Organisation Culture

ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

One of the primary responsibilities of strategic leaders is to create and maintain the organizational characteristics that reward and encourage collective effort. Perhaps the most fundamental of these is organizational culture. But what do we really mean by organizational culture? What influence does it have on an organization? How does one go about building, influencing or changing an organization's culture?

THE IMPACT OF CULTURE

Why is culture so important to an organization? Edgar Schein, an MIT Professor of Management and author of Organizational Culture and Leadership: A Dynamic View suggests that an organization's culture develops to help it cope with its environment. Today, organizational leaders are confronted with many complex issues during their attempts to generate organizational achievement in VUCA environments. A leader's success will depend, to a great extent, upon understanding organizational culture.

Schein contends that many of the problems confronting leaders can be traced to their inability to analyse and evaluate organizational cultures. Many leaders, when trying to implement new strategies or a strategic plan leading to a new vision, will discover that their strategies will fail if they are inconsistent with the organization's culture. A CEO, SES, political appointee, or flag officer who comes into an organization prepared to "shake the place up" and institute sweeping changes, often experiences resistance to changes and failure. Difficulties with organizational transformations arise from failures to analyse an organization's existing culture.

WHAT IS ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE?

There is no single definition for organizational culture. The topic has been studied from a variety of perspectives ranging from disciplines such as anthropology and sociology, to the applied disciplines of organizational behaviour, management science, and organizational communication. Some of the definitions are listed below:

A set of common understandings around which action is organized, finding expression in language whose nuances are peculiar to the group (Becker and Geer 1960).

A set of understandings or meanings shared by a group of people that are largely tacit among members and are clearly relevant and distinctive to the particular group which are also passed on to new members (Louis 1980).

A system of knowledge, of standards for perceiving, believing, evaluating and acting . . . that serve to relate human communities to their environmental settings (Allaire and Firsirotu 1984).

The deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are: learned responses to the group's problems of survival in its external environment and its problems of internal integration; are shared by members of an organization; that operate unconsciously; and that define in a basic "taken -for-granted" fashion in an organization's view of itself and its environment (Schein 1988).

Any social system arising from a network of shared ideologies consisting of two components: substance-the networks of meaning associated with ideologies, norms, and values; and forms-the practices whereby the meanings are expressed, affirmed, and communicated to members (Trice and Beyer 1984).

This sampling of definitions represents the two major camps that exist in the study of organizational culture and its "application strategies." The first camp views culture as implicit in social life. Culture is what naturally emerges as individuals transform themselves into social groups as tribes, communities, and ultimately, nations. The second camp represents the view that culture is an explicit social product arising from social interaction either as an intentional or unintentional consequence of behaviour. In other words, culture is comprised of distinct observable forms (e.g., language, use of symbols, ceremonies, customs, methods of problem solving, use of tools or technology, and design of work settings) that groups of people create through social interaction and use to confront the broader social environment. (Wuthnow and Witten 1988). This second view of culture is most relevant to the analysis and evaluation of organizational culture and to cultural change strategies that leaders can employ to improve organizational performance.

BEHAVIOR AND ARTIFACTS

We can also characterize culture as consisting of three levels (Schein 1988). The most visible level is behaviour and artifacts. This is the observable level of culture, and consists of behaviour patterns and outward manifestations of culture: perquisites provided to executives, dress codes, level of technology utilized (and where it is utilized), and the physical layout of work spaces. All may be visible indicators of culture, but difficult to interpret. Artifacts and behaviour also may tell us what a group is doing, but not why. One cartoon which captures this aspect shows two executives sitting at their desks in an office. Both have large billed black and white checked hats. One is saying to the other, "I don't know how it started, either. All I know is that it's part of our corporate culture."

VALUES

At the next level of culture are values. Values underlie and to a large extent determine behaviour, but they are not directly observable, as behaviours are. There may be a difference between stated and operating values. People will attribute their behaviour to stated values.

ASSUMPTIONS AND BELIEFS

To really understand culture, we have to get to the deepest level, the level of assumptions and beliefs. Schein contends that underlying assumptions grow out of values, until they become taken for granted and drop out of awareness. As the definition above states, and as the cartoon illustrates, people may be unaware of or unable to articulate the beliefs and assumptions forming their deepest level of culture.

To understand culture, we must understand all three levels, a difficult task. One additional aspect complicates the study of culture: the group or cultural unit which "owns" the culture. An organization may have many different cultures or subcultures, or even no discernible dominant culture at the organizational level.


Recognizing the cultural unit is essential to identifying and understanding the culture.

Organizational cultures are created, maintained, or transformed by people. An organization's culture is, in part, also created and maintained by the organization's leadership. Leaders at the executive level are the principle source for the generation and re-infusion of an organization's ideology, articulation of core values and specification of norms. Organizational values express preferences for certain behaviours or certain outcomes. Organizational norms express behaviours accepted by others. They are culturally acceptable ways of pursuing goals. Leaders also establish the parameters for formal lines of communication and message content-the formal interaction rules for the organization. Values and norms, once transmitted through the organization, establish the permanence of the organization's culture.

A List of Definitions that Distinguish

Rite: Relatively elaborate, dramatic, planned sets of activities that consolidates various forms of cultural expressions into one event, which is carried out through social interactions, usually for the benefit of an audience.

Ceremonial: A system of several rites connected with a single occasion or event.

Ritual: A standardized, detailed set of techniques and behaviours that manage anxieties, but seldom produce intended, technical consequences of practical importance.

Myth: A dramatic narrative of imagined events usually used to explain origins of transformations of something. Also, an unquestioned belief about the practical benefits of certain techniques and behaviours that is not supported by demonstrated facts.

Physical: Those things than surround people physically setting and provide them with immediate sensory stimuli as they carry out culturally expressive activities.

Artifact Material objects manufactured by people to facilitate culturally expressive activities.

• Have a fundamental understanding of the highly complex factors that support and make possible collective effort in an organization. They must personally act in accord with productive values and beliefs, and they must teach others to do the same. They must promulgate the culture. The key method strategy leaders should follow to transform cultures is to teach symbolically. This type of strategy involves the artful crafting of new stories, new symbols, new traditions, and even new humour so that the ambiguities surrounding organizational life can be productively managed by all members of the organization. Without collective understanding-shared networks of revised meaning- the new ways of acting and thinking cannot be internalized by organizational members.
• Culture is deep seated and difficult to change, but leaders can influence or manage an organization's culture. It isn't easy, and it cannot be done rapidly, but leaders can have an effect on culture. Schein outlines some specific steps leaders can employ:
• What leaders pay attention to, measure and control? Something as simple as what is emphasized or measured, over time, can have an effect on an organization's culture. One example of this is an emphasis on form over substance. If leaders pay more attention to form, an organizational culture can develop where people start to believe that the substance of a recommendation is less important than the way it is presented. One can recall when more attention was paid to the format of viewgraphs used in a briefing than what was said; what we characterize as "eyewash."
•  Where do you think people will focus their effort once it becomes accepted that a slick presentation is what the leaders are looking for? How could you go about changing that aspect of the organization's culture? Consider cultural assumptions and beliefs underlying a "zero defects" organizational mentality. "You must always be perfect; mistakes aren't allowed." If this assumption reflects a dysfunctional aspect of an organization's culture, how would you go about changing that perception?
•  Leader reactions to critical incidents and organizational crises. The way leaders react to crises says a lot about the organization's values, norms and culture. Crises, by their nature, bring out the organization's underlying core values. Often, this is where rhetoric becomes apparent. Reactions to crises are normally highly visible, because everyone's attention is focused on the incident or situation. Disconnects between actions and words will usually be apparent, and actions always speak louder than words. Additionally, a crisis not only brings a great deal of attention, it also generates a great deal of emotional involvement on the part of those associated with the organization, particularly if the crisis threatens the organization's survival. This increases the potential for either reinforcing the existing culture, or leading to a change in the culture. Such a crisis can provide an opportunity for a leader to influence the organization's culture in either a positive or a negative way. 
• Deliberate role modelling, teaching, and coaching. Nothing can take the place of leaders "walking their talk." The personal example of a strategic leader can send a powerful message to the members of an organization, particularly if it is ethical and consistent. Reinforcing that example with teaching and coaching will help others to internalize the desired values.
• Criteria for allocation of rewards and status. The consequences of behaviour-what behaviour is rewarded and what is punished-can significantly influence culture. If the organization reacts to new ideas by ridiculing the ideas and those who propose them, it won't take long before people believe that new ideas are not welcomed or desired. One belief of perceived organizational culture is reflected in the statement: "Don't raise questions or suggest improvements, because nothing will come of it and you will just get in trouble." If you were in an organization's strategic leader, what steps could you take to alter the reward system to change this aspect of the culture?
•  Criteria for recruitment, selection, promotion, retirement and excommunication. One of the powerful ways of changing an organization's culture is through the type of people brought into, retained, and advanced in the organization. You should be able to establish a desired culture base in an organization by bringing in and advancing individuals with the values you want, and eliminating those with undesired value bases.
• That is what organizations are attempting when they propose tightening up admissions standards to screen out undesirables. This strategy is consistent with the belief that the problems experienced by the organization result from a few "bad apples" and do not reflect systemic problems. However, if a strong culture bias exists, it may be too strong to be changed by selection alone.
• The military academies are organizations which change over one fourth of their membership every year, which should provide an opportunity for changes to the organizational culture as new members are brought in. The catch, however, is that the socialization of those new members rests in the hands of those who are already part of the existing culture. How could the military academies make systemic culture changes not negated by the socialization process new members go through?
• Organizational design and structure. As we mentioned earlier, modifying the organization's basic structure may be a way of changing the existing norms, and hence the culture. For example, a culture of mistrust between the leaders and the members of an organization may be exacerbated by a "line" structure that discourages vertical communication.
• Organizational systems and procedures. The simplest definition of culture is "that's the way we do things around here." Routines or procedures can become so embedded that they become part of the culture, and changing the culture necessitates changing those routines. We can all think of organizations where a weekly or monthly meeting takes on a life of its own, becomes more formalized, lengthy, and elaborate, and becomes the only way information moves within the organization. Changing the culture to improve communication may only be possible by changing the meeting procedures or eliminating the meetings altogether.
•  Design of physical space, facades, and buildings. The impact of the design of buildings on culture can easily be illustrated by considering the executive perks in an organization. Which organization do you think will have a more open and participative culture, one where top executives have reserved parking spaces, top floor offices, a special elevator and an executive dining room, or one where the executive offices are not separated from the rest of the company and executives park and eat in the same place as their employees?
• Stories about important events and people. This is a way that culture is perpetuated in an organization, in that it helps define and solidify the organization's identity. By what events and stories they emphasize, leaders influence that identity.
• Formal statements of organizational philosophy, creeds, and charts. This is the way leaders most often try and influence their organizations, and encompasses the vision or mission statement and statements of the organization's (or the leader's) values and philosophy. By themselves, however, formal statements will have little effect on the organization's culture. They must be linked to actions to affect culture.

CONCLUDING THOUGHT

An understanding of culture, and how to transform it, is a crucial skill for leaders trying to achieve strategic outcomes. Strategic leaders have the best perspective, because of their position in the organization, to see the dynamics of the culture, what should remain, and what needs transformation. This is the essence of strategic success.