Organisational Culture

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• Organisational Culture

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Organisational Culture

• Objectives
• 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

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Assignment One

• The 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 One

• Two 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?

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Rewind Week One

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

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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.

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OT to the rescue?

• What is organisational culture?
• How should I choose to think about
• Organisational culture?
• Senior Managements position?
• The department?
• My role in the department?
• What are the implications of different
  perspectives for making different management
  decisions?

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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.

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Culture
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Norms and Values

• Norm
• 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.

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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).

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Scheins 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

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Scheins Levels of Organisational Culture

• Structure that shapes us via socialisation and
  acculturation (processes)

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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)

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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

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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.
• Gagliardis fan model identifies instrumental
  strategies and expressive strategies as aspects
  of organisational identities
• Hatchs 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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Hatchs cultural dynamic model
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Modernist Approach

• Organisational 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.

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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.

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Modernist Approach

• Kotter and Heskett (1992) Corporate Culture and
  Performance
• Research question Does organisational culture
  impact on organisational performance?

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Modernist Approach

• Kotter 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.

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National cultural Influences

• Geert Hofstedes 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

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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.

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Symbolic interpretive approach

• Investigating 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.

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Symbolic interpretive approach

• Organisational Acting Emotional Labour
• Hochschilds 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 (Hochschild1983).

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Symbolic interpretive approach

• Organisational 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).

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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.

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Implications for management practice
Understanding Narratives and Dramaturgy

• The need to direct the Script Train the Actors

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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.

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Critical Theorists

• Organisational culture as manipulation

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Critical Theorists

• Theoretical 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.

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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.

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Postmodernist Approaches

• Calling 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.

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Postmodernist Approaches

• Corporate culture is conceptualised within
  postmodern notions of power and the contestation
  of power need to deconstruct this.

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Postmodern Approaches

• Organisational 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.

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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.

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• Symbols of control? Power rather than product?
• Cult or culture?

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OT to the rescue?

• First Day on the Job as Department Manager
• How should I choose to think about
• Organisational culture?
• Senior managements position?
• The department?
• My role in the department?
• The way my perspective of the problem may
  influence my management decisions?