Enhancing Organizational Performance (1997) / Chapter Skim
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3 Organizational Culture
3 Organizational Culture
Pages 65-96
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From page 65... ...
what leads to actual deterioration in organizational performance. Although
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From page 66... ...
Each promises dramatic improvements, increased effectiveness, and a change in the way of life in organizations. Each risks the threat of being relegated to the management fad ragbag, however, because none has been rigorously studied in systematic, empirical ways, especially regarding its impact on organizational effectiveness.
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From page 67... ...
In 1979, when Dan Daniels was named vice president of manufacturing and given direct responsibility for the plant, he faced a myriad of performance problems in Plant 10, includ ing production behind schedule, production costs significantly over bud get, quality problems, a climate of fear that suppressed information needed to correct problems, and open hostility between departments. Fortunately, from his experiences over the years, Daniels had developed a strong mana gerial philosophy that was very different from the autocratic and demean ing style of management for which Plant 10 had been known.
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From page 68... ...
In May of 1994 its Geo Prizm won the highest quality score ever attained by a U.S.-made vehicle. From these and other cases, it became clear that cultural factors play an important role in organizational performance, but there was a dearth of systematic knowledge on which to base interventions into organizational cultures.
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From page 69... ...
Qualitative methods adapted from anthropology, sociology, and other fields require intensive observations over substantial time periods and thus limit how many organizations can be studied by any group of researchers. As a result, theoretical discussions and debates about organizational cultures far outnumber empirical studies, and empirical results do not cumulate well.
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From page 70... ...
They define cultural forms as the observable entities, including actions, through which members of a culture express, affirm, and communicate the substance of their culture to one another. Team meetings, the communal cafeteria, posted defect records, and consensual decision making are examples of cultural forms that symbolically communicated and affirmed new beliefs and values at the NUMMI plant.
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From page 71... ...
Such theory helps to explain what was observed in the setting and contributes to general theory by abstracting those elements and relationships from the situation that appear to have the most explanatory power for possible future study in other settings. Despite differences in approach, most organizational researchers agree on six aspects of organizational culture: 1.
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From page 72... ...
, managerial cultures in general (Bendix, 1956; Sutton et al., 1956; Chatov, 1973) , organizational cultures (Rohlen, 1974; Biggart, 1977; Denison, 1990; Kunda, 1991; Martin et al., 1985)
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From page 73... ...
, there is no consensus about whether any influence cultures have on organizational performance can be assessed. The former approach -- that cultures are properties of organizations -- assumes that researchers and managers can identify differences among organizational cultures, can empirically measure cultures and performance separately, and thus can assess the impacts of cultures on performance.
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From page 74... ...
The opposing point of view argues that breadth and comparability are sacrificed by employing a qualitative approach. The investigation of multiple organizational cultures becomes impossible when immersion in each one is mandatory.
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The most common pattern dimensions are cultural strength, cultural congruence, and cultural type. The challenge in assessing content dimensions of organizational culture is to identify and assess the key archetypes that capture the culture's core dimensions.
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From page 76... ...
Since this volume addresses issues of improving human performance, the duality of positive versus negative consequences is especially pertinent. Although the examples cited at the beginning of this chapter and many others portray organizational cultures in terms of their positive effects on performance, it is clear that not all of the effects of cultures are positive or even benign.
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CULTURE AND PERFORMANCE Organizational cultures cannot directly affect performance because it is people who do the performing. Cultures must therefore somehow influence people in order to affect their individual or collective performance.
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Identification involves the linking of one's self-concept with membership in a culture. Such identification with an organizational culture may enhance performance if it enhances selfconcepts and feelings of self-esteem.
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Despite the consequent lack of certainty that a cultural intervention will affect performance in desired ways, astute managers take advantage of various levers available to them for managing their organizational cultures. LEVERS FOR MANAGING CULTURES Because cultures involve people's innermost thoughts and feelings, their ongoing relations with other people, and complex patterns of behavior, and because cultures take time to develop, they are not easy for managers to manipulate and control.
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From page 80... ...
It would be naive to ignore the ethical issues they raise and unrealistic to ignore the fact that, through their actions, managers do manage their cultures, more or less effectively, all of the time. The practical way to deal with ethical concerns about managing cultures thus becomes not a question of whether or not managers should manage their cultures, but rather one of how ethical concerns can be built into management efforts.
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From page 81... ...
Specific socialization experiences in actual organizations tend to combine these tactics in many different ways. Those that use more institutionalized tactics, with fixed sequences and timetables, are likely to encourage members to preserve existing cultural values and practices, and those that employ more innovative tactics, which are flexible and allow for variability, are likely to encourage recruits to develop innovative role orientations departing from past cultural prescriptions.
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From page 82... ...
In these settings the Japanese have been very successful in taking young workers and subjecting them to intense socialization experiences in order to instill in them loyalty to the firm and skill in teamwork practices such as quality circles (Oliver and Wilkinson, 1988)
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Cultural Forms Cultural forms are the concrete manifestations of culture. They consist of observable entities through which members of a culture affirm, express, and communicate cultural substance to one another.
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Thus, subcultures are probably more prevalent in organizations than are organization-wide cultures. When popular writers and journalists refer to the organizational culture, they are often describing only the managerial subcultures subscribed to by those at the top of an organization.
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From page 85... ...
It is critical to the accomplishment of the Academy's purpose that developmental experiences encountered in this living laboratory be compatible with the espoused ideology relating to leadership and leader development. Cadet companies are indeed fertile ground for subculture formation, because members interact more with each other than with anyone else, share powerful common experiences, and have many similar personal characteristics.
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From page 86... ...
Emphasize social value of performance of social roles. ways been associated with subcultural forms that are clearly counter to those espoused by the Academy.
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From page 87... ...
When the attention paid to one of the developmental experiences is so far skewed toward a single dimension that other developmental dimensions are not adequately addressed, the subculture is damaging overall performance. This example illustrates how subcultures can have positive and negative impacts on intended organizational cultures and performance.
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From page 88... ...
Here we focus on how the expressive side of leadership affects thoughts, feelings, and programmed behaviors that in turn affect performance. Elements of cultural leadership that have been addressed in the literature include: the personal qualities of the leader, the situation as perceived by the leader and followers, the vision or mission of the leader, follower attributions about the leader and the situation, the performance of the leader, characteristic leader behaviors or style, administrative actions, the use of cultural forms, the use of tradition, and the persistence of consequences over time.
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From page 89... ...
MANAGING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURES One implication of this discussion of cultural levers is that cultures develop inertia. The levers of selection, socialization, and cultural forms not only bring the culture to new members but also serve to reinforce culturally determined values and behaviors in those organizational members who are already acculturated.
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From page 90... ...
For a management desirous of managing organizational culture, a major
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Thus, an enduring problem for managers is how to employ cultural levers when such drastic environmental changes do not aid in moving organizational cultures in desired directions. Unlike redesigning organizational structure or forming an organizational alliance, managing culture is fraught with ambiguity and uncertainty.
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From page 92... ...
It is important note that there may be a liability associated with strong cultures. In the airline industry, for example, People Express Airlines effectively used cultural levers to develop a strong culture.
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. ." To symbolize the new order, he replaced many established symbols and cultural forms with new ones.
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From page 94... ...
Of the many approaches to systematically managing a culture change effort, one procedure, based on what is called the competing values framework, rests on the assumption that key dimensions of organizational culture can be assessed by way of a survey instrument (a controversial assumption, as pointed out earlier in the chapter)
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From page 95... ...
The consensusproducing discussion was an important clarification exercise in this step. In the second step, the top management team reached consensus on a "preferred" or future culture that they believed the organization had to achieve in order to become more successful.
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From page 96... ...
In addition to a number of major changes in manufacturing processes, supplier relations, and quality tools, a return to the core Harley-Davidson family culture was a significant reason why the firm recaptured market share and returned to profitability. A contrasting example to this unwitting change in organizational culture is Hewlett-Packard (H-P)
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