Organizational Theory and Design Dersi 8. Ünite Özet

Introduction

Organizations are quite similar to social beings. If one needs to be the part of the society, he/she should accept certain norms, assumptions, and values. Our lives are full of interactions between people and organizations, like the hotels we accommodate, the restaurants where we like to enjoy with friends, the NGO that we donate most. When you spend some time in a certain organization, you will recognize that atmosphere, management style, structure, and the people are extremely different than other organizations even if they are in same industry. Like societies and nations, organizations have their own characteristics and cultures.

Culture Defined

While culture can be defined as the context where people live when considered sociologically, metaphorically it is the scene where all the social interactions take place. Symbols and artifacts, values and beliefs are important aspects of culture. Some of the specific characteristics of culture are;

• Culture is connected to history and traditions.
• Culture is difficult concept that needs further explanations to be understood in details.
• Culture is shared by as a group.
• Culture is related to perspectives, beliefs, and knowledge.
• Culture is an integrative, subjective, and emotional phenomenon.

In short, culture is a kind of meaning making process which people use to understand the world around them by the help of values and beliefs, language, symbols, and physical artifacts. It has been a popular concept of management and organization curriculum since 1980s; however there were some scientists like Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856 - 1915), who published The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911. Such studies show that culture highly concerned by the management and organizational scholars since the beginning of contemporary management thought.

The Rise of Cultural Perspective in Organization Theory

Cultural perspective in organizational dates back to the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s.The time culture seemed to be the main reason for organizational success in 1990s.The reasons behind the rise of organizational culture as a concept for understanding organizations were:

• Individualism and alienation: Organizational culture was trying to find answer for the questions like “Who am I, what is my reason for being in this world?, what this organization stands for?”, which lonely people were asking.
• Technically advanced production and the rise of service industry: Since technology developed, employees had to be more customer-focused and technically qualified. As a result, skillful and well-trained employees preferred independent working conditions
• Machine bureaucracy gradually became less useful in managing people: Time-and-motion studies were challenged, which led scholars focusing on the human aspect of management.
• Innovative production techniques: Mass production techniques increase the level of efficiency. In order to balance the level of efficiency with the degree of flexibility, organizations should employ people who have a sense of active belonging and commitment.
• Japanese miracle: After the 2nd World War, Japan became an economic power, which was related to the Japanese management style

Organizational Cultural

Globalization and competition transform organizations. That’s why it is necessary for everyone to be aware of organizational culture in which they spent most of their times. Although many scholars from various fields attempted to explain what organizational culture is, below is one of the definitions which may be a definition accepted in general:

Organizational culture is made up of fundamental beliefs and assumptions, providing shared values that make being a part of an organization meaningful, and offers organizational members well-defined integrative patterns for expressing themselves.

The definitions underline that culture (1) is made up of shared emotions and beliefs, (2) guides behaviors in organizational settings, (3) is historically transferred from generations to generations

Fundamental concepts related to organizational culture are: subculture, dominant culture, and counterculture.

Subculture is defined as groups sharing overall cultural values of the society but differs from these groups in holding different values brought by their lifestyles, values, and norms. There are three kinds of subculture; operational subculture (the culture of blue collar workers), technical subculture (the culture shared by blue- and white-collar workers) and managerial subculture (the culture shared by managers)

There might be a dominant culture surrounded by various subcultures in today’s organizations. But sometimes subcultures within the organization may marginalize due to several factors affecting them. These marginalized cultures are called counterculture.

Organizations which have strong cultures will create places where norms, values, and beliefs are all accepted by the majority of the organizational members. In such places performance is said to be very high. These organizations will have benefits like low controlling cost, low employee turnover rates, and high organizational commitment.

On the other hand, organizations in which norms, values, and beliefs are not widely accepted are known to have weak organizational culture, where you see less commitment and organizational members tend to focus on short term business deals rather than long-term beneficial relationships.

Some organizational settings support their members, take care of them, and praise their achievements, which will create healthy organizational culture. However, employees working in some organizations never feel that way. They always think insecure; they generally believe that tasks they are doing have no particular value. These organizations will have an unhealthy organizational culture.

Levels of Organizational Culture

Organizational culture has three levels; artifacts, espoused values, and basic assumptions. Artifacts are the physical, behavioral, and verbal manifestation of the culture. This layer is made up of symbols and behavioral pattern. The layer between artifacts and basic assumptions is called espoused values, which are general criteria, standards, or guiding principles that people use to determine which types of behaviors, events, situations, and outcomes are desirable or undesirable. Basic assumptions are taken-forgranted beliefs about reality, nature of the organization and its relations to the environment, the nature of human life, the nature of time, and the nature of people’s relations to each other.

Constructing Organizational Culture

Organizational culture is made up of values, beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions on social reality. Naturally constructing organizational culture is an evolutionary process, which rather slow, and it takes time for a proper formation. Factors which affect the process of constructing organizational culture are:

• Organizational history (the purpose of the organization, original structure, age, philosophy, founders’ and first-generation managers’ values ,significant events)
• Founder and top management team (essential figures shaping organizational culture)
• Mission and vision statement (organization’s reasons for being, organization’s scope and the dynamics of the industry)
• Human capital (human resources employed by the organization)
• Communication styles
• Organizational environment

Communicating Organizational Culture

When communicating organizational cultures, we need to be aware of some terms. Culture is shaped and communicated by shared values through symbolic interaction. You may come across various forms of physical symbols throughout the organizations. From official logo to the pictures used in financial reports symbols reveals tips about organizational culture. Slogans are verbal expressions of organization’s mission.

Stories (lively anecdotes providing guidance of correct behavioral patterns) have great potential for expressing organizational values, ideals, and beliefs.

Organizations also have their certain concepts, methods, understandings creating a different set of vocabularies generating a jargon, which is particular words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand.

Ceremonies are formal gatherings. Succession events, celebrations, new product releases, awards for quality, profitability, market share, etc. can be the reason for organizing a ceremony. Rites and Rituals can also be considered as a kind of ceremony, but rituals are conducted on a regular basis.

Another way of organizational communicating culture is just expressing values through publishing organizational principles, or its code of conduct, which determines how one should behave within the organization.

Models of Organizational Culture

Especially during 1980s some models were offered for organizational culture. They provide an answer about what culture is, how it should be contemplated, and how we should manage it?

Type Z, offered by Ouchi, is the blended version of Type J and Type A in which suitable features of Japanese firms are adapted to the US context.

For Peters & Waterman having strong and integrative organizational culture is what makes an organization excellent. For Peters & Waterman top management considered to be one of the most important element s of organizational culture.

Cameron and Quinn’s model of organizational culture focused on core values like: Internal Focus and Integration Vs. External Focus and Differentiation, Stability and Control Vs. Flexibility and Discretion.

The organizational cultural model offered by Terrence E. Deal & Allan A. Kennedy based on two dimensions; one of them is the degree of risk, and the other is the speed of feedback.

Business Ethics

Ethics, which has a close connection with organizational culture, is to do with good and bad or right and wrong. People in the organizations make many choices and decisions, these decisions and eventually the following actions are guided by ethical values. Managers’ responsibility to make decisions that are legal, honest, moral, and fair is called business (managerial) ethics

Ethical Organizational Culture

Some of principles of managers when building ethical organizational cultures might be like these;

• Managers should act as a role model
• The organizational expectation on ethical behavior should be announced
• Conducting ethical training and development programs
• Rewarding ethical practices and punishing unethical offenses
• The protective mechanism should be put into action.