Chapter (3)
organization culture and
environment
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Chapter outcomes:
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- contrast the actions of managers according
to the omnipotent and symbolic views.
- discuss the characteristics and importance
of organizational culture.
- describe current issues in organizational
culture.
- identify the features of the specific and
general environments.
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The manager
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The manager: omnipotent or symbolic:
Omnipotent view: the dominant view in
general is that managers are directly
responsible for an organization's success or
failure.
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The manager: continued
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Symbolic view of management: much of an
organization's success or failure is due to
external forces outside managers' control. Its
called symbolic because it's based on the
belief that managers symbolize control and
influence, but the part that the managers
actually play in organizational success or
failure is limited.
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The manager: continued
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Reality suggest a synthesis:
The managerial discretion (manager
decisions and actions) are constrained
because they coming between organizational
culture and organizational environment, as
shown in exhibit 3-1 page 61
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Exhibit 3-1
Constraints on Managerial Discretion
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Organizational Culture:
The shared values, principles, traditions, and
the ways of doing things that influence the
way organizational members act.
 These shared values and practices have
evolved over time and determines how things
are done in the organization.
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Organizational Culture: continued
The definition implies three things:
 - culture is perception: it's not something that can be
physically touched or seen.
 - culture is descriptive: it's concerned with how
members perceive the culture, not with whether they
like it
 - culture is shared: individuals tend to describe the
organization's culture in similar terms, even they
may have different backgrounds or work at different
organizational levels
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Organizational Culture: continued
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Researchers suggests that there are seven
dimensions that describe an organization's
culture ranging from low to high: exhibit 3-2
page 63 showing that:
All organizations have cultures, but not all
cultures equally influence employees'
behaviors and actions.
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Exhibit 3-2
Dimensions of Organizational Culture
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Organizational Culture: continued
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Strong and Weak cultures:
Strong culture: organizational cultures in which the
key values are intensely (deeply) held and widely
shared. Have greater influence on employees than
do weaker cultures.
Exhibit 3-4 page 64 showing comparison between
strong and weak cultures.
As more employees accept the organization's
values, the greater their commitment to those
values.
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Exhibit 3-4
Strong Versus Weak Cultures
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Organizational Culture: continued
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The strong culture is important because in
organization with strong cultures, employees
are more loyal than employees with weak
culture, and the strong cultures are
associated with high organizational
performance, and the employees can act
quickly to take care of problems if values are
clear and widely accepted by them.
But strong culture might prevent employees
from trying new approaches.
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Organizational Culture: continued
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Where culture come from and how it
continues: original source of the culture:
Exhibit 3-5 page 64 showing that:
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Exhibit 2-8
Establishing and Maintaining Culture
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Organizational Culture: continued
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1- philosophy of organization’s founders: Its
usually reflects the vision of the founders.
2- Selection criteria: certain organizational
practice help maintain the culture, ex: during
the employees selection process, managers
judge job candidates not only on job
requirement but also on how well they might
fit into the organization.
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Organizational Culture: continued
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3- the action of top managers also have a major
impact on the organization’s culture. Top managers
establish norms that can have positive effect on
employees behavior, the actions of top managers
can also lead to undesirable outcomes.
4- socialization: the process that helps employees
adapt to organization’s culture, helping them to learn
the way of doing things, understand the culture and
become enthusiastic and knowledgeable with
customers, and minimize the chance that new
employees who are unfamiliar with organization’s
culture might disrupt current beliefs and customs.
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Organizational Culture: continued
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How employees learn culture: through the following
ways:
1- Stories: by narrative of significant events or
people, like organization’s founders. Story tellers
could be executives who explain the company’s
heritage and tell stories that celebrate people getting
things done.
2- Rituals: by repetitive sequences of activities that
express and reinforce the important values and
goals of the organization.
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Organizational Culture: continued
3- Material Symbols: ex: how employees dress, the type of
automobiles provided to top managers, the elegance of
furnishings, employees fitness center, health club memberships.
Its convey to employees who is important and the kinds of
behavior.
 4- Language: many organizations use language as a way to
identify and unite members of culture. Some organizations have
its unique vocabularies, ex:
Work judo (deflecting a work assignment to someone else without
making it appear that you are avoiding it), death march
(countdown to shipping a new product).
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Organizational Culture: continued
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How Culture Affect Managers:
Because an org. culture constrains what they can
and cannot do, such constrains are rarely explicit,
they are not written down, managers should quickly
learn what to do and not to do in their org. some
values are not written down, but come from a real
org. as:
- look busy even if you are not.
- what made us successful in the past will make us
successful in the future.
- if you want to get to the top, your have to be a
team player.
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Organizational Culture: continued
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Exhibit 3-6 page 68 showing how the
managerial decisions affected by culture.
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Exhibit 3-6
Managerial Decisions Affected by Culture
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Organizational Culture: continued
Current Organizational Culture Issues:
1- creating an ethical culture: the content and strength
of an organization’s culture influences its ethical
climate and the ethical behavior of its members,
 If the culture is strong and supports high ethical
standards, it should have a very powerful and
positive influence on employee behavior, and vice
versa.
 Exhibit 3-7 page 69 showing how to creating an
ethical culture.
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Organizational Culture: continued
2- Creating An innovative Culture: any successful org. needs a
culture that supports innovation.
 What does an innovative culture characterized:
- Challenge and involvement:
- Freedom: can employees take initiative in their activities.
- Trust and Openness: are employees supportive and respectful to
each other.
- Idea Time: do employees have time to elaborate on new ideas
before taking action.
- Playfulness/Humor: is the work place spontaneous and fun.
- conflict resolution: do employees make decisions and resolve
issues.
- Debates: are employees allow to express opinions and put ideas
- Risk taking: do managers tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity.
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Organizational Culture: continued
3- Creating A customer Responsive Culture:
exhibit 3-8 page 71 showing the
characteristics of customer responsive
culture, and the suggestions for managers.
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Exhibit 3-8
Creating a Customer-Responsive Culture
• How Do You Create a Customer
Responsive Culture?
– Hire the right type of employees (those with a
strong interest in serving customers)
– Have few rigid rules, procedures, and
regulations
– Use widespread empowerment of employees
– Have good listening skills in relating to
customers’ messages
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Organizational Culture: continued
4- Creating a culture that support diversity:
 Workforce diversity: a workforce that’s
heterogeneous in terms of gender, race,
ethnicity, age, and other characteristics that
reflect differences.
 Diversity contributes to more creative
solutions and enhances employees morale,
the managing workforce diversity box
discusses what managers can do.
(homework)?
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Organizational Culture: continued
5- Spirituality and organizational culture: it’s a
feature of a culture where organizational
values promote a sense of purpose through
meaningful work that takes place in the
context of community.
 Organizations with spiritual culture recognize
that people have a mind and a sprit, seek to
find meaning and purpose in their work, and
desire to connect with other human beings
and to be part of community.
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Organizational Culture: continued
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Workplace spirituality seems to be important
now for a number of reasons:
- employees are looking for ways to cope with
the stresses and pressures of a turbulent
pace of life. Like: single parent families,
geographic mobility, temporary jobs.
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Organizational Culture: continued
Research shows that spiritual organizations
tend to have five cultural characteristics:
a- strong sense of purpose: that’s create a
more productive, efficient, loyal, and
committed employee base.
b- focus on individuals development: that’s
create cultures in which employees can
continually grow and learn.
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Organizational Culture: continued
c- trust and oppeness: managers aren’t afraid to admit
mistakes, and they tend to upfront with employees,
customers, and suppliers.
d- employee empowerment: managers trust
employees to make thoughtful and conscientious
decisions, even if it means going against company
policies.
e- toleration of employee expression: they allow
people to be themselves, to express their moods
and feelings without guilt and profits compatible.
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The Environment:
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An organization interacts with its environment
as it takes in inputs and distributes outputs.
Environmental forces play a major role in
shaping managers’ actions, even external or
internal environment.
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The environment: Continued:
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External environment: refers to factors and
forces outside the organization that affect the
organization’s performance.
Organization environment includes two
components: specific and general
environment. As shown in exhibit 3-9 page
73.
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Exhibit 3-9
Components of External Environment
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The environment: Continued:
a- specific environment: external forces that
directly or indirectly impact managers’
decisions and actions and are directly
relevant to the achievement of the
organization’s goals. And include:
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The environment: Continued:
1- Customers: an organization exist to meet the needs
of customers who use its output, customers taste
can change or they can become dissatisfied with the
organization’s product.
2- Suppliers: managers seek to ensure a steady flow
of needed inputs, at the lowest price possible, org.
suppliers might be delay or limited in delivery and
that can constrain managers to meat the right
demand levels for customers.
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The environment: Continued:
3- Competitors: managers can’t afford to
ignore the competitors.
4- Pressure groups: special interest groups
that attempt to influence the actions of
organizations in order to get managers to
change some decisions or actions, like:
human rights, boycotting, consumer’s
protection societies.
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The environment: Continued:
b- The general environment: broad external conditions
that may affect an organization. And include:
1- Economic conditions: As: interest rates, inflation,
changes in disposable income, stock market
fluctuations, and the stage of general business
cycle.
2- Political/Legal conditions: As: national and local
laws, regulations in other countries where a
business operate.
Exhibit 3-10 page 75 showing the important U.S
legislation (self study).
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The environment: Continued:
3- Sociocultural conditions: managers must adapt
their practices to the changing in customer attitudes,
values, customs, tastes, and must respond to
customers changing. Like flexible, work hours, child
care facilities, leave policies.
4- Demographic conditions: refer to population
characteristics such as gender, age, level of
education, geographic location, income, and family
composition.
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The environment: Continued:
5- Technological conditions: the rapid changes
that occurred in technology.
6- Global conditions: is one of the major
factors affecting managers and organizations.
As the markets and competitors. WTO.
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The environment: Continued:
How the Environment Affects Managers: by
two ways:
a- the degree of environmental uncertainty
(changes and complexity): the degree of
changes and complexity in an organization’s
environment.
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The environment: Continued:
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the degree of environmental complexity: the
number of components in an organization’s
environment and the extent of the
organization’s knowledge about these
components.
Exhibit 3-11 page 77 showing the
environmental uncertainty matrix:
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Exhibit 3-11
Environmental Uncertainty Matrix
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The environment: Continued:
b- managing the various stakeholder
relationships that exist between the
organization and its external constituencies.
 Stakeholders: any constituencies in an
organization’s environment that are affected
by the organization’s decisions and actions.
Exhibit 3-12 page 78 showing the
organizational stakeholders.
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Exhibit 3-12 Organizational Stakeholders
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The environment: Continued:
Reasons for keeping good relationships with
stakeholders:
1- to reduce the impact of change.
2- the organizations depend on these forces as
a sources of inputs.
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The environment: Continued:
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How managers manage stakeholders relationships:
1- need to identify the organization’s stakeholders.
2- need to determine what particular interests or
concerns the stakeholders might have.
3- need to decide how critical each stakeholders is
to the organization’s decisions and actions.
4- need to determine how to manage external
stakeholders relationships.
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