Do organizations think and talk??? CULTURE

Transcription

1 Do organizations think and talk??? CULTURE

2 Ways of Understanding Culture Culture as Independent Variable Culture as Dependent Variable Culture as Root Metaphor Thing Thing Process National management styles Differences and similarities in management style Relationship between effectivity and national culture Corporate cultures Culture management Relationship between effectivity and corporate culture Shared meanings and symbols Culture as way of life Studying organizations as human cultures Based on Linda Smircich (1983)

3 Culture as Thing Out There Culture as independent variable: cross-cultural management. Culture is the explaining factor or the broad frame of reference, influencing various elements of the process of management (independent variable) National styles of management, norms and values that influence management, consumer attitudes etc. Culture handbooks for negotiators, managers working abroad, for the use of marketing etc. Example: Geert Hofstede (1980)

4 Culture as Thing Out There Hofstede s 4 dimensions of culture: Power Distance Uncertainty Avoidance Individualism/ Collectivism Masculinity/ Femininity 09/24/10

5 Culture as Thing Out There CULTURE MAP: PD & UA

6 Culture as Thing Out There CULTURE MAP: IND & UA

7 Culture as Thing Out There Weaknesses: Assumption that cultures are territorial and discrete Assumption that main categories all unconscious Assumption that culture has impact on employee behaviour Categories all derived from IBM s HR questionnaire Study carried out on the employees of IBM

8 Culture as Thing Out There Cultural Shock

9 Culture as Something the Organization Has... and manages.. Culture as dependent variable: culture management. Assumption 1: it is possible and desirable to manipulate culture, in order to achieve certain golas and gains (e.g. financial). Assumption 2: organizations (understood as management), create cultures culture is a dependent (internal) variable. Example: Tom Peters & Robert Waterman.

10 Culture as Something the Organization Has Weaknesses: Empirical research shows that it is impossible to manipulate culture in practice (long- and middle-term negative effects) However, there are exceptions totalizing and dictatorial organizations

11 Culture as Something the Organization Has Culture as diagnostic interface (Edgar Schein): Culture can be used for making contact when the organization is having problems A model for diagnosis Levels of culture: artifacts, norms & values, deep hidden assumptions

12 Culture as Process: Something the Organization Does Culture as root metaphor: something people do People are not receivers of reality but actively make sense of it All human actions, however concrete and real they may be, are constantly created and re-created by processes of sense-making Symbols are the smallest meaningsful elements of culture, they enable interpretation of what is going on

13 Culture as Process: Something the Organization Does In the most general sense, culture can be viewed as a bubble (of meaning) covering the world, a bubble that we both create and live within. Its film covers everything that we turn our eye to; it is, as stated in the title, the medium of (social) life (Czarniawska, 1991). Culture enables us to make sense of our lifes, it is a network of meaning (Smircich, 1983/1987). Believing [ ], that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. (Geertz, 1973)

14 Medium of Life Organizational culture is the medium of social life, enabling the participants to cooperate and communicate. It offers and experience of sense. All aspects of organization, i.e. economic, financial, political etc. have cultural significance and can be interpreted from a cultural perspective. The creation of organizational culture is active but not always conscious. Organizational culture orders experiences, actions and offers some shared meanings and understandings.

15 How Organizational Culture Culture makes it possible to communicate and cooperate. It is shared but does not have to be uniform. It is like a living language but involving muchmore than just words. Works

16 What Organizational Culture Is Not It is not a set of exotic rules and presciptions to giving a guarantee to succeed in foreign lands It is not normative glue that can be managed and manipulated It is not a tool

17 What Organizational Culture Is An important, usually non-material dimension of the environment of organizations, responsible for understanding or clash A construct enabling humans to communicate with organizations A set of elements and a pattern of actions making communication possible = symbolization 09/24/10