ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Chapter 14 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Defining organizational culture Kroeber and Kluchohn (1952) - 164 different meanings of culture Table 14.1

Defining organizational culture organizational culture - a set of shared, often implicit assumptions, beliefs, values, and sensemaking procedures that influences and guides the behaviour and thinking of organizational members, and is in turn continuously enacted and reinforced - or changed - by the behaviour of organizational members

Model of the linkages between culture, behaviour, cognition and artefacts Figure 14.1

Acculturation For cultures to persist, new generations of members or new entrants to the culture must start to share some of the assumptions, beliefs, values, and sensemaking procedures particular to that culture Newcomers to a culture are often culturally inept, and typically need to go through a learning process before they become fully adept at behaving in culturally appropriate ways. This process is also called acculturation or socialization - the process by which newcomers develop the ability to function effectively in a particular culture

STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Cray and Mallory (1998) offer three approaches that can be identified: • Naive comparative • Culture free • Culture bound

Schein’s three levels of culture Figure 14.2

Schein cultural dimensions Schein (1985) identified six dimensions reflecting the composition of culture: • Behavioural regularities • Dominant values • Norms • Rules • Philosophy • Climate

The cycle of culture Figure 14.3

Cultural frameworks Figure 14.4

Deal and Kennedy’s strong cultural elements Table 14.4

Handy’s four types of culture Figure 14.5: Power Culture Figure 14.6: Role Culture Figure 14.7: Task Culture Plus- Person culture

The cultural web Figure 14.8

Sub- and countercultures Subcultures - The existence of different groups within a single organization: • Enhancing subcultures - support the prevailing culture, • Orthogonal cultures - do not interfere with the prevailing culture • Counter-cultures - actively and clearly oppose aspects of the prevailing culture

The determinants of culture • History and ownership • Size • Technology • Goals and objectives • Environment • People

Changing organizational cultures • Lundberg (1985) - six stage programme: • External conditions that may encourage a change to the existing culture • Internal circumstances and individuals that would support change • Pressures - forces pressing for change in the culture • Visioning - Identify key stakeholders and create in them a vision of the proposed changes, the needs and benefits • Strategy - Develop a strategy for achieving the implementation of the new culture • Action - Develop and implement a range of action plans based on the strategy as a means of achieving movement to the desired culture

Nine-factor test Table 14.6

Trompenaar’sand Woolliams’ perspective on values within culture • Seven dimensions reflecting ways that values differ between cultures : • Universalism v participation • Individualism v communitarianism • Specific v diffuses • Neutrality v affectivity • Inner directed v outer directed • Achieved status v ascribed status • Sequential time v synchronic time

Hofstede’s perspectives on culture • Individualism-collectivism - the degree of integration between individuals in a society • Power distance - the degree of centralization of authority • Uncertainty avoidance - how the members of a society deal with uncertainty • Masculinity-femininity - societies classified as ‘masculine’ tend to gender based, stressing achievement. Societies classified as feminine tend to seek a high quality of life, help others.

Illustration of Hofstede’s classification Table 14.7

Trompenaars’ perspective What works in one culture will seldom do so in another: • Performance pay - people in France, Germany, Italy and parts of Asia tend not to accept that ‘individual members of the group should excel in a way that reveals the shortcomings of others’ • Two-way communications - Americans may be motivated by feedback sessions, Germans, however, find them, ‘enforced admissions of failure’ • Decentralization and delegation - might work well in Anglo-Saxon cultures, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Germany, but are likely to fail in Belgium, France and Spain.

Trompenaars’ perspective Trompenaars seven dimensions of culture – which combine to create different corporate cultures including: • Family - found in Japan, India, Belgium, Italy, Spain and small French companies. Hierarchical in structure with the leader a ‘father figure’. Praise can frequently be a better motivator than money. • Eiffel Tower - Large French companies, some German and Dutch companies. Hierarchical in structure, very impersonal, rule driven and slow to adapt to change are dominant characteristics. • Guided missile - American companies, some in the UK. Egalitarian and strongly individualistic in nature with a measure of impersonality. They tend to be able to adjust the established course of action quickly but not to completely to new situations.

Berry’s framework of acculturation styles Figure 14.11

Globalization and culture Yip (1989) - three stage process • Developing a core strategy as the basis of competitive advantage • Internationalization of the home country strategy • Globalization through integration of the largely separate country • based international strategies Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989) • International organization • Transnational organization • Two options available to an organization in its approach to culture: • Polycentric • Ethnocentric

The six global capabilities Table 14.8

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE