10 Langton Ob 4ce ch10

Chapter 10
Organizational Culture
Chapter 10, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition Copyright 2007 Pearson Education Canada
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Chapter Outline
What Is Organizational Culture? Reading an Organizations Culture Creating and Sustaining Culture The Liabilities of Culture Changing Organizational Culture
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. What is the purpose of organizational culture? How do you read an organizations culture? How do you create and maintain culture? Can organizational culture have a downside? How do you change culture?
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Henry Mintzberg on Culture

Culture is the soul of the organization the beliefs and values, and how they are manifested. I think of the structure as the skeleton, and as the flesh and blood. And culture is the soul that holds the thing together and gives it life force.
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The pattern of shared values, beliefs, and assumptions considered to be the appropriate way to think and act within an organization.
Culture is shared. Culture helps members solve problems. Culture is taught to newcomers. Culture strongly influences behaviour.
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Exhibit 10-1 Layers of Culture
Artifacts of Organizational Culture
Material Symbols Language Rituals Stories
Beliefs Values Assumptions
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Levels of Culture
Artifacts Aspects of an organizations culture that you see, hear, and feel. Beliefs The understandings of how objects and ideas relate to each other. Values The stable, long-lasting beliefs about what is important. Assumptions The taken-for-granted notions of how something should be in an organization.
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Characteristics of Organizational Culture

Innovation and risk-taking
The degree to which employees are encouraged to be innovative and take risks.
Attention to detail
The degree to which employees are expected to exhibit precision, analysis, and attention to detail.
Outcome orientation
The degree to which management focuses on results or outcomes rather than on technique and process.
People orientation
The degree to which management decisions take into consideration the effect of outcomes on people within the organization.
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Characteristics of Organizational Culture

Team orientation The degree to which work activities are organized around teams rather than individuals. Aggressiveness The degree to which people are aggressive and competitive rather than easygoing. Stability The degree to which organizational activities emphasize maintaining the status quo in contrast to growth.
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Exhibit 10-2 Contrasting Organizational Cultures

Organization A
Managers must fully document all decisions. Creative decisions, change, and risks are not encouraged. Extensive rules and regulations exist for all employees. Productivity is valued over employee morale. Employees are encouraged to stay within their own department. Individual effort is encouraged.
Organization B
Management encourages and rewards risk-taking and change. Employees are encouraged to run with ideas, and failures are treated as learning experiences. Employees have few rules and regulations to follow. Productivity is balanced with treating its people right. Team members are encouraged to interact with people at all levels and functions. Many rewards are team based.
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Cultures Functions
Social glue that helps hold an organization together.
Provides appropriate standards for what employees should say or do.
Boundary-defining. Conveys a sense of identity for organization members.
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Cultures Functions
Facilitates commitment to something larger than ones individual self-interest. Enhances social system stability. Serves as a sense-making and control mechanism.
Guides and shapes the attitudes and behaviour of employees.
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Do Organizations Have Uniform Cultures?

Organizational culture represents a common perception held by the organization members. Core values or dominant (primary) values are accepted throughout the organization.
Dominant culture
Expresses the core values that are shared by a majority of the organizations members.
Subcultures
Tend to develop in large organizations to reflect common problems, situations, or experiences.
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Reading an Organizations Culture

Stories Rituals Material Symbols Language
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Exhibit 10-3 How Organizational Culture Forms

Top management Selection criteria Socialization Organization's culture
Philosophy of organization's founders
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Creating and Sustaining Culture: Keeping a Culture Alive

Selection
Identify and hire individuals who will fit in with the culture.
Top Management
Senior executives establish and communicate the norms of the organization.
Socialization
Organizations need to teach the culture to new employees.
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Exhibit 10-5 A Socialization Model

Socialization Process Outcomes
Productivity
Prearrival
Encounter
Metamorphosis
Commitment
Turnover
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Exhibit 10-6 Entry Socialization Options

Formal vs. Informal Individual vs. Collective Fixed vs. Variable Serial vs. Random Investiture vs. Divestiture
Sources: Based on J. Van Maanen, People Processing: Strategies of Organizational Socialization, Organizational Dynamics, Summer 1978, pp. 19-36; and E. H. Schein, Organizational Culture, American Psychologist, February 1960, p. 116. Chapter 10, Nancy Langton and Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behaviour, Fourth Canadian Edition Copyright 2007 Pearson Education Canada
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Exhibit 10-7 Four-Culture Typology

Sociability
High Networked Communal
Low
Fragmented Low
Mercenary High
Solidarity
Source: Adapted from R. Goffee and G. Jones, The Character of a Corporation: How Your Companys Culture Can Make or Break Your Business (New York: HarperBusiness, 1998), p. 21.
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The Liabilities of Culture

Culture can have dysfunctional aspects in some instances.
Culture as a Barrier to Change
When organization is undergoing change, culture may impede change.
Culture as a Barrier to Diversity

Strong cultures put considerable pressure on employees to conform.
Culture as a Barrier to Mergers and Acquisitions

Merging the cultures of two organizations can be difficult, if not impossible.
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Changing Organizational Culture

1. Have top-management people become positive role models, setting the tone through their behaviour. 2. Create new stories, symbols, and rituals to replace those currently in vogue. 3. Select, promote, and support employees who espouse the new values that are sought. 4. Redesign socialization processes to align with the new values.
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Changing Organizational Culture

5. Change the reward system to encourage acceptance of a new set of values. 6. Replace unwritten norms with formal rules and regulations that are tightly enforced. 7. Shake up current subcultures through transfers, job rotation, and/or terminations. 8. Work to get peer group consensus through utilization of employee participation and creation of a climate with a high level of trust.
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Summary and Implications

1. What is the purpose of organizational culture?
Organizational culture provides stability and gives employees a clear understanding of the way things are done around here. Artifacts, such as stories, rituals, material symbols, and language, can be used to help read an organizations culture.
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1. How do you read an organizations culture?
Summary and Implications

3. How do you create and maintain culture?
An organizations culture is derived from the philosophy of its founders. It is communicated by managers and employees are socialized into it. A strong culture can have a negative effect, including pressure-cooker cultures, barriers to change, difficulty in creating an inclusive environment, and hindering mergers and acquisitions. It is important to change the reward structure and to work carefully to change employee beliefs.
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3. Can organizational culture have a downside?
3. How do you change culture?
OB at Work
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For Review
1. What are the levels of organizational culture? 2. How can an outsider assess an organizations culture? 3. How is language related to organizational culture? 4. Can an employee survive in an organization if he or she rejects its core values? Explain 5. What defines an organizations subcultures?
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For Review
6. What benefits can socialization provide for the organization? For the new employee? 7. Describe four cultural types and the characteristics of employees who fit best with each. 8. How can culture be a liability to an organization? 9. How does a strong culture affect an organizations efforts to improve diversity? 10. Identify the steps a manager can take to implement culture change in an organization.
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For Critical Thinking

1. Is socialization brainwashing? Explain. 2. If management sought a culture characterized as innovative and autonomous, what might its socialization program look like? 3. Can you identify a set of characteristics that describes your colleges or universitys culture? Compare them with what several of your peers have noted. How closely do they agree?
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For Critical Thinking

4. We should be opposed to the manipulation of individuals for organizational purposes, but a degree of social uniformity enables organizations to work better. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? What are its implications for organizational culture? Discuss. 5. Todays workforce is increasingly made up of parttime or contingent employees. Is organizational culture really important if the workforce is mostly temporary employees?
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Point-CounterPoint
Why Culture Doesnt Change
v Culture develops over many years, and becomes part of how the organization thinks and feels. v Selection and promotion policies guarantee survival of culture. v Top management chooses managers who are likely to maintain culture.
When Culture Can Change

v There is a dramatic crisis. v There is a turnover in leadership. v The organization is young and small. v There is a weak culture.
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HR Implications Creating an Ethical Culture

Be a visible role model.
Senior managers seen to be taking the ethical high road provide a positive message for all employees.
Communicate ethical expectations.

Create and distribute an organizational code of ethics.
Provide ethical training.

Set up seminars, workshops, and similar ethical training programs.
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HR Implications: Creating an Ethical Culture

Visibly reward ethical acts and punish unethical ones.
Performance appraisals should consider how decisions and behaviour measure against the organizations code of ethics.
Provide protective mechanisms.

Employees need to be able to discuss ethical dilemmas and report unethical behaviour without fear of punishment.
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Breakout Group Exercises

Form small groups to discuss the following:
1. Choose two courses that you are taking this term, ideally in different faculties, and describe the culture of the classroom in each. What are the similarities and differences? What values about learning might you infer from your observations of culture? 2. Identify artifacts of culture in your current or previous workplace. From these artifacts, would you conclude that the organization had a strong or weak culture? 3. Have you or someone you know worked somewhere where the culture was strong? What was your reaction to that strong culture? Did you like that environment, or would you prefer to work where there is a weaker culture? Why?
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Chapter 10

Henry Mintzberg on Culture

Exhibit 10-1 Layers of Culture

Artifacts of Organizational Culture

Material Symbols Language Rituals Stories

Beliefs Values Assumptions

Characteristics of Organizational Culture

Characteristics of Organizational Culture

Exhibit 10-2 Contrasting Organizational Cultures

Boundary-defining. Conveys a sense of identity for organization members.

Do Organizations Have Uniform Cultures?

Reading an Organizations Culture

Exhibit 10-3 How Organizational Culture Forms

Philosophy of organization's founders

Creating and Sustaining Culture: Keeping a Culture Alive

Exhibit 10-5 A Socialization Model

Exhibit 10-6 Entry Socialization Options

Exhibit 10-7 Four-Culture Typology

The Liabilities of Culture

Culture as a Barrier to Diversity

Culture as a Barrier to Mergers and Acquisitions

Changing Organizational Culture

Changing Organizational Culture

Summary and Implications

1. How do you read an organizations culture?

Summary and Implications

3. Can organizational culture have a downside?

3. How do you change culture?

For Critical Thinking

For Critical Thinking

When Culture Can Change

HR Implications Creating an Ethical Culture

Communicate ethical expectations.

Provide ethical training.

HR Implications: Creating an Ethical Culture

Provide protective mechanisms.

Breakout Group Exercises

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