2.5 Corporate cultures (HL)

Question 1

What is organizational culture? How is it created?

Answer 1

✓ Organizational culture is the attitudes, beliefs and values of an organization.

Culture is an abstraction from values, attitudes, beliefs, practices, and norms of individual employees and groups of employees. When someone asserts “We need to change the culture of our organization”, they
actually mean that values, attitudes, beliefs, practices, and norms must change. In other words, what changes is not “culture”, but rather what individuals think, value, and do.
Individuals can influence organizational culture significantly, no one else.

Question 2

Power culture (Handy)?

Answer 2

✓ exists when a few individuals retain most of the power. It has a form of a web. The spider uses reward or punishment for motivation.

Question 3

Role culture (Handy)?

Answer 3

✓ each employee has a clearly defined role and operates within a highly-controlled structure.

Question 4

Task culture (Handy)?

Answer 4

✓ teams address specific problems within a defined time- frame. It has a form of a net where at the nods different teams are built and dissolved.

Question 5

Person culture (Handy)?

Answer 5

✓ Where individuals believe that they are superior to the organization and just do their own thing.

Question 6

Reasons for culture clashes?

Answer 6

✓ different degrees of formality,
✓ different leadership styles,
✓ different languages,
✓ different senses of time and urgency etc

Question 7

3 levels of organizational culture (Shain)

Answer 7

Organizational attributes
Professed culture
Organizational assumptions

Question 8

4 types of organizational culture (Handy)?

Answer 8

Power
Task
Role
Person

Question 9

Limitations of a role culture?

Answer 9

Becomes constraint in a dynamic environment which requires quick reactions/changes

People avoid making own decisions, taking risks or personal responsibility

Question 10

Limitations of a power culture?

Answer 10

Motivated of highly skilled workers may not stay long in the heavily controlled environment

Brainstorming, initiatives from workforce are rare

Question 11

Limitations of a task culture?

Answer 11

Teams may not have appropriate combination of personal and professional characteristics to work efficiently without conflicts or chatting.

Team members may cover up for some members faults

Question 12

Limitations of a person culture?

Answer 12

These Persons/stars may be unwilling to follow organizational goals, standards
Management will have trouble to manage differing interests of so many `stars’ (such as a clinic with well known doctors)

Question 13

Who may understand organizational assumptions the best, the new worker, the external consultant or the old staff

Answer 13

The old staff

Question 14

Which level of the organizational culture (the pyramid) is easiest to see?

Answer 14

The attributes

Question 15

Organizational values are promoted at which level of organizational culture (pyramid) ?

Answer 15

Professed culture

Question 16

Usual culture clashes after a merger?

Answer 16

● Lack of focus – employees may not understand the values and aims of the new organization or the new leader and, thus, are not focused on organizational aims.
● Preoccupation with the merger – employees focus their attention and energy on the fact of the merger or the fact of a new leader, rather than on their own jobs. Productivity and job performance suffer.
● Sense of division – employees focus on the differences between the employees from the merging companies rather than on their common purpose and their many similarities.
● Lost privileges - in the case of a new leader and new leadership styles, some employees may think that they have fallen out of favour.
● Sense of isolation – while managers focuses on the strategy of the new organization, employees feel isolated and ignorant of what is happening.
● Unresponsive management – employees feel that managers are not concerned for their well-being.