Organisational culture
(Originally published on the OUBS Blog)
An understanding of organisation culture is important because it defines the framework within which you have to manage and work. But it is difficult to define what a culture really is. Some say it is “what the organisation is really like when no one’s looking.�? Or “the way things happen around here�?.
Culture is important and successful companies have cultures in which people want to work and to succeed.
Cultures are not rules or formal and can differ from the defined one.
the collection of traditions, values, policies, beliefs, and attitudes that constitute a pervasive context for everything we do and think in an organisation. (LcLean and Marshall, 1993).
Recognise that what you see on the surface is based on a much deeper reality.
Trice and Beyer (1984) suggest the use of symbols. High-profile symbols are those designed to create an external image. Trice and Beyer suggest that there are 4 categories for low-profile symbols:
\- practices: rites, rituals and ceremonies.
\- Communications: stories, myths, sagas, legends, fold tales, symbols and slogans.
\- Physical forms: building, floor plan, flipcharts or whiteboards, casual or tie …
\- A common language: jargon. “crew members�? …
Handy considered culture in terms of shared rules of behaviour:
\- power/club culture: personality is more important than formal structures…; organisation important.
\- task culture: work as problem solving, people relying on their concerted abilities to deal with new situations; organisation important
\- person culture: people first, org. second and just means to an end.
\- role culture: individuals are role occupants; formal; certainty, predictability, continuity and stability is important.
But attention, culture evolves over time.
You need to understand your client’s cultures too.
Negotiated cultures says that through their inputs people construct and create an individual and a shared sense of organisational identity. There will always be a variety of cultures and subcultures in any organisation. Therefore, as of this theory, a company does not have a culture but a cultures is something more fluid, influenced and shares and created by everyone involved.
Cultural Change programs, often coming from a view that current behaviour of the organisation and its staff does not match the demands of its external environment, happen in four stages:
1\. review external environment and current culture to see mismatch
2\. develop a model culture for the external environment (total quality, customer-focused, user-centered, …)
3\. programme of action, to develop the desired culture
4\. embedding the new culture
It is not that easy though. Hendry and Hope identified for problems with cultural change:
1\. resilience of the existing organisational culture: outsiders may see the need for change but employees may not. It’s like persuading someone that they need to change their character
2\. complexity of culture change: informal processes, rituals, power structures and behaviours cannot be changed by dictate or in isolation from each other.
3\. contradictions in the desired culture: managers want control but they really would like to have autonomy, creativity and innovation.
4\. mismatches between individual and organisational values: people need to genuinely trust, respect and support their organisation’s behaviour.