Reframing Organizations , 3 rd ed.

1. Reframing Organizations, 3rd ed.

2. Chapter 12 Organizational Culture and Symbols

3. Organizational Culture and Symbols • Symbolic frame assumptions • Organizations as cultures • Organizational symbols

4. Core Assumptions of the Symbolic Frame • Most important—not what happens, but what it means • Activity and meaning are loosely coupled. • People create symbols to resolve confusion, find direction, and anchor hope and belief. • Events and processes are more important for what is expressed than for what is produced. • Culture provides basic organizational glue.

5. Organizations as Cultures • Organizations have cultures or are cultures? • Definitions of culture: • Schein: a “pattern of shared basic assumptions that a group has learned as it solved its problems…and that has worked well enough to be considered valid and taught to new members” • “How we do things around here” • Culture is both product and process. • It embodies accumulated wisdom. • It must be continually renewed and recreated as newcomers learn old ways and eventually become teachers. • Managers who understand culture are better equipped to understand and influence organizations.

6. Organizational Symbols • Symbols reveal and communicate culture • McDonald’s golden arches and the legend of Ray Kroc • Harvard’s myth, mystique, and rituals • Volvo France and Continental Airlines • Myths: deeply rooted narratives that explain, express, and build cohesion • Often rooted in origin legends (“how it all began”) • Values: what an organization stands for and cares about

7. Organizational Symbols (II) • Vision: image of future rooted in core ideology • Heroes and heroines: icons and living logos who embody and model core values • Stories and fairy tales • Good stories convey information, morals, values, and myths vividly, memorably, and convincingly. • Rituals: repetitive, routinized activities that give structure and meaning to daily life • Men’s hut and initiation rituals • Ceremonies: grand, infrequent symbolic occasions

8. Organizational Symbols III • Metaphor, humor, play • “As if” role of symbols: indirect approach to issues that are too hard to approach head-on • Metaphor: image to compress ambiguity and complexity into understandable, persuasive message • Humor: way to illuminate and break frames • Play: permits relaxation of rules to explore alternatives, encourages experimentation and flexibility

9. Geert Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences in Work-Related Values • Culture: “collective programming of the mind that distinguishes one human group from another” • Dimensions of national culture: • Power distance: How much inequality between bosses and subordinates? • Uncertainty avoidance: How comfortable with ambiguity? • Individualism: How much value placed on the individual vs. the group? • Masculinity-femininity: How much pressure on males for career success and workplace dominance?

10. Conclusion • In contrast to traditional views emphasizing rationality and objectivity, the symbolic frame highlights the tribal aspects of contemporary organizations. • Culture acts as basic organizational glue, “the way we do things around here.” • Symbols embody and express organizational values and ideology.