Chapter 14
ORGANIZATIONAL
CULTURE
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Defining organizational culture
Kroeber and Kluchohn (1952) - 164 different meanings of culture
Table 14.1
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Defining organizational culture
organizational culture - a set of shared, often
implicit assumptions, beliefs, values, and
sensemaking procedures that influences and guides
the behaviour and thinking of organizational
members, and is in turn continuously enacted and
reinforced - or changed - by the behaviour of
organizational members
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Model of the linkages between
culture, behaviour, cognition and
artefacts
Figure 14.1
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Acculturation
• For cultures to persist, new generations of members or
new entrants to the culture must start to share some of
the assumptions, beliefs, values, and sensemaking
procedures particular to that culture
• Newcomers to a culture are often culturally inept, and
typically need to go through a learning process before
they become fully adept at behaving in culturally
appropriate ways.
• This process is also called acculturation or socialization the process by which newcomers develop the ability to
function effectively in a particular culture
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
STUDYING ORGANIZATIONAL
CULTURE
Cray and Mallory (1998) offer three
approaches that can be identified:
• Naive comparative
• Culture free
• Culture bound
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Schein’s three levels of culture
Figure 14.2
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Schein cultural dimensions
Schein (1985) identified six dimensions
reflecting the composition of culture:
• Behavioural regularities
• Dominant values
• Norms
• Rules
• Philosophy
• Climate
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
The cycle of culture
Figure 14.3
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Cultural frameworks
Figure 14.4
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Deal and Kennedy’s strong cultural
elements
Table 14.4
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Handy’s four types of culture
Figure 14.5: Power Culture
Figure 14.7: Task Culture
Figure 14.6: Role Culture
Plus- Person culture
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
The cultural web
Figure 14.8
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Sub- and countercultures
Subcultures - The existence of different groups within a
single organization:
• Enhancing subcultures - support the prevailing culture,
• Orthogonal cultures - do not interfere with the
prevailing culture
• Counter-cultures - actively and clearly oppose aspects
of the prevailing culture
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
The determinants of culture
• History and ownership
• Size
• Technology
• Goals and objectives
• Environment
• People
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Changing organizational cultures
Lundberg (1985) - six stage programme:
•External conditions that may encourage a change to the existing culture
• Internal circumstances and individuals that would support change
• Pressures - forces pressing for change in the culture
• Visioning - Identify key stakeholders and create in them a vision of the
proposed changes, the needs and benefits
• Strategy - Develop a strategy for achieving the implementation of the
new culture
• Action - Develop and implement a range of action plans based on the
strategy as a means of achieving movement to the desired culture
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Nine-factor test
Table 14.6
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Trompenaar’s and Woolliams’
perspective on values within culture
Seven dimensions reflecting ways that values differ between cultures :
• Universalism v participation
• Individualism v communitarianism
• Specific v diffuses
• Neutrality v affectivity
• Inner directed v outer directed
• Achieved status v ascribed status
• Sequential time v synchronic time
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Hofstede’s perspectives on culture
• Individualism-collectivism
- the degree of
integration between individuals in a society
• Power distance - the degree of centralization of
authority
• Uncertainty avoidance - how the members of a
society deal with uncertainty
• Masculinity-femininity - societies classified as
‘masculine’ tend to gender based, stressing
achievement. Societies classified as feminine tend
to seek a high quality of life, help others.
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Illustration of Hofstede’s
classification
Table 14.7
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Trompenaars’ perspective
What works in one culture will seldom do so in another:
• Performance pay - people in France, Germany, Italy and
parts of Asia tend not to accept that ‘individual members
of the group should excel in a way that reveals the
shortcomings of others’
• Two-way communications - Americans may be
motivated by feedback sessions, Germans, however,
find them, ‘enforced admissions of failure’
• Decentralization and delegation - might work well in
Anglo-Saxon cultures, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and
Germany, but are likely to fail in Belgium, France and
Spain.
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Trompenaars’ perspective
Trompenaars seven dimensions of culture – which combine to create different
corporate cultures including:
• Family - found in Japan, India, Belgium, Italy, Spain and small French
companies. Hierarchical in structure with the leader a ‘father figure’. Praise
can frequently be a better motivator than money.
•
Eiffel Tower - Large French companies, some German and Dutch
companies. Hierarchical in structure, very impersonal, rule driven and slow
to adapt to change are dominant characteristics.
•
Guided missile - American companies, some in the UK. Egalitarian and
strongly individualistic in nature with a measure of impersonality. They
tend to be able to adjust the established course of action quickly but not to
completely to new situations.
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Berry’s framework of acculturation
styles
Figure 14.11
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
Globalization and culture
Yip (1989) - three stage process
• Developing a core strategy as the basis of competitive advantage
• Internationalization of the home country strategy
• Globalization through integration of the largely separate country
based international strategies
Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989)
• International organization
• Transnational organization
Two options available to an organization in its approach to culture:
• Polycentric
• Ethnocentric
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning
The six global capabilities
Table 14.8
For use with Organizational Behaviour and Management
by John Martin and Martin Fellenz
1408018128© 2010 Cengage Learning