Symbolic Frame

1
Symbolic Frame

• Summer 2006

2
Assumptions

• Organization/school functions as a culture
• Success is based on myth and ritual
• Control is based in past practice
• Leadership creates symbols for others to embrace
• Individuals learn and replicate the existing
  cultural patterns.
• Survival is based on pattern alteration.

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Definition

• Attempts to alter the functions and organization
  of the workplace through the use of culture,
  myth, and ceremony.

4
Culture (Schein, 1985)

• A pattern of basic assumptions, invented,
  discovered developed by a given group as it
  learns to cope with its problems of external
  adaptation and internal integration, that have
  worked well enough to be considered valid and
  therefore, to be taught to new members as the
  correct way to think and feel in relation to
  those problems.

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Activity

• What forms of culture are present within your
  school organization?
• What purposes do they serve?

6
Perspectives within Orgs.

• Business Environment
• Values
• Symbols
• Heroes/Heroines
• Rites and Rituals
• Cultural Networks

7
Levels of Culture

• Artifacts and Creations (visible but often not
  decipherable)
• Technology
• Art
• Behavior Patters

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Levels of Culture

• Values(greater level of awareness)
• Testable in the physical environment
• Testable by social consensus

9
Activity

• What values are present in the environment of
  your school?
• How are you aware they exist?

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Levels of Culture

• Basic Assumptions (Taken for granted)
• Relationship to the Environment
• Nature of Reality, Time and Space
• Nature of Human Nature
• Nature of Human Activity
• Nature of Human Relationships

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Organizations Relationship to the Environment

• Basic identity and role
• Who are we?
• What is our mission?
• What is our function?
• Relevant Environment
• What do others think of us?
• What do others expect of us?

12
Activity

• Again, given the organization in which you work,
  what is its relationship to the surrounding
  environment?

13
Nature of Reality, Time and Space

• How is truth determined?
• Tradition--Its always been done this way...
• Moral--Its the right way...
• Revelation--Our principal tells us so...
• Trial and Error--Lets give it a whirl and see
  what happens...
• Science--Research says...
• What are relevant units of time?
• Linear or cyclical
• What is the nature of space?
• How is space used to symbolize power? Peer
  relations? Privacy? Property?

14
Nature of Human Nature

• What beliefs do we hold about people in our
  organization?
• Do we believe people are basically good, bad,
  neutral, fixed at birth, mutable?

15
Human Activity and Relationships

• What do we believe about the work we do?
• Proactive
• Reactive
• Harmonizing

• What is the ultimate basis for structuring
  organizational relationships?
• Autocracy
• Meritocracy
• Paternalism
• Consultation

16
Activity

• In what ways to these ideas help you make sense
  of your analysis?