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Category: Organizational Culture

  • Changing Organizational Culture 2

    In the last byte, we began our discussion on changing organizational culture. In today’s byte, we continue looking at the same.

    Referring to the diagram shown in the last byte; there are two approaches to changing the existing culture:
    Path  1: helping current members buy into the new set of values
    Path 2: adding newcomers and socializing them into the organizations and removing current members as appropriate
     
    Lets Explore path 1 first:
    The first action is to change behavior in organization. Behavior is an artifact of culture – so individuals may change heir behavior bu not the values that drive it. Managers must use actions to justify the changed behavior. All artifacts should send consistent message about the new values and beliefs.
     
    Lets now look at path 2:
    The organization can look at revising its selection strategies to more accurately reflect the new culture – and let go of people who resist cultural change.

  • Changing Organizational Culture

    In the last byte, we looked at assessing the organizational culture. In today’s byte, we begin looking at how change in organizational culture could be initiated. 

    We could visualize the process of changing the organizational cultural in the following diagram.


  • Assessing Organization Culture

    In the last byte, we looked at socilization as cultural communication. In today’s byte, we begin look at ways to  assess organization culture. 

    There are two widely used quantitative assessment instruments:
    1. Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI)
    2. Kilmann-Saxton Culture-Gap Survey
    OCI focuses on behaviors that help employees fit into the organization and meet the expectations of coworkers. The two underlying dimensions of the OCI are task/people and security/satisfaction. 

    Kilmann-Saxton Culture-Gap Survey focuses on the gap between what actually happens in the organization and the expectations of others in the organization. It has two underlying dimensions – technical/human and time(short/long). 

    While quantitative methods listed above are precise, comparable and objective – the use of qualitative methods like interviews and observations offer a detailed, descriveptive and unique measure of the scenario. Thus, “Traingulation” methods are generally prefered in study of organizational culture.

  • Socialization as Cultural Communication

    In the last byte, we looked at the outcomes of socialization. In today’s byte, we look at Socialization as cultural communication.

    It could be interesting to note that socialization is definitely a powerful cultural communication tool, but it needs to be understood well: The transmission of information about cultural artifacts is relatively easy, the transmission of values is more difficult. But it is the communication of organizational assumption that is most difficult. 

    The source of this problem is possibly that members of the organization themselves may not be consciously aware of the assumptions and therefore difficult to communicate.

    Socialization serves one primary purpose amongst others – the transmission of core values to new members of the organization. Interaction with role-models, training that newcomers receive, behavior with respect to rewards and punishment etc are all means by which the newcomers are exposed to these values. 

    If newcomers are expected to adopt the values of an organization, it is essential that the message reflect the underlying values of the organization. Both the individuals and organizations should ensure that certain actions are taken for the success of socialization processes.

  • Organizational Socialization

    In the last byte, we looked at how hiring and firing decisions could be important indicators of the organizational culture. In today’s byte, we look at organizational socialization. 

    We have clearly understood, based on our earlier discussion the role of leaders in defining organizational values, that leaders play a key role in shaping an organization’s culture. Another such process that perpetuates culture is the way it is handed down from generation to generation of employees – the underlying process here is “Organizational Socialization”.

    Organizational Socialization refers to the process by which new comers into an organization are transformed from outsiders to participating, effective members of the organization.

    We have earlier discussed how the new-comer selection often reinforces the organization’s culture. It is just the first step in the process. Once selected these people pass through the process of socialization in the organization and this is thus the vehicle for bringing newcomers into the organizational culture. 

    We shall discuss the various stages of organizational socialization next.

  • Culture and Leadership 5

    In the last byte, we looked how rewarding could help get the organizational values aligned. In today’s byte, we look at how hiring and firing decisions by leaders could reinforce the organizational culture.

    Hiring and Firing decisions are very strong indicators of the way leaders reinforce the organizational culture. 

    Often leaders unconsciously look out for new members who are similar to the current organizational members in terms of values and assumptions. As a practise in some companies that recommendations by a current employee, and this too helps find new employees who have similar values. The policy of promoting from within also servs to reinforce organizational culture. 

    The way an organization deals with firing an employee and the rationale behind the act are important means to communicate about the organization’s culture. Some companies poor performers are transfered to another department where they could perform better and make useful contributions. In others these employees would be qickly be sent away from the organization. 

    In some case where the reason may not be communicated to the employee, the speculation plays a major role. Imagine: An employee caught displaying unethical behavior and if simply reprimanded even though the behavior is against the organization’s values – other employees in such a context would think that this is a failure to reinforce the values within an organization.

  • Culture and Leadership 4

    In the last byte, we looked at how an organizational culture would be reflected in how the  leaders behave. In today’s byte, we look at how one could understand organizational culture from how leaders allocate resources.

    Rewards are widely used by organizations to get the expected behavior. Leaders could use these rewards to encourage and ensure that the values of the organization are consistently followed by all employees. 

    Lets take a couple of examples:
    1. Imaging a company where it is generally heard that there is a pay-for-performance system implemented. If the company at  point of offering increments decides to increase the compensation based on the years of service with the company rather than performance, think of the feeling an employee who has performed exceptionally well but relatively new into the organization!
    2. Imagine a second company where the company claims its value to be teamwork. They form cross-functional terms and empower these teams to make important decisions, however when there is the point of performance appraisal the criteria for rating employees focuses on individual performances!

    The confusing signals to the employees about the company’s culture could demotivate the employees.

  • Culture and Leadership 3

    In the last byte, we looked at how one could understand the leaders focus by observing what the leader pays attention to and how he would react in crisis. In today’s byte, we look further to understand how leaders could reinforce culture by how he/she behaves.
     
    How Leaders Behave?

    By role modeling, teaching, and coaching, leaders reinforce the values that support the organizational culture. One could often find employees emulating the leader’s behavior and look for cues when they would like to understand what the appropriate behavior would be.
     
    In the dynamic business environment we stay today, we often hear organizations say that they are encouraging employees to behave more entrepreneurially – taking up more initiative, and be more innovative in their jobs. Even in this case, it is required that the leaders themselves behave  entrepreneurially.
     
    One could extend the above example of entrepreneurial culture to any value in an organizational culture. Employees often find themselves observing the leader to find out what the organizations’ values are.

  • Culture and Leadership 2

    In the last byte, we began our discussion on the role a leader in managing the organizational culture and also noted the 5 major questions to ponder over. In today’s byte we look at a few of these questions.

    What leaders pay attention to:
    Leaders n a organization communicate their priorities, values and beliefs though the theme that consistently emerge from what they focus on – one could observe these by noticing what they notice, what they comment on, what they measure and what they control. 

    Leaders must be consistent in what they pay attention to, measure and control; in order to communicate to the employees and give a clear signal on what is important in the organization. In consistency on this front would get the employees confused thanks to the inconsistent signals.

    How leaders react to Crisis:
    Crisis is a situation when leadership is actually tested – how a leader deals with such situations communicate a powerful message about culture. Often emotions are heightened during crisis and learning is intense.

    It has been observed that difficult economic times present crisis from companies and illustrate their different values. Some organizations do everything possible to prevent laying off workers while others claim that employees are important but quickly institute major layoffs at the first signal of economic downturn.

  • Culture and Leadership

    In the last byte, we looked at the benefits of an adaptive culture on firm’s performance. In today’s byte, we explore how a leader could play a role in shaping or reinforcing culture. 

    Leadership in an organization plays a huge role in the way an organization develops its culture. To effectively manage culture, the following five elments need to be carefully throught through:
    1. What leaders pay attention to?
    2. How leaders react to crisis?
    3. How leader behave?
    4. How leaders allocate rewards?
    5. How leaders hire and fire individuals?
    We shall briefly discuss on some highlights of each of these elements over the next few bytes.