1. Chapter 13 Organizational Culture
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2. Learning Objectives
Define organizational culture and know why it is important
Distinguish among organizational, national, and global culture and understand the relationships among them
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3. Learning Objectives
Evaluate the culture-free approach to understanding organizational culture
Identify levels of organizational culture
Know what organizational culture does
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4. Learning Objectives
Discuss the cultural dimensions and typology approaches to understanding organizational culture
Understand how organizational culture can be managed
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5. Organizational Culture
A pattern of basic assumptions - invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration - that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems
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6. National and Global Culture
Relationship between national and corporate culture complex
“Logic of industrialization" may affect all organizations the same way
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7. National and Global Culture
National culture and other elements in an organization's environment may determine internal organizational culture
Globalization also affects organizational culture
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8. Understanding Organizational Culture
Culture-free approach
Technology, policies, rules, organizational structure, and other variables that contribute to efficiency and effectiveness make national culture irrelevant for successful management
Organizations culture free in some respects, but culture bound in many others
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9. Levels of Organizational Culture
Artifacts
Concrete aspects of an organization that symbolize its culture
Espoused Values
Public values and principles that organization's leaders announce it intends to achieve
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10. Levels of Organizational Culture
Actual Values
Validated espoused values, what the organization demonstrates it stands for
Basic Underlying Assumptions
Unconscious beliefs and values that structure feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and actions that members of a culture view as the only correct understanding of life
Usually emphasize or exaggerate major national cultural themes
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11. Levels of Organizational Culture
Subcultures
Shared meanings created and maintained by groups within an organization
Reflect division of labor or personal background of employees
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12. What Organizational Culture Does
FUNCTIONS
Provides an external identity
Creates a sense of commitment
Acts as source of high reliability
Defines an interpretive scheme
Acts as a social control mechanism
DYSFUNCTIONS
Can create barriers to change
Can create conflict within the organization
Subcultures can change at different rates than other units
Can clash when two companies merge
Can become "cultural Tower of Babel"
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13. Some Underlying Dimensions of Organizational Culture
Dimension Questions to be answered
1. The organization’s relationship
to its environment
2. The nature of human activity
3. The nature of reality and truth
Does the organization perceive itself
to be dominant, submissive, harmonizing,
searching out a niche?
Is the “correct” way for humans to
behave to be dominant/proactive.
harmonizing, or passive/fatalistic?
How do we define what is true and what
is not true; and how is truth ultimately
determined both in the physical and
social world?
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14. Some Underlying Dimensions of Organizational Culture
Dimension Questions to be answered
4. The nature of time
5. The nature of human nature
What is our basic orientation in terms of
past, present, and future, and what kinds
of time units are most relevant for the
conduct of daily affairs?
Are humans basically good, neutral, or
evil, and is human nature perfectible or
fixed?
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15. Some Underlying Dimensions of Organizational Culture
Dimension Questions to be answered
6. The nature of human relationships
7. Homogeneity versus diversity
What is the “correct” way for people to
relate to each other, to distribute power
and affection? Is life competitive or
cooperative? Is the best way to organize
society on the basis of individualism or
groupism? Is the best authority system
autocratic/paternalistic or
collegial/participative?
Is the group best off if it is highly diverse
or if it is highly homogeneous, and should
individuals in a group be encouraged to
innovate or conform?
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16. Trompenaars’ Four Corporate Cultures
Family culture
Emphasizes personal, face-to-face relationships
Hierarchical with authority structure based on power differentials commonly experienced between parents and children
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17. Trompenaars’ Four Corporate Cultures
Eiffel Tower culture
Emphasizes division of labor and coordination through hierarchy of authority
Relies on planning to accomplish its goals
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18. Trompenaars’ Four Corporate Cultures
Guided missile culture
Egalitarian, impersonal, task oriented
Incubator culture
Attempts to minimize organizational structure and culture
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19. Leadership and Organizational Culture
Not clear to what extent leaders can manage organizational culture
Elements of Culture Leaders Can Change
Employee selection criteria
Socialization of new members
Meaning of work
Artifacts/surface manifestations of culture
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20. Convergence or Divergence?
Industrialization
Organizational strategies for managing culture
Use of organizational culture as a competitive tool
Impact of diverse national cultures on organizational culture
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21. Implications for Managers
Analyze organizational cultures to coordinate activities or change them
Understand what levels of culture can be influenced
Know how organizational culture can influence a manager
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