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Organization Culture: The values and behaviors that contribute to the unique social and

psychological environment of an organization. Organizational culture includes an organization's

expectations, experiences, philosophy, and values that hold it together, and is expressed in its

self-image, inner workings, interactions with the outside world, and future expectations. It is

based on shared attitudes, beliefs, customs, and written and unwritten rules that have been

developed over time and are considered valid. Also called corporate culture, it's shown in:

(1) The ways the organization conducts its business, treats its employees, customers, and the

wider community.

(2) The extent to which freedom is allowed in decision making, developing new ideas, and

personal expression.

(3) How power and information flow through its hierarchy.

(4) How committed employees are towards collective objectives.

It affects the organization's productivity and performance, and provides guidelines on customer

care and service, product quality and safety, attendance and punctuality, and concern for the

environment. It also extends to production-methods, marketing and advertising practices, and

to new product creation. Organizational culture is unique for every organization and one of the

hardest things to change.

Do Organizations Have Uniform Cultures?

Organizational culture represents a common perception held by the organization members.

Dominant culture expresses the core values that are shared by a majority of the organization’s members.

Subcultures tend to develop in large organizations to reflect common problems, situations, or experiences.

Core Values or dominant (primary) values are accepted throughout the organization.

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Strong versus Weak Culture: Strong culture is one that is internally consistent, is widely

shared, and makes it clear what it expects and how it wishes people to behave or in other

words, that 'a positive organizational culture reinforces the core beliefs and behaviors that a

leader desires while weakening the values and actions the leader rejects. Peters and Waterman

(1982) indicates that 'a negative culture becomes toxic, poisoning the life of the organization

and hindering any future potential for growth. Obviously, there is an inevitable bridge joining

organizational culture and the level of success it enjoys. Strong culture is said to exist where

staff respond to stimulus because of their alignment to organizational values. Conversely, there

is Weak Culture where there is little alignment with organizational values and control must be

exercised through extensive procedures and bureaucracy.' Kilmann, Saxton, and Serpa, (1986)

defined strong cultures as 'those where organization members place pressure on other

members to adhere to norms.' Byrne, (2002) indicates that 'a strong organizational culture will

exert more influence on employees than a weak one. If the culture is strong and supports high

ethical standards, it should have a very powerful and positive influence on employee behaviour.'

Although all organizations have cultures, some appear to have stronger, more deeply rooted

cultures than others. Initially, a strong culture was conceptualized as a coherent set of beliefs,

values, assumptions, and practices embraced by most members of the organization. The

emphasis was on (1) the degree of consistency of beliefs, values, assumptions, and practice

across organizational members; and (2) the pervasiveness (number) of consistent beliefs, values,

assumptions, and practices. Many early proponents of organizational culture tended to assume

that a strong, pervasive culture was beneficial to all organizations because it fostered

motivation, commitment, identity, solidarity, and sameness, which, in turn, facilitated internal

integration and coordination. Still others noted potential dysfunctions of a strong culture, to the

point of suggesting that a strong culture may not always be desirable. For example, a strong

culture and the internalized controls associated with it could result in individuals placing

unconstrained demands on themselves, as well as acting as a barrier to adaptation and change.

A strong culture could also be a means of manipulation and co-optation (Perrow 1979). It could

further contribute to a displacement of goals or sub goal formation, meaning that behavioral

norms and ways of doing things become so important that they begin to overshadow the

original purpose of the organization (Merton 1957; March and Simon 1958).

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Culture was initially seen as a means of enhancing internal integration and coordination, but the

open system view of organizations recognized that culture is also important in mediating

adaptation to the environment (see Chapter 3: Overview of the Management and the

Organizational Effectiveness Literatures). The traditional view of a strong culture could be

contrary to the ability of organizations to adapt and change. Seeing culture as important for

facilitating organizational innovation, the acceptance of new ideas and perspectives, and needed

organizational change may require a different, or more nuanced, view of organizational culture.

Schein (1992) notes that, indeed, a strong organizational culture has generally been viewed as a

conservative force. However, in contrast to the view that a strong organizational culture may be

dysfunctional for contemporary business organizations that need to be change-oriented, he

argues that just because a strong organizational culture is fairly stable does not mean that the

organization will be resistant to change. It is possible for the content of a strong culture to be

change-oriented, even if strong organizational cultures in the past typically were not. He

suggests that the culture of modern organizations should be strong but limited, differentiating

fundamental assumptions that are pivotal (vital to organizational survival and success) from

everything else that is merely relevant (desirable but not mandatory). Today's organizations,

characterized by rapidly changing environments and internal workforce diversity, need a strong

organizational culture but one that is less pervasive in terms of prescribing particular norms and

behavioral patterns than may have existed in the past. This view was supported by Collins and

Porras (1994) in their famous study (Built to Last) of companies that had strong and lasting

performance.

Culture’s Functions : • A pattern of shared basic assumptions within an organization.

Learned as a way of solving basic problems of external adaptation and internal integration.

• Has worked well enough to be considered valid.• Therefore, is taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in

relation to those problems.

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Managing External Adaptation:

Managing Internal Integration:

• Mission and strategy -- shared understanding of primary tasks.

• Goals -- derived from mission.

• Means -- how goals should be achieved.

• Measurement determining how well the group is doing.

• Correction remedial and repair strategies.

• Creating a common language and conceptual categories.

• Defining group boundaries and criteria for inclusion and exclusion.

• Distributing power and status. Developing norms of intimacy, friendship, and love.

• Defining and allocating rewards and punishments.

• Explaining the unexplainable ideology and religion.

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Primary Mechanisms: Secondary Mechanisms:• What leaders pay attention to, measure,

and control on a regular basis.

• How leaders react to critical incidents and crises.

• Observed criteria by which leaders allocate scarce resources.

• Deliberate role modeling, coaching, teaching.

• Observed criteria to allocate rewards and status.

• Observed criteria by which leaders recruit, promote, retire, and excommunicate organizational members.

• Organization design and structure.

• Organizational systems and procedures.

• Organizational rites and rituals.

• Design of physical space.

• Stories, legends, and myths about people and events.

• Formal statements of organizational philosophy, values, and creed.

How employees learn culture? Culture is transmitted to employees in a number of forms,

the most potent being stories, rituals, material symbols, and language.

Rituals: Rituals are repetitive sequences of activities that express and reinforce the key values of

the organization — what goals are most important, which people are important, and which

people are expendable.

One of the better-known corporate rituals is Wal-Martsa’s company chant. Begun by the

company’s founder, Sam Walton, as a way to motivate and unite his workforce, “Gimme

a W, gimme an A , gimme an L, gimme a squiggle, give me an M,A, R, T !? has become a

company ritual that bonds Wal-Mart workers and reinforce Sam Walton’s belief in the

importance of his employees to the company’s success. Similar corporate chants are used by

IBM, Ericsson, Novell, Deutsche Bank, and Price Waterhouse Coopers.

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Material Symbols: The headquarters of Alcoa doesn’t look like your typical head office

operation. There are few individual offices, even for senior executives. It is essentially made up

of cubicles, common areas, and meeting rooms. This informal corporate headquarters conveys

to employees that Alcoa values openness, equality, creativity and flexibility.

Some corporations provide their top executives with chauffeur-driven limousines and, when

they travel by air, unlimited use of the corporate jet. Others may not get to ride in limousines or

private jets but they might still get a car and air transportation paid for by the company. Only

the car is a Chevrolet (with no driver) and the jet seat is in the economy section of a commercial

airliner.

The layout of corporate headquarters, the types of automobiles top executives are given, and

the presence or absence of corporate aircraft are few examples of material symbols. Others

include the size of offices, the elegance of furnishings, executive perks, and attire.

These material symbols convey to employees who is important, the degree of egalitarianism

desired by top management, and the kinds of behavior (for example, risk taking, conservative,

authoritarian, participative, individualistic, social) that are appropriate.

Language: Many organizations and units within organizations use language as a way to identify

members of a culture or subculture. By learning this language, members attest to their

acceptance of the culture and, on so doing, help to preserve it.

The following are examples of terminology used by employees at Knight-Ridder Information, a

California based Data Redistributors: accession number (a number assigned to each individual

record in a database); KWIC ( a set of key words in-context); and relational operator (searching a

database for names or key terms in some order).

If you are a new employee at Boeing, you’ll find yourself learning a whole unique vocabulary

of acronyms, including: BOLD (Boeing online data); CATIA (computer graphics-aided three-

dimensional interactive application); MAIDS (manufacturing assembly and installation data

system); POP (purchased outside production); and SLO (service level objectives).

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Organizations, over time, often develop unique terms to describe equipment, offices, key

personnel, suppliers, customers, or products that relate to its business. New employees are

frequently overwhelmed with acronyms and Jargon that, after six months on the job, have

become fully part of their language. Once assimilated, this terminology acts as a common

denominator that unites members of a given culture or subculture.

Creating an Ethical Organizational Culture: List of what management can do to create a

more ethical organizational culture. Creating an Ethical Culture is a combination of the following

points:

1. Be a role model and be visible. Your employees look to the behavior of top

management as a model of what’s acceptable behavior in the workplace. When senior

management is observed (by subordinates) to take the ethical high road, it send a

positive message for all employees.

2. Communicate ethical expectations. Ethical ambiguities can be reduced by creating and

disseminating an organizational code of ethics. It should state the organization’s primary

values and the ethical rules that employees are expected to follow. Remember,

however, that a code of ethics is worthless if top management fails to model ethical

behaviors.

3. Offer ethics training. Set up seminars, workshops, and similar ethical training programs.

Use these training sessions to reinforce the organization’s standards of conduct, to

clarify what practices are and are not permissible, and to address possible ethical

dilemmas.

4. Visibly reward ethical acts and punish unethical ones. Performance appraisals

of managers should include a point-by-point evaluation of how his or her

decisions measure up against the organization’s code of ethics. Appraisals must

include the means taken to achieve goals as well as the ends themselves. People who

act ethically should be visibly rewarded for their behavior. Just as importantly, unethical

acts should be punished.

5. Provide Protective Mechanisms. The organization needs to provide formal mechanisms

so that employees can discuss ethical dilemmas and report unethical behavior without

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fear of reprimand. This might include creation of ethical counselors, ombudsmen, or

ethical officers.

A good case study of an unethical organizational culture is the now defunct Enron. Sims and

Brinkmann (2003) described Enron’s ethics as “the ultimate contradiction between words and

deeds, between a deceiving glossy facade and a rotten structure behind” (p. 243). Enron

executives created an organizational culture that valued profits (the bottom line) over ethical

behavior and doing what’s right.

Spirituality and organizational culture The field of spirituality in the workplace expanded

rapidly during the 1990s, and that a bibliography distributed at a session on spirituality in the

organization at the 1998 Academy of Management conference listed no fewer than 72 books

on the subject, 54 of them published in the five years since 1992. Numerous journal articles

have appeared on the subject, as well as special issues of journals devoted solely to the

concept—see, for example, the special issues of the Journal of Managerial Psychology (1994);

Chinmaya Management Review (1999); the Journal of Organization and Change Management

(1994 and 1999); and American Behavioral Scientist (2000). A special issue of the Journal of

Management Education (2000) has advocated the teaching of the subject to management

students. There are also two journals devoted to the topic: Spirit at Work and Business Spirit.'

My literature search has thrown up doctoral theses (Beazley, 1997; Perez, 1999; Trott, 1996)

and a Master's-level dissertation (Gibbons, 1999).2 And, in 1999, the American Academy of

Management Annual Meeting set up the Management, Spirituality and Religion Interest

Group, an indication of (American) academics' interest in the topic.

For reasons of space, let us accept that the description provided above is an adequate survey

of spirituality. In which case, what is organizational spirituality? Konz and Ryan (1999: 201)

state that '[n]o agreed-on definition of spirituality in business exists' and cite Kahnwiler and

Otte (1997) and McGee (1998) in support of this statement.

'Organizational spirituality', if not viewed as a direct synonym for 'workplace spirituality', is

problematic. If one accepts the reification of an organization into an entity with its own

reality, rather than considering that an organization is a collection of people engaged in

purposeful activity, then it is a short step from endowing the reified organization with

attributes. Organizational spirituality subsequently shares the same grammatical meaning as

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aspects such as 'organizational culture', which concerns the culture of the organization, and

'organizational strategy', which concerns the strategy of the organization. However, whereas

culture is an activity (the way we do things around here) and strategy is a process (the way we

decide or plan things around here), spirituality is a far more abstract quality, and sits

uncomfortably with the other concepts. OS is neither an activity (the way we act spiritually

round here) nor a process (the way we spiritualize around here). At best, OS is a belief; at the

least, it is a feeling about reality and transcendence; in between, it is a quality that can be

exhibited by the individuals who make up a workforce. But it is not an attribute of

organizational functioning.

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