Change Management
BUS 442M
Culture and Change
Ch. 4

Learning objectives
 Recognize of the importance of the informal
organization and its role in the relation to
organizations and change;
 Explain the meaning of culture;
 Compare and contrast different cultural models and
typologies;
 Examine how cultural differences impact upon
organizational change.
The informal organization
 The culture and politics
of many organizations constrain the degree of change and
transformation in which they can successfully engage, and
meeting the challenges and demands of the wider environment.
Therefore, regardless of how well change might be planned in
terms of the more formal organizational characteristics, it is the
hidden informal aspects of organizational life which will act to
help or hinder it.
What Is an Organizational Culture?
 Organizational culture
Definition 1
 system of shared beliefs and values that develops within an
organization and guides the behavior of its members
 Also called
corporate culture
This is the social glue that binds
Members of the organization
Together.
What Is an Organizational Culture?
 People are seen as being from different cultures if their
ways of life as a groups differ significantly, one from
another. Culture has a cognitive ( to do with thinking),
affective (to do with feeling) and behavioral
characteristics.
 Culture can be changed, in fact it is changing all the time.
 The issue is the degree of change to which culture can be
submitted over the short and long term and the process
for doing this.
 Much depends on the perspective adopted and the type
of change proposed.
What Is an Organizational Culture?
3 perspectives can be identified
 Culture can be managed
 Culture may be manipulated
 Culture cannot be consciously changed
There is a general agreement that there is need to:
 Assess the current situation
 Have some idea on what the aimed for situation looks like
 Work out the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of moving the
organization, or part of it, away from its current culture to
what is perceived to be a more desirable one
The ingredients of culture
 Brown 1995 lists the following characteristics of
culture:
 Observable artifacts
 physical manifestations such as manner of dress,
awards, myths and stories about the company
 visible behavior exhibited by managers and
employees
The ingredients of culture
 Language in the form of jokes, stories, myths and
legends..
 Behavior patterns in the form of rites, rituals,
ceremonies.
 Norms of behavior
 Heroes ( past and present employees who do great
things)
 Symbols and symbolic action
 Beliefs, values and attitudes
 Ethical codes
The ingredients of culture
•
Basic assumption about what is important
 represent the core values of the organization ’ s
culture ; which are not observable, represent the core
beliefs that employees have about their organization
 those taken for granted and highly resistant to change
•
history
Describing organizational culture
 People orientation: the degree to which
management decisions take into consideration the effect
of outcomes on people within the organization.
 Team orientation: the degree to which work activities
are organized around groups rather than individuals.
 Aggression: the degree to which people are
aggressive and competitive rather than easygoing.
 Stability: the degree to which organizational activities
emphasize maintaining the status quo in contrast to
growth
Describing organizational culture
 Levels (Schein)
 1/ Artifacts: the annual report of the company includes
policies concerned with employees as well as customers and
shareholders.
 2/Espoused values: pay and conditions for workers
should be fair and their views taken into account on matters
that affect them. However, gaining contracts and satisfying
customers is a priority.
 3/ Basic underlying assumptions: all people should
be treated with dignity whatever their level and function
Describing organizational culture
 Values level (Hofstede)
1/ Values
2/ Rituals: activities and ceremonies, planned an
unplanned, that celebrate important occasions and
accomplishments in the organization’s life
3/ Hero: person whose accomplishments embody the
values of the organization
4/Symbols: an object, act, quality, or event that conveys
meaning to others
Describing organizational culture
Levels of Culture (Combination of Schein’s and Dyer’s models)
1. Artifacts
2.perspective: it is acceptable for trade union representatives to
know what volume of work is expected in the future, but the
directors are not expected to talk about details of the proposed
expansion until it becomes well-established.
3. Values
4. Basic/tactic assumptions
Objectivist and interpretive views of culture
 How to bring meaning to the concept of culture
itself. There is a distinction between 2 classifications
of culture:
The objectivist or functional view of culture
Implies that organizations have cultures and further implies that
changing cultures is not that difficult if certain procedures are
followed
Objectivist and interpretive views of culture
 There is a second view of culture, which
-
interprets the meaning of culture as a metaphor for the
concept of organization itself.
-
Culture is something an organization is (In essence this
means that organizations are socially constructed realities
and that, rather than being defined by their structures, rules
and regulations, they are constructed as much in the heads
and minds of their members and are strongly related to
members’
-
self-concept and identity.
The cultural web
 Is a model of organizational culture which brings together
the idea of culture as congruent with everything that
happens in an organization ( Johnson et al 2008).
 The cultural web is all-encompassing in the organizational
elements which it includes. They lie within a cultural web
which bonds them to the day-to-day action of
organizational life.
The cultural web
The different elements of the cultural web:

Rituals and routines

Stories

Symbols

Power structure

Organizational

structures

Control systems

The paradigm
The cultural web
The notion of culture as a metaphor for organization also
encompasses the concept of sub-cultures. Alvesson
recommends combining perspectives at 3 levels:
The organization as culture (unitary and unique)
The organization as a meeting place for great cultures
Local perspectives on organisationnel subcultures.
A cultural compass
Hall’s compass model of culture and its associated culture
typologies have been developed through an apparent interest in
cultural differences in partnerships.
There are 2 components of behavior or cultural styles of behavior:
Assertiveness: The degree to which a company’s behaviors are
seen by others as being forceful or directive.
Responsiveness: The degree to which a company’s behaviors
are seen by others as being emotionally expressed.
Dimensions of organizational culture
 The structural view of culture
Handy (1993) refers to organizational culture at atmosphere
ways of doing things, levels of energy and levels of
individual freedom – or collectively, the sets of values
and norms and beliefs – reflected in different structures
and systems. He suggested four organizational culture
types:
Handy's structural view of culture
1/Power culture
In which a single person or group tends to dominate. Decision making is
centralized. Family businesses,
2/ Role culture
Work by logic and rationality. Activity is controlled more by rules and regulations
than by personal directive from the top.
3/ Task culture
Represented by Project work associated with matrix-type structures. Is not
particularly concerned with personal power or hierarchy, but with marshaling the
required resources to complete work and work efficiently and effectively.
4/Person culture
An unusual culture. It exists only to service the needs of the participating
members.
Organizational culture and the external
environment
Deal and Kennedy’s (1982) proposed four generic cultures:
 The tough-guy, macho culture:
-
People in these organizations regularly take High risks and
rapid feedback on the outcomes of their actions: example:
police departments
-
Focus on speed rather than endurance
-
Failure is punished
Organizational culture and the external
environment
 The work-hard/ play-hard culture
-
Low risk but quick feedback on actions such as sales
organizations that incorporate hard work and fun.
-
Risks are small because an individual sale is unlikely
severely damage the salesperson.
-
Heroes in these organizations are the super salespeople who
turn in volume sales
-
Emphasizes the team because it is the team which makes the
difference.
to
Organizational culture and the external
environment
 Bet-your-company culture
- The risks are high and the feedback on actions and decisions
takes a long time. Bet-your- company organizations are those
that invest heavily in projects which take years to come to
result: e.g. Oil companies
-
People bet the company rather than themselves
-
All decisions are carefully weighed and based on careful
research
-
influenced by short-term economic fluctuations in the
economy
Organizational culture and the external
environment
 The process culture
- There is low risk and slow feedback on actions and decisions: e.g.
public and government organizations.
- Working with little feedback, employees have no sense of their
own effectiveness or otherwise.
- They tend to concentrate on the means which things are done
rather than what should be done
- Effective when dealing with a stable and predictable
environment, but find it difficult to react quickly to changing
circumstances.
Organizational culture, structure, strategy and the
external environment
 The external-inducted dimensions
 The internal-inducted dimensions identifies three culture
types: production, bureaucratic and professional that derive
from organizational structure characteristics.
 The evolution-inducted dimensions
From these, five culture types are identified
Organizational culture, structure, strategy and the
external environment
3-1/ Stable, with the time orientation towards the past and an
aversion to risk.
3-2/ Reactive, with the time orientation towards the present and
an acceptance of the minimum risk.
3-3/ Anticipating, also oriented towards the present but more
accepting of familiar risks.
3-4/ Exploring, with a time orientation towards the present and
the future and an acceptance of increasing risk.
3-5/ Creative, looking forward to the future and accepting risk as
normal.
The sources of organizational culture
 After studding how culture is expressed and noting the
influences of dominant personalities, professional norms and
market economics, among others, on shaping organizational
culture. Organizational history and national culture
differences also play a part:
.1The influence of organizational history
The subculture of an organization reflects national culture,
professional subculture, and the organization's own history.
Regarding the last of these, Robbins emphasizes how the
philosophy of organization’s founder and, as time passes,
the top management define acceptable behavior.
The sources of organizational culture
.2The influence of national culture:
The literature on cultural similarities and differences between
nations identifies a long-standing debate known as the
convergence-divergence debate.
Those who support the convergence view argue that the
forces of industrialization and the use of similar
technologies as well as increasing size will push
organizations, whatever their location, towards particular
configurations with respect to strategy, structure and
management.
The influence of national culture
 The markets valuing a global approach to business- an
approach in which a company’s units, divisions, teams,
functions, and regions are all tightly integrated and
synchronized across borders.
Opposing this view is the notion that differences in
language, religion, social organization, laws, politics,
education systems, and values and attitudes will mean
that national cultures will not converge but continue to
remain distinct.
The diversity of national cultures
Six different cultural orientations of societies
People’s qualities as individuals in terms of whether people
are seen as basically good or basicallyBad
People’s relationship to their world
People’s personal relationships in terms of individualism or
collectivism
An orientation to either doing or being
People’s orientation to time
People’s use of space
Organization's capacity to change
 Attitudes to criticism
 Attitudes to sharing information
 Attitudes to experimentation in processes and products
 Degree of willingness to give people autonomy and support them in
their actions
 Degree to which the organization's structure facilitates change
 Degree of willingness to discuss sensitive issue openly
 Attitudes to conflict
 Degree of management’s openness to new ideas – especially
from below
Organization's capacity to change
According to Stalker’s(1961):Culture and
structure seem almost to be interchangeable.
- Structure and culture as organic types of
organization are much more likely to be able to
respond to the need for change than mechanistic
forms( they are less open to change).
Mechanistic vs. Organic Organizations
Organization's capacity to change
 Mechanistic forms are :unlikely to support, without
serious trauma, the frame-breaking, transformational or
revolutionary types of change.

This is likely to be the case because of their structural
characteristics, but might also be because of the attitudes,
beliefs and values held by the people who work in them.
Organizational learning and types of change

Single-loop learning (individual learning)
An objective or goal is defined and an individual works out
the most favored way of reaching the goal. The goal
itself is not questioned.
 Double-loop learning (organizational relearning)
Questions are asked not only about the means by which
goals can be achieved, but about the ends, the goals it
selves.
Changing organizational culture to bring about
organizational change
 Culture is, by definition, a dominant influence on
organizational life. It follows then that in order to
bring about significant organizational change,
organizational culture must be managed
accordingly.

But can culture be managed?
The relevance of culture change to organizational
change
Assessing cultural risk helps management pinpoint where
they are likely to meet resistance to change because of
incompatibility between strategy and culture. This further
allows them to make choices regarding:
1. Ignoring the culture
2. Managing around the culture
3. Changing the culture
4. Changing the strategy to match the culture