Culture and Organizations

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Culture and Organizations
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The Bureaucratic Nightmare

• Depersonalization
• You cant fight city hall.
• What sociologist was concerned about this?
• Max Weber Bureaucratic society iron cage.
• Irony culture has become key concept in
  organizational analysis and completely changed
  this

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Culture and Organizations

• I. Culture and Motivation
• II. Organizational Subcultures
• III. Cross-cultural Differences in Organizational
  Functioning
• IV. Organizations Operating in Multi-cultural
  Contexts.

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Culture and Organizations

• What is an organization.
• a body of persons organized for some specific
  purpose, as a club, union, society, business,
  committee, or party.
• What does organized mean?
• To make into a whole with unified and coherent
  relationships.

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I. Culture and Motivation

• Organizations have a task to accomplish.
• Do this by task specialization, chains of
  command.
• Result efficiency, accountability, and.boredom.

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Culture and Motivation

• Task2 how to keep people motivated?
• A. Brute Force
• B. Economic Incentives
• C. Create organizational culture
• E.g.s
• Democratic organization
• Recruitment and socialization
• Models of exemplary employees and ways of being.

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Gideon Kunda

• Two basic points
• 1. Organizational culture depends on the function
  and nature of the enterprise.
• 2. OC doesnt just happen, its actively
  constructed by specialists.
• Kunda
• 1. Tech culture innovative yet productive for
  company.
• 2. Internal cultural specialists or external
  consultants.

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II. Organizational Subcultures

• Cultures are not necessarily unitary (Griswold
  p.136).
• Management vs. Labor
• Several internal subcultures.
• E.g. College living situations

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III. Cross-Cultural Differences in Organizational
Functioning.

• Management studies are now cross-cultural.
• Japan
• Structural Theory Welfare corporatism provides
  job security, labor-mgmt. cooperation,
  decentralized decision making, social activities
• Cultural Theory Worker values such as the
  collectivity over the individual, cooperation,
  relations of dependency.
• Findings this welfare corporatism had no impact
  on job satisfaction. It did impact feedback and
  commitment.

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Structural or Cultural?

• Indirect influence culture produced structures
  which had impacts.
• Study of business enterprise groups
• Japan stable, non-competing horizontal links
• S. Korea Vertical domination from founding
  company.
• Taiwan small, less centralized, controlled by
  single family.
• Cultural traditions
• Japan communitarianism
• S. Korea Patrimonialism
• Taiwan familialism

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IV. Organizations Operating in Multi-cultural
Contexts.

• Cultural Variations in
• 1. Reception of Product
• 2. Culture and Motivation