3: Organizational culture

1 Defining organizational culture
1.1 Definition
-organizations have distinctive cultures, and behavior acceptable in one organizational culture may be inappropriate in another
-can change instantly as a result of a single major event.
1.2 Components of culture
• Norms guide people’s behavior
• Symbols or symbolic action
• A set of shared values and beliefs
2 The factors that shape the culture of the organsiation
• Size
• Technology
• Diversity
• Age
• History
• Ownership
3 Writers on culture
3.1 Schien
-First leader of the company create the culture of an organization, thus the link between culture and leadership is very strong.
• Artefacts –these are the aspects of culture that can be easily seen, e.g. the way that people dress.
• Espoused values – these are the strategies and goals of an organization, including company slogans etc.
• Basic assumptions and values- these are difficult to identify as they are unseen, and exist mainly at the unconscious level.
3.2 Handy
- ‘the way we do things around here’, by this handy means the sum total of the belief, knowledge, attitudes, norms and customs that prevail in an organization.
• Power – rely on a central figure, most likely to be the owner of the organization, who strive to maintain absolute control over subordinates
• Role – everything and everyone are in their proper place doing own job, it’s a bureaucratic organization, where the structure determines the authority and responsibility of individual.
• Task – teams established to achieve specific tasks. People describe their position in terms of the results they are achieving. This is often associated with matrix structure.
• Person – is characterized by the fact it exists to satisfy the requirements of the particular individual involved in the organization.
3.3 Hofstede
-an attempt to find aspects of culture that might influence business behavior.
• Individualism vs. collectivism –some cultures are more cohesive than others. Anglo Saxon cultures are generally more individualistic than the collectivist cultures of South America.
• Uncertainty – some cultures, e.g. France and Japan use bureaucracy to reduce uncertainty because they dislike it.
• Power distance - the degree to which culture are willing to accept an inferior position. In south America societies, differences in power were tolerated more than in North European cultures.
• Masculinity vs. femininity – a masculine role is one where the distinction between the roles of the gender is large and the males focus on work, power and success.
• Confucianism vs. dynamism – this look at the attitude to change over the long term, emphasis love to a humanity.