-on management
 Doing the right thing
  Freedom to grow and to fail
 Commitment and personal responsibility
 Emphasis on the future[12]

Critical views

Writers from Critical management studies have tended to express skepticism about the
functionalist and unitarist views of culture put forward by mainstream management thinkers.
Whilst not necessarily denying that organizations are cultural phenomena, they would stress the
ways in which cultural assumptions can stifle dissent and reproduce management propaganda and
ideology. After all, it would be naive to believe that a single culture exists in all organizations, or
that cultural engineering will reflect the interests of all stakeholders within an organization. In
any case, Parker[13] has suggested that many of the assumptions of those putting forward theories
of organizational culture are not new. They reflect a long-standing tension between cultural and
structural (or informal and formal) versions of what organizations are. Further, it is perfectly
reasonable to suggest that complex organizations might have many cultures, and that such sub-
cultures might overlap and contradict each other. The neat typologies of cultural forms found in
textbooks rarely acknowledge such complexities, or the various economic contradictions that
exist in capitalist organizations.

One of the strongest and widely recognised criticisms of theories that attempt to categorize
or 'pigeonhole' organizational culture is that put forward by Linda Smircich. She uses the
metaphor of a plant root to represent culture, describing that it drives organizations rather than
vice versa. Organizations are the product of organizational culture, we are unaware of how it
shapes behaviour and interaction (also recognised through Scheins (2002) underlying
assumptions) and so how can we categorize it and define what it is?

Organizational communication perspective on culture

The organizational communication perspective on culture is divided into three areas:

 Traditionalism: Views culture through objective things such as stories, rituals,

and symbols
 Interpretivism: Views culture through a network of shared meanings
(organization members sharing subjective meanings)
 Critical-Interpretivism: Views culture through a network of shared
meanings as well as the power struggles created by a similar network of competing meanings
 There are many different types of communication that contribute in creating an
organizational culture:

Mergers, organizational culture, and cultural leadership

One of the biggest obstacles in the way of the merging of two organizations is
organizational culture. Each organization has its own unique culture and most often, when
brought together, these cultures clash. When mergers fail employees point to issues such as
identity, communication problems, human resources problems, ego clashes, and inter-group
conflicts, which all fall under the category of “cultural differences”. One way to combat such
difficulties is through cultural leadership. Organizational leaders must also be cultural leaders
and help facilitate the change from the two old cultures into the one new culture. This is done
through cultural innovation followed by cultural maintenance.

 Cultural innovation includes:

 Creating a new culture: recognizing past cultural differences and setting realistic
expectations for change
 Changing the culture: weakening and replacing the old cultures
 Cultural maintenance includes:
 Integrating the new culture: reconciling the differences between the old cultures and
the new one
 Embodying the new culture: Establishing, affirming, and keeping the new culture