Chapter 16 Organizational Cultures

Survey Feedback

a tool for assessing attitudes held by organizational members, identifying discrepancies among member perceptions, and solving this differences.

Psychological symptoms

job dissatisfaction, tension, anxiety, irritability, boredom, and procrastination.

Five Organizational Development

technics or interventions for bringing about change: 1. Survey Feedback 2. Process Consultation 3. Team building 4. Intergroup Development 5. Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

Subcultures

tend to develop in large organizations to reflect common problems or experiences members face in the same department or location.

Coercion

the application of direct threats of force on the resisters.

Innovation & Risk Taking

the degree to which employees are encouraged to be innovative and take risks

Attention to Detail

the degree to which employees are expected to exhibit precision, analysis, and attention to detail

People Orientation

the degree to which management decisions take into consideration the effect of outcomes on people within the organization

Outcome Orientation

the degree to which management focuses on results or outcomes rather than on the techniques and processes uses to achieve them.

Stability

the degree to which organizational activities emphasize maintaining the status quo in contrast to growth

Aggressiveness

the degree to which people are aggressive and competitive rather than easygoing

Team Orientation

the degree to which work activities are organized around teams rather than individuals

Selection

the explicit goal of the selection process is to identify and hire individuals with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform successfully. The final decision, because it's significantly influenced by the decision maker's judgment of how well the candidates will fit into the organization, identifies people whose values are essentially consistent with at least a good portion of the organization's. Selection is a two-way street: allowing employer or applicant to avoid a mismatch and sustaining an organization's culture by electing out those who might attack or undermine its core values.

Eight Tactics can help change agents deal with resistance to change:

1) Education and Communication 2) Participation 3) Building support and commitment 4) Develop positive relationships 5) Implementing changes fairly 6) Manipulation and cooptation 7) selecting people who accept change 8) coercion

Organizational Culture has Seven primary characteristics:

1) Innovation & Risk Taking 2) Attention to Detail 3) Outcome Orientation 4) People Orientation 5) Team Orientation 6) Agressiveness 7) Stability

What is the purpose of culture:

1) culture has a boundary-defining role: it creates distinctions between one organization and others. 2) a sense of identity for organization members 3) facilitates commitment to something larger than individual self-interest. 4) enhances the stability of a social system 5) sense-making and control mechanism that guides and shapes employees' attitudes and behavior.

Kotter's Eight-Step Plan for Implementing Change

1. Establish a sense of urgency by creating a compelling reason for why change is needed. 2. Form a coalition with enough power to lead the change. 3. Create a new vision to direct change and strategies for achieving the vision. 4. Communicate the vision throughout the organization. 5. Empower others to act on the vision by removing barriers to change and encouraging risk taking and creative problem solving. 6. Plan for, create, and reward short-term "wins" that move the organization toward the new vision. 7. Consolidate improvements, reassess changes, and make necessary adjustments in the new programs. 8. Reinforce the changes by demonstrating the relationship between new behaviors and organizational success.

Structural variables have been the most studied potential source of innovation.

1. Organic structures positively influence innovation 2. Long tenure in management is associated with innovation 3. Innovation is nurtured when there are slack resources 4. Interunit communication is high in innovative organizations Innovative organizations tend to have similar cultures.

Underlying values in most OD efforts

1. Respect for people 2. Trust and support 3. Power Equalization 4. Confrontation 5. Participation

What can managers do to creative a more ethical culture

? 1) Be a visible role model 2) Communicate Ethical Expectations 3) Provide Ethical Training 4) Visibly Reward Ethical Arts and Punish Unethical Ones 5) Provide Protective Mechanisms The work of setting a positive ethical climate has to start at the top of the organization.

Individual Sources

Habit, Security, Economic Factors, Fear of the Unknown, and Selective Information Processing.

Major Forces for resistance to change.

Individual sources reside in human characteristics such as perceptions, personalities, and needs. Organizational sources reside in the structural makeup of organizations themselves. Not all change is good.

Resistance can be overt, implicit, immediate, or deferred.

It's easiest for management to deal with overt and immediate resistance such as complaints, a work slowdown, or a strike threat.

Encounter Stage

On entry into the organization, the new member enters the — stage and confronts the possibility that expectations—about the job, co-workers, the boss, and the organization in general—may differ from reality.

Kotter began by listing common mistakes managers make.

They may fail to create a sense of urgency about the need for change, create a coalition for managing the change process, have a vision for change and effectively communicate it, remove obstacles that could impede the vision's achievement, provide short-term and achievable goals, or anchor the changes into the organization's culture. They may also declare victory too soon.

How to Keep a Culture Alive

Three forces at play: Selection, top management, socialization.

How a Culture Begins:

Ultimate source of culture is its founders. Culture creation occurs in three ways: 1) Founders hire and keep only employees who think and feel the same way they do. 2) They indoctrinate and socialize these employees to their way of thinking and feeling. 3) the founders own behavior encourages employees to identify with them and internalize their beliefs, values, and assumptions.

Selecting People Who Accept Change

ability to easily accept and adapt to change is related to personality—some people simply have more positive attitudes about change than others. Organizations can facilitate change by selecting people predisposes to accept it.

Once a new idea is developed Idea champions

actively and enthusiastically promote it, build support, overcome resistance and ensure it's implemented. Common characteristics: high self-confidence, persistence, energy, and a tendency to take risks. They also inspire and energize others with their vision of an innovation's potentially and their strong personal conviction about their mission.

Process Consultation

an outside consultant to assist a client, usually a manager, "to perceive, understand, and act upon the process events" with which the manager must deal.

Rituals

are repetitive sequences of activities that express and reinforce the key values of the organization—what goals are most important and which people are important as well as which are expendable.

Managing Stress

as an Individual includes basic time management, physical exercise, relaxation techniques, and expanding your social support network. 1. Making daily lists of activities to be accomplished 2. Prioritizing activities by importance and urgency 3. Scheduling activities according to the priorities set 4. Knowing your daily cycle and handling the most demanding parts of your job when you are most alert and productive 5. Avoiding electronic distractions

Participation

assuming participants have the expertise to make a meaningful contribution, their involvement can reduce resistance, obtain commitment, and increase the quality of the change decision.

There may be benefits to establishing a positive culture

but an organization also needs to be objective and not pursue it past the point of effectiveness.

Education & Communication

communicating the logic of a change can reduce employee resistance on two levels. 1) it fights the effects of misinformation 2) communication can help sell the need for change.

We've seen that high formalization

creates predictability, orderliness, and consistency. A strong culture achieves the same end without the need for written documentation. Two different roads to a common destination.

Barriers to Cultural Change

culture is a liability when the shared values don't agree with those that further the organization's effectiveness

Employees form an overall subjective perception of the organization based on factors such as

degree of risk tolerance, team emphasis, and support of people. This overall perception becomes, in effect, the organizations culture or personality affects employee performance and satisfaction, with stronger cultures having greater impact.

Driving Forces

direct behavior away from the status quo.

Positive Organizational Culture

emphasizes building on employee strengths, rewards more than it punishes, and emphasizes individual vitality and growth.

Dominant Culture

expresses the care values a majority of members share and that give the organization its distinct personality.

Implementing Changes Fairly Procedural

fairness is especially important when employees perceived an outcome as negative, to it's crucial that employees see the reason for the change and perceive its implementation as consistent and fair.

If the culture is strong and supports hight ethical standards

it should have a very powerful and positive influence on employee behavior.

Restraining forces

hinder movement away from equilibrium.

Resistance to change can be positive

if it leads to open discussion and debate. When they treat resistance only as a threat, rather than a point of view to be discusses, they may increase dysfunctional conflict.

Physiological symptoms

include health, sickness, and absence.

Behavioral symptoms

include reductions in productivity, absence, and turnover as well as changes in eating habits, increased smoking or consumption of alcohol, rapid speech, fidgeting, and sleep disorders.

Human Resources and innovation:

innovative organizations actively promote training and development o their members so they keep current, offer high job security so employees don't fear getting fired for making mistakes, and encourage individuals to become champions of change.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

instead accentuates the positive. Rather than looking for problems to fix, it seeks to identify the unique qualities and special strengths of an organization. AI focuses on an organization's successes rather than its problems. Consists of four steps: discovery, dreaming, design, and destiny.

Organizational Development (OD)

is a collection of change methods that try to improve organizational effectiveness and employee well-being.

Stress

is a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, demand, or resource related to what the individual desires and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important.

Innovation a more specialized kind of change

is a new idea applied to initiating or improving a product, process, or service.

Technology

is continually changing jobs and organizations. Economic Shocks has lead to the elimination, bankruptcy, or acquisition or some of the best know U.S. companies.

Organizational culture

is so powerful it often transcends national boundaries. But that doesn't mean organizations should, or could, ignore local culture. Organizational cultures often reflect national culture.

Barriers to Cultural Diversity

management wants to demonstrate support for the differences these employees bring to the workplace, but newcomers who wish to fit in must accept the organization's core cultural values and current mix.

Manipulation and Cooptation

manipulation refers to covert influence attempts. Cooptation, combines manipulation and participation by attempting to buy off the leaders of a resistant group They can backfire if the targets become aware.

Socialization

no matter how good a job the organization does in recruiting and selection, new employees need help adapting to the prevailing culture. We can think of socialization as a process with three stages: prearrival, encounter and metamorphosis.

Employees who have negative feelings about change cope by

not thinking about it, increasing their use of sick time, and quitting. We often see change as threatening.

Metamorphosis Stage

occurs to work out any problems discovered during the encounter stage, the new member changes, or goes through the — stage.

Develop Positive Relationships

people are more willing to accept changes if they trust managers implementing them.

Stress shows itself

physiological, psychological, and behavioral symptoms.

In many organizations, people are rewarded for the absence of failures rather than for the

presence of successes.

Change has to happen

quickly. Once change has been implemented the new situation must be refrozen so it can be sustained over time.

Prearrival Stage

recognizes that each individual arrives with a set of values, attitudes, and expectations about both the work and the organization.

Organizational Sources:

structural inertia, Limited focus of change, group inertia, threat to expertise, threat to established power relationships, threat to established resource allocations.

Organizational Culture

refers to system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes that organization from other organizations. Shows how employees perceive the characteristics or an organizationals culture, not whether they like them (its descriptive).

Organizational Climate

refers to the shared perceptions organizational members have about their organization and work environment.

Intergroup Development

seeks to change groups attitudes, stereotypes, and perceptions about each other.

No company today is in a particularly

stable environment. It's change or die.

Challenge stressors

stressors associated with workload, pressure to complete tasks, and time urgency.

Hindrance stressors

stressors that keep you from reaching your goals such as red tape, office politics, confusion over job responsibilities.

Material Symbols

the layout of corporate headquarters, the types of automobiles top executives are given, and the presence of absence of corporate aircraft are a few examples. Others include the size of offices, the elegance of furnishings, executive perks, and attire.

Strong culture

the organization's core values are both intensely held and widely shared. A strong culture should reduce employee turnover because it demonstrates hight agreement about what the organization represents.

Culture defines

the rules of the game.

Top Management

through words and behavior, senior executives established norms that filter through the organization about whether risk taking is desirable, how much freedom manager give employees, which is appreciate dress, and what actions earn pay raises, promotions, and other rewards.

Culture is transmitted

to employees in a number of forms, the most potent being stories, rituals, material symbols, and language.

The status quo is an equilibrium state. To move from equilibrium—to overcome the pressures of both individual resistance and group conformity—

unfreezing must happen in one of three ways driving forces, restraining forces, or a combination of the two.

Kurt Lewsin argued that successful change in organizations should follow three steps:

unfreezing the status quo, movement to a desired end state, and refreezing the new change to make it permanent.

Team Building

uses high-interaction group actives to increase trust and openness among team members, improve coordination effects, and increase team performance. Typically includes goal-setting, development of interpersonal relations among team members, role analysis to clarify each member's role and responsibilities, and team process analysis.

Institutionalization

valued for itself and not for the goods or services it produces—it takes on a life of its own, apart from its founders or members.

Building Support and Commitment

when managers or employees have low emotional commitment to change, they favor the status quo and resist it. Employees are also more accepting of changes when they are committed to the organization as a whole.

The three-part entry socialization process is complete

when new members have internalized and accepted the norms of the organization and their work group, are confident in their competence, and feel trusted and valued by their peers.

Stress is associated

with seaman and resources. Demands are responsibilities, pressures, obligations, and uncertainties individuals face in the workplace. Resources are things within an individual's control that he can use to resolve the demands.