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Organisational Culture

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Organisational CultureObjectives:• Assignment One

• Review of course: Why are we doing this?

– How can different perspectives help me in the future?

• Introduce the concepts of culture, norms and values.

• Discuss how these concepts relate to organisations.

• Distinguish between contemporary theoretical approaches to organisational culture– Modern – Symbolic interpretive– Critical theory– Postmodern

Assignment OneThe Question To Be Answered:

'What managers most often want to know about their organization's culture is how to change it......But what is recommended to managers on the basis of culture theory differs markedly according to the perspectives adopted' (Hatch and Cunliffe, 2013: 185).

Choose two of the four perspectives and discuss their different views on organisational culture and how their advice to managers who are seeking to influence organisational culture might be different.

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Assignment OneTwo questions to answer:

•Why and how do each perspective provide different insights into the nature of organisational culture?

•How do the insights of each perspective lead to different recommendations to managers on how they might go about changing organisational culture?

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Assignment One• You must focus explicitly on the key issues identified in the

question.

• You must consider at least two of the four perspectives.

 • You must make use of required readings.

 • A failure to follow this and the instructions in the assignment guide

will have a significant negative impact on your marks.

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Why are we doing this?

How will these four perspectives help me in the future?

Rewind: Week OneWhat is this course about?Upon Successful Completion of the course you will be able to:

 • Identify, understand and interpret a range of organisational theories and

concepts that contribute to the management of contemporary organisations 

 • Critically evaluate theories and practices in organisations to support decisions

and actions and select and apply relevant theories to develop solutions to problems in contemporary organisations

 • Understand, critically discuss and apply key organisational theories to issues

arising from diverse cultural, economic, historical, philosophical and social and environmental contexts

 • Communicate ideas, intentions and outcomes clearly to a variety of audiences

Fast-forward: 5 Years Scenario:

You have secured a position as a department manager.

First day on the job you learn:

– The company is in financial difficulties.

– Your department is seen as underperforming.

– Former management team of the department resigned. Some department members tell you they resigned due to their treatment from senior management.

– Senior management of the company tell you the ‘culture’ of the department is the problem and that it will have to be dealt with as a matter of priority.

OT to the rescue?

What is organisational culture?

How should I choose to think about:– Organisational culture?– Senior Management’s position?– The department?– My role in the department?

What are the implications of different perspectives for making different management decisions?

What is Culture?

The totality of learned ideas, values, knowledge, normative behaviours,

rules and customs shared and passed down by a group of people through language, symbols and artifacts.

Culture

Norms and ValuesNorm:

– A common expectation and/or prescription for social behaviour within a given context.

Values:– The central beliefs and purposes of an

individual, group of individuals, organisation or society.

Organisational Culture‘comprises the deep, basic assumptions and beliefs, as well as the shared values, that define organisational membership, as well as the members’ habitual ways of making decisions, and presenting themselves and their organisation to those who come into contact with it’ (Clegg, Kornberger and Pitsis, 2008: 224).

Schein’s Levels of Organisational Culture - Modernist

Three Components of Culture in Organisations

Level 1: Artifacts: Visible organisational features (buildings, uniforms, interior design, brand images).

Level 2: Values: non-visible facets of organisational culture (norms and beliefs)

Level 3: Basic Assumptions (Core) largely unconscious and tacit frames that shape values and artifacts formed through and out of particular social relationships

• Shapes decision-making processes ‘invisibly’

Schein’s Levels of Organisational Culture

Structure that shapes us via socialisation and acculturation (processes)

The Complexities of Organisational Culture

Corporate Culture: top down

– The dominant culture (values, artifacts, rules, norms, etc.) put forward by top management.

– May or may not be widely supported by organisational members.

Subcultures: bottom up

– Diverse cultures found within an organisation whose members view themselves as distinctly different. Other subcultures also view them as distinctly different.

• Enhancing subcultures (advocate for dominate corporate culture).• Orthogonal subcultures (express a view that is neither supportive or threatening of

dominant culture)• Countercultures (hold values, norms and attitudes that challenge dominant corporate

culture)

The Complexities of Organisational Culture

Organisational Culture composed of all the subcultures: not a single monolithic entity

Corporate culture only one of the many sub-cultures: an imposed tool of management: the dominant sub-culture?

Subcultures within organisations can contribute to or rival organisational attempts to reproduce dominant identities and culture.

Where do organisational sub-cultures reside?Occupational groupings

Departments or teams

Hierarchical divisions

‘Old’ or ‘new’ segments or departments

Organisational Identity• Corporate cultures are a way for organisations to shape

their organisational identities.

• Organisational identities= those artifactual attributes, familiar signs, symbols and routines that corporations use to create a particular public ‘image’.

The public image/identity is a composite of physical structural components and culture.

• Gagliardi’s fan model identifies instrumental strategies and expressive strategies as aspects of organisational identities

• Hatch’s cultural dynamics model takes the fan model one step further by focussing on the process rather than the components.

• Bakan anthropomorphises identity e.g. like an old man

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Culture, Identity and Image

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Hatch’s cultural dynamic model

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Modernist ApproachOrganisational culture is ‘real’ – structural reality

Organisational culture(s) is a variable that can impact upon organisational performance.

Organisational culture can enable or constrain organisational effectiveness & capacity to bring about change.

Modernist Approach; A management tool?

• Culture amenable to change? Evidence from industry – acculturation of externally sourced CEOs – rather than them changing existing culture – as was intended.

Modernist Approach

Kotter and Heskett (1992) Corporate Culture and Performance

Research question: Does organisational culture impact on organisational performance?

Modernist ApproachKotter and Heskett (1992) Corporate Culture and Performance

Research Design– Surveyed managers and financial analysts of 200 corporations – Surveys included a range of questions and variables aimed at

measuring ‘cultural strength’ and cultural values as well as organisational performance (e.g. financial viability).

Quantitative Analysis– Measured the strength of the correlation between corporate culture and

organisational performance and organisational adaptation/change.

Results– There is a positive correlation between organisational performance and

the strength of corporate culture.– When corporate cultures demonstrated to be weak organisational

performance was reduced.

National cultural Influences

• Geert Hofstede’s IBM study identified five key variables

• Power distance – accept or reject inequality• Uncertainty avoidance – accept avoid risk taking• Individualism versus collectivism• Masculine versus feminine• Long-term versus short –term orientation

• These vary from national culture to national culture and are important to those managing MNCs and TNCs.

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Implications for management practice

If we can understand organisational culture and national cultural differences management can use that knowledge to achieve certain outcomes (e.g. improve organisational efficiency and effectiveness).

Objective is to create and unify an organisational culture so that it aligns with organisational goals.

Mechanisms for organisation acculturation:

– ‘Team-building’ exercises– Corporate sponsored social events

Symbolic Interpretive Approaches– Culture is ‘real’ – socially constructed and objectified

– Interpretation and meaning making occurs through culture(s).

– Taking part in ‘organisational’ life and culture is like fulfilling a part in a theatrical play.

• Organisations have scripts to ‘perform’• Organisational members (actors) perform an organisational

role within this script.• Organisational success or failure is partially determined by

the capacity to perform the script and have good actors.

Symbolic interpretive approachInvestigating Organisational Culture

Qualitative data gathering– Participant observation (‘going native’)– Ethnography (observation, focus groups, indepth interviews).

Qualitative analysis– Thematic and narrative analysis

Results:– ‘thick description’ (Geertz) & interpretation of the dynamics of

organisational culture.

Symbolic interpretive approachOrganisational Acting & Emotional Labour

• Hochschild’s The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling (1983):

– First to develop the notion of ‘emotional labour’

– Emotional labour is characterised as:

‘a covert resource, like money or knowledge, or physical labour, which companies need to get the job done’ (Hochschild:1983).

Symbolic interpretive approachOrganisational Acting & Emotional Labour

The individual actor:

• Hochschild uses the example of flight attendants and bill collectors to show how people are constrained to maintain emotions in their work:– Friendliness of flight attendant– Suspension of trust and sympathy for the debt-collector.

The organisational script and collective emotional labour:

‘it is not simply individuals who manage their feelings in order to do a job; whole organisations have entered the game. The emotion management that keeps the smile on Delta Airlines competes with the emotion management that keeps the same smile on United and TWA’ (1983: 185-6).

Implications for management practice

Symbolic-interpretive:

– If we understand culture and the cultural meaning of behaviours, verbal and non-verbal communication, symbols and objects, we come to understand ourselves, others and our interaction with others more fully.

– This knowledge can enable managers to engage more effectively with diverse cultures and sub-cultures within and external to organisations – facilitate institutionalisation.

– Enable organisational actors to better negotiate order – facilitate

cooperation.

Implications for management practice: Understanding Narratives and Dramaturgy

The need to direct the Script & Train the Actors:

Critical Theorists Theoretical position: culture is real

– ‘Organisational culture’ is ideological.

– Organisational culture is an attempt to ‘manufacture consent’ and pacify consumers, organisational members and others that the organisation depends upon.

Critical Theorists• Organisational culture as manipulation:

Critical TheoristsTheoretical position:• Modernist understanding of ‘culture’ is too

simplistic.

• Organisational culture not be manufactured and/or easily controlled by management.

• Organisational members become very cynical

and suspicious of management attempts to ‘manufacture’ a culture.

Implications for management practice

Critical theorists:

– ‘Poor’ organisational culture is a potential sign of ‘poor’ management.

– Managing ‘culture’ should not be the focus of management practice.

– Improving management processes and procedures should be the priority (e.g. better involvement of organisational members in decision-making processes) – employee empowerment – employee participation industrial democracy.

Postmodernist ApproachesCalling Organisational Culture into

Question:

– Postmodernists challenge the idea that organisations have cultures.

– The notion that members of an organisation share a culture is an illusion.

Postmodernist Approaches– Corporate ‘culture’ is conceptualised within

postmodern notions of power and the contestation of power – need to deconstruct this.

Postmodern ApproachesOrganisational Culture & Power

– Corporate ‘culture’ is part and parcel of organisational narratives that seek to legitimise authority and marginalise other voices.

– Organisational members, however, recite and create different narratives with different audiences resulting in a polyphony of competing and incoherent ‘stories’ being told simultaneously within an organisation.

• Organisations as soap opera not theater.

Implications for management practice

Postmodernism:

• Requires us to recognise, ‘listen’ to, and critically reflect upon dominant and marginalised organisational narratives.

– Is ‘culture’ the problem?– Is leadership the problem?

• These narratives can help us to identify points of instability and dissatisfaction within organisations.

• These multiple and competing narratives can help guide our decisions and provide organisational members with a better sense of involvement in management processes.

Symbols of control? Power rather than product?

Cult or culture?

OT to the rescue?First Day on the Job as Department

Manager How should I choose to think about:

– Organisational culture?– Senior management’s position?– The department?– My role in the department?– The way my perspective of the ‘problem’ may

influence my management decisions?