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UOP Coursework Culture (Implementing Culture (Cultural engineering and…
UOP Coursework Culture
What is Culture?
Origins of Culture in Organisation Studies
Economic downturns in Western countries (Meek, 1988) Disenchantment with ‘hard’ scientific approaches (e.g. Taylorism)
Increase in knowledge workers and ‘The New Spirit of Capitalism’ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2006)
Culture is ... “
A shared commitment to particular ways of relating to the organization, to superiors, to colleagues and to role” (Brewis, 2007: 344)
Formality - seen in mission statements
Create a culture that will make people think and behave in the ‘right way’
It ensures commitment, loyalty and collective identity
It can be created, manipulated and changed by management (hence corporate culture)
It is functional - a way of ensuring that everybody is working to organisational goals (e.g. the pursuit of efficiency, productivity and profit)
Link the internal culture with external goals
Create shared values, beliefs and norms – everybody pulls in the same direction
Make the culture ‘visible’
Corporate Culture
Underlying thinking:
a strong culture means a successful organisation
Identifying Culture
Esposed Values
Professed values and beliefs - how the organisation is represented (e.g. official philosophies and mission statements)
Basic Underlying Assumptions
What members of the culture (perhaps unconciously) believe to be ‘reality’. Influence perceptions, thoughts and feelings
Observable Artifacts
Surface Manifestations – what a newcomer would notice e.g. artefacts, slogans, heroes, physical layout, stories, ceremonies, gestures, rituals, language
Implementing Culture
Cultural engineering and ‘perfectibility’ (Jackson & Carter, 2000)
Socialisation and training
Hiring and firing
Through language, rituals, rites of passage and corporate ‘hoopla’ (Grey,2009)
Visible signs of progress e.g. ranking tables?
Break people down in order to build them up…
If an organisation ‘successfully’ creates their corporate culture their employees will often show signs of:
Using corporate language e.g. ‘we’ not ‘me’
Going the ‘extra mile’ – greater commitment and flexibility
Singing the organisations praises
Being unable to be critical of the organisation and their practices
Summary
‘Culture’ is all around us
At its most pervasive, it is invisible… but everything we do has a reason behind it
Various methods for enabling us to see and analyse cultural assumptions…
Mainstream perspectives:
The culture of an organisation can make or break an organisation
Creating, changing and maintaining culture is the responsibility of management
It is possible to get every employee ‘on board’, and thinking in the same way
Critiques
“Such arguments have encouraged the view that managers can manipulate organisational culture…this has proven an oversimplification” (Fineman et al, 2010: 380)
Are strong, managerially created, cultures always desirable?
Suppression of conflict, diversity, creativity in favour of conformity and compliance
Empirical problems (Peters and Waterman, 1982)
Distinctions between what an organisation say they do, and what happens in practice…
“…even the strongest-looking cultures can hide significant cracks beneath the surface” (Fineman et al, 2010: 380)
The ‘is’ perspective
The ‘has’ perspective is problematic, because it ignores the idea that culture is emergent, and is not a managerial tool.
Both question:
The simplicity of mainstream perspectives
Managerial prerogative
Unitarist assumptions
Culture as a form of Control
Leadership
Construction of visionary leaders
Working in the knowledge that those at the top are omnipotent
Surveillance methods
External Forces
Believe that outside pressures will destroy the organisation is everybody is not united
Individuality
Individuals are pitted against one another in a competitive relationship
The ‘individual’ matters less as they find themselves in alignment and subservient to the collective
Consequences
Thought control / Thought crime
Sanctions and punishments for not acting , or believing, ‘right’
Totalitarianism?
Willmott (1993) – compares corporate culture initiatives with the events in Orwell’s ‘1984’
Kunda (1992) – we are not empowered, we feel pressurised; are anxious and living in fear
The pursuit for consensus and a homogenous culture reduces dissent and increases conformity
leading to…
A suppression of individuality, where our ‘hearts and minds’ are no longer our own
therefore…
Whilst corporate culture-ists would claim that these initiatives promote autonomy and empowerment, in fact, they impinge and deny them.
A wolf in sheeps clothing...
A way of maintaining class relationships –
through oppression and control
Managers and workers have fundamentally antagonistic interests
Corporate culture as a form of control
Corporate culture is problematic, as it can result in domination and oppression of workers.
The 'is' Perspective
Instead of discussing Corporate Culture we know talk about Organisational Culture
Culture is emergent
Unwritten and informal
It emerges from the bottom up and is not created or managed by those at the top of the organisation
Culture is increasingly messy, fragmented and confusing, with no ‘one best way’
Move away from seeing culture as a variable, instead as a root metaphor (Smircich, 1983)
Culture is heterogeneous, not homogenous
Different Types of Culture
Countercultures are anti-management in nature, and serve to question the corporate culture through methods such as:
Subverting organisational goals (“they smiled but did not mean it”; Ogbonna and Wilkinson, 1990:12)
Resistance and refusal to engage in ‘hoopla’
Overt conflict (Braga Rodrigues,2006)
... Subtle means such as metaphors and humour.
Subcultures ...
not necessarily anti-management in principle, and may share some of the core values of the corporate culture
but are about sense-making or ‘coping’ with the mundane nature of everyday work life.
Some organisations would encourage (or, not discourage) subcultures, as it can potentially lead to higher productivity within teams
An overview of 'is' and 'has' culture...
Managerialist
Corporate Culture
Culture ‘HAS’
Culture can be managed:
Performance
Commitment
Efficiency
‘Given’ to new employees
Consensus and integration
Social Science
Organisational Culture
Culture ‘IS’
Cannot be ‘managed’
Not a ‘tool’
Differentiation
Fragmentation
Members produce and reproduce culture
‘Generated’ by interactions