Organizational Culture & Leadership

Organizational Culture & Leadership

"Some are born great,

some achieve greatness,

and some have greatness thrust upon 'em"

Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

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Ð'* Culture a phenomenon that surrounds us all.

Ð'* Culture helps us understand how it is created, embedded, developed, manipulated, managed, and changed.

Ð'* Culture defines leadership.

Ð'* Understand the culture to understand the organization.

Defining Organizational Culture

Ð'* Culture is customs and rights.

Ð'* Good managers must work from a more anthropological model.

Ð'* Each org has its own way and an outsider brings his/her baggage as observer.

Ð'* Understand new environment and culture before change or observation can be made.

1. Observe behavior: language, customs, traditions

2. Groups norms: standards and values

3. Espoused values: published, publicly announced values.

4. Formal Philosophy: mission

5. Rules of the Game: rules to all in org

6. Climate: climate of group in interaction

7. Embedded skills:

8. Habits of thinking, acting, paradigms: Shared knowledge for socialization.

9. Shared meanings of the group

10. Metaphors or symbols:

Ð'* Culture: norms, values, behavior patterns, rituals, traditions.

Ð'* Culture implies structural stability and Patterning and integration.

Ð'* Culture is the accumulated shared learning from shared history.

Ð'* 2 problems all groups must deal with:

1. survival, growth, and adaptation in environment

2. internal integration that permits functioning and adapting.

Culture Formally Defined

A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way you perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.

Ð'* The problem of socialization: teaching newcomers

Ð'* The problem of behavior:

Ð'* Can a large org have one culture? subcultures.

Summary

Ð'* culture explains incomprehensible, irrational

Ð'* org with history has culture.

Ð'* Not every group develops a culture.

Ð'* Once culture exists it determines criteria of leadership.

Ð'* Leaders should be conscious of culture otherwise it will manage them.

Levels of Culture

Artifacts

Ð'* on surface

sees

hears

feels

Ð'* visible products

Language

technology

products

creations

style: clothing, manners of address, myths, stories

Ð'* easy to observe

Ð'* difficult to decipher

Ð'* symbols are ambiguous

Ð'* Problems in classification

Espoused Values

Ð'* all group learning reflects original values

Ð'* those who prevail influence group: the leaders

Ð'* first begins as shared value then becomes shared assumption

Ð'* social validation happens with shared learning.

Ð'* initially started by founder, leader and then assimilated.

Basic Assumptions

Ð'* evolve as solution to problem is repeated over and over again.

Ð'* hypothesis becomes reality

Ð'* to learn something new requires resurrection, reexamination, frame breaking

Ð'* Culture defines us:

what we pay attention to

what things mean

react emotionally

what actions to take when

Ð'* humans need cognitive stability

defense mechanisms

Ð'* McGregor: if people are treated consistently in terms of certain basic assumptions, they come eventually to behave according to those assumptions in order to make their world stable and predictable.

Ð'* different cultures make different assumptions about others based on own values etc: see them with our eyes not theirs.

Ð'* third party may help solve differences between 2 cultures

Ð'* each new member comes with own assumptions.

Culture of 2 orgs

Case study of 2 distinct companies illustrating multilevel