chapter 16 - organizational culture and change

Question 1

organizational culture

Answer 1

“Organizational culture refers to a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations.This system of shared meaning includes values, beliefs, and assumptions that characterize the organization.These values, beliefs, and assumptions, when put into practice,,
(1) filter what employees pay attention to,
(2) are physically manifested as material symbols (for example, uniforms, statues, etc.) and stories, and
(3) form the foundation for shared meaning among members of an organization

Organizational culture shows how employees perceive the essence of an organization, not whether they like them—that is, it is a descriptive term

Question 2

characteristics of organizational culture

Answer 2

one of the most common frameworks describes organizational cultures as possessing several competing values:

“The Clan.” - A culture based on human affiliation. Employees value attachment, collaboration, trust, and support.

“The Adhocracy.” - A culture based on change. Employees value growth, variety, attention to detail, stimulation, and autonomy.

“The Market.” - A culture based on achievement. Employees value communication, competence, and competition.

“The Hierarchy.” - A culture based on stability. Employees value communication, formalization, and routine.”

Question 3

The Organizational Culture Inventory groups cultures into three categories:

Answer 3

The Organizational Culture Inventory groups cultures into three categories:
(1) constructive cultures that value affiliation, encouragement, and achievement; (2) passive-defensive cultures that avoid accountability, seek validation and approval from others, and are conventional; and
(3) aggressive-defensive cultures that are competitive, perfectionist, and power- oriented.

Question 4

Organizational Culture Profile (OCP)

Answer 4

Another widely used framework is the Organizational Culture Profile (OCP).

The OCP draws upon a novel survey method in which employees sort a set of values based on how closely they represent their organization.

The OCP suggests an organizational culture can be described by eight dimensions:
(1) innovation,
(2) attention to detail,
(3) decisiveness,
(4) team-orientation,
(5) outcome-orientation,
(6) aggressiveness,
(7) supportiveness, and
(8) rewards-emphasis.”

Question 5

dominant culture and subcultures

Answer 5

The dominant culture expresses the core values most members share and that give the organization its distinct personality.

Subcultures tend to develop in large organizations in response to common problems or experiences that a group of members face in the same department or location

Question 6

strong culture

Answer 6

In a strong culture, the organization’s core values are both intensely held and widely shared. The more members who accept the core values and the greater their commitment, the stronger the culture and the greater its influence on member behavior.

A strong culture should more directly affect organizational outcomes because it demonstrates high agreement about what the organization represents. Such unanimity of purpose builds cohesiveness, loyalty, meaning, and organizational commitment.

Question 7

Show how culture is transmitted to employees: rituals

Answer 7

Rituals are repetitive sequences of activities that express and reinforce the key values of the organization—what goals are most important and/or which people are important versus which are expendable

Question 8

Show how culture is transmitted to employees: material symbols

Answer 8

The layout of corporate headquarters, the types of automobiles top executives are given, and the presence or absence of corporate aircraft are a few examples of material symbols, sometimes also known as artifacts

Question 9

Show how culture is transmitted to employees: language

Answer 9

Many organizations and subunits within them use language to help members identify with the culture, attest to their acceptance of it, and help preserve it.

Unique terms describe equipment, officers, key individuals, suppliers, customers, or products related to the business. New employees may be overwhelmed at first by acronyms and jargon that, once assimilated, act as a common denominator to unite members of a given culture or subculture

Question 10

ultimate source of an organization’s culture

Answer 10

his leads us to the ultimate source of an organization’s culture: the founders

“Founders have a vision of what the organization should be, and the firm’s initial small size makes it easy to enact that vision with all members

Question 11

organizational culture creation occurs in three ways.

Answer 11

First, founders tend to hire and retain employees who think and feel the same way they do.

Second, they socialize employees to their way of thinking and feeling.

Finally, the behavior of the founder(s) encourages employees to identify with them and internalize their beliefs, values, and assumptions

Question 12

three forces play a particularly important part in sustaining a culture:

Answer 12

Three forces play a particularly important part in sustaining a culture:
(1) selection or hiring practices,
(2) actions of top management, and
(3) socialization methods (e.g., onboarding, training, and including new employees)

Question 13

three forces play a particularly important part in sustaining a culture: 1. selection

Answer 13

“The explicit goal of the selection process is to identify and hire individuals with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform successfully. “

“The selection process also provides information to applicants. Those who perceive a conflict between their values and those of the organization can remove themselves from the applicant pool or even fake their way into the organization by feigning that they share the organization’s values”

“Selection thus becomes a two-way street, with both employers and applicants as active participants in determining the value fit between the applicant and the organization.”

Question 14

three forces play a particularly important part in sustaining a culture: 2. top management

Answer 14

“The actions of top management have a major impact on the organization’s culture.70 Through words and behavior, senior executives establish norms that filter through the organization about, for instance, whether risk taking is desirable, how much freedom managers give employees, the uniforms employees should wear, and what behavior is desired and rewarded. “

“more positive organizational outcomes are achieved when the culture and leadership styles are complementary in content and not redundant”

“when leaders provide something that is lacking in the organization’s culture, they can substitute or fill in for the element that is missing. In other words, one can fill in where the other fails.”

Question 15

three forces play a particularly important part in sustaining a culture: 3. socialization AND ITS 3 STAGES

Answer 15

“No matter how good a job the organization does in recruitment and selection, new employees need help adapting to the prevailing culture. This help comes in the form of socialization. Socialization can help alleviate the problem many employees report when their new jobs are different from what they expected and can make or break how employees see their jobs moving forward”

“We can think of socialization as a process with three stages: prearrival, encounter, and metamorphosis”

1. Prearrival stage. The prearrival stage recognizes that everyone arrives with a set of values, attitudes, and expectations about both the work and the organization. One major purpose of a business school, for example, is to socialize students to the attitudes and behaviors companies desire in employees. “
2. “Encounter stage. The selection process can help inform prospective employees about the organization. Upon entry into the organization, the new member enters the encounter stage and confronts the possibility that expectations—about the job
3. “Metamorphosis stage. Finally, to work out any problems discovered during the encounter stage, the new member changes or goes through the metamorphosis stage”
   Most research suggests two major “bundles” of socialization practices

Question 16

institutional vs. individual practices

Answer 16

These institutional practices are common in police departments, fire department
- The more management relies on formal, collective, fixed, and serial socialization programs while emphasizing divestiture, the more likely newcomers’ differences will be stripped away and replaced by standardized predictable behaviors

Programs that are informal, individual, variable, and random while emphasizing investiture are more likely to give newcomers a sense of their roles and methods of working. Creative fields such as research and development, advertising, and filmmaking rely on these individual practices

Question 17

socialization practices (add on later?)

Answer 17

Formal vs. informal
Individual vs. collective
Fixed vs. variance
Serial vs. random
Investiture vs. divestiture

Question 18

culture defines..

Answer 18

Culture defines “the rules of the game.”

First, it has a boundary-defining role: It creates distinctions between organizations.
Second, it conveys a sense of identity for organization members.
Third, culture facilitates commitment to something larger than individual self-interest.
Fourth, it enhances the stability of the social system. culture is the social glue that helps hold the organization together by providing standards for what employees should say and do.

Question 19

organizational climate

Answer 19

Organizational climate refers to the shared perceptions that organizational members have about their organization and work environment. These perceptions are directed at the policies, practices, and procedures experienced by the employees.

Although it may appear difficult on the surface to distinguish organizational culture from climate, culture and climate are “two crucial building blocks for organizational description.””
“One meta-analysis found that, across dozens of different studies, positive climates were strongly related to individuals’ level of job satisfaction, involvement, commitment, and motivation

Question 20

social sustainability

Answer 20

“Sustainability refers to maintaining practices over very long periods of time because the tools or structures that support the practices are not damaged by the processes.”

“Social sustainability practices address the ways social systems are affected by an organization’s actions over time and, in turn, how changing social systems may affect the organization.”

Question 21

culture as a liability

Answer 21

Stagnation and entrenchment
“Culture is a liability when shared values do not agree with those that further the organization’s effectiveness. This is most likely when an organization’s environment is undergoing rapid change, and its entrenched culture may no longer be appropriate.

Uniformity and rigidity
“Hiring new employees who differ from organizational members in values, beliefs, or perspectives creates a paradox:144 Management wants to demonstrate support for the differences that these employees bring to the workplace, but newcomers who wish to fit in are usually compelled to accept the organization’s core culture.”

Toxicity and dysfunctions
“This consensus can create powerful forward momentum. However, coherence around negative and dysfunctional management values in a corporation can produce downward forces that are equally powerful yet toxic.

Culture clashes
“Historically, when management looked at acquisition or merger decisions, the key decision factors were potential financial advantage and product synergy. In recent years, cultural compatibility has become the primary concern”

Question 22

change and planned change

Answer 22

Change is simply when things become different than the way they were. When changes are implemented, it leads to a natural redistribution of values, priorities, and resources that reverberate throughout the organization and transform employees interactions.

Oftentimes, changes are unplanned and happen naturally—however, certain situations involve proactive, intentional, and goal-oriented efforts to realize change, which all describe planned change

Question 23

change agents

Answer 23

Who in organizations is responsible for managing change activities? The answer can be found in change agents. They see a future for the organization others have not identified, and they are able to motivate, invent, and implement this vision

Question 24

sources of resistance to change

Answer 24

individual
- habit
- security
- economic factors
- fear of the unknown
- selective information processing

organizational
- structural inertia
- limited focus of change
- threat to expertise
- threat to established power relationships

Question 25

overcoming resistance to change

Answer 25

Communication
Participation
Building support and commitment
Develop positive relationships
Implementing changes fairly
Manipulation and cooptation
Selecting people who accept change
Coercion

Question 26

four main approaches to managing organizational change: Lewin’s Three-Step Model

Answer 26

Kurt Lewin 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”

unfreezing –> movement –> refreezing

By definition, 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 (see Exhibit 16-10). For one, the driving forces, which direct behavior away from the status quo, can be increased. For another, the restraining forces, which hinder movement away from equilibrium, can be decreased. A third alternative is to combine the first two approaches

Question 27

four main approaches to managing organizational change: kotter’s eight-step plan

Answer 27

John Kotter built on Lewin’s three-step model to create a more detailed approach for implementing change. Kotter began by listing common mistakes managers make when trying to initiate change. They may fail to create a sense of urgency about the need for change, a coalition for managing the change process, or a vision for change. They also may fail to communicate effectively about it and/or anchor the changes to the organization’s culture. Moreover, they could also fail to remove obstacles impeding the vision’s achievement and/or provide short-term and achievable goals. Finally, they may declare victory too soon.”

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 the 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.

Question 28

four main approaches to managing organizational change: action research

Answer 28

Action research is a change process based on the systematic collection of data and selection of a change action based on what the analyzed data indicate. Its value is in providing a scientific methodology for managing planned change.

“This diagnosis is analogous to a physician’s search to find specifically what ails a patient. Diagnosis is followed by analysis. What problems do people focus on? What patterns do these problems seem to take?”

” Action research requires the people who will participate in a change program to help identify the problem and determine the solution. So the third step—feedback—requires sharing with employees what has been found from the first and second steps. Now the action part of action research is set in motion. “

Question 29

four main approaches to managing organizational change: organizational development (od)

Answer 29

Organizational development (OD) is a collection of change methods that try to improve organizational effectiveness and employee well-being”

“Managers often sense that their unit’s performance can be improved but are unable to identify what to improve and how.

Question 30

process consultation

Answer 30

The purpose of process consultation is for an outside consultant to assist a client, usually a manager, through crafting “a relationship through a continuous effort of ‘jointly deciphering what is going on

Question 31

team building

Answer 31

We have noted throughout this text that organizations increasingly rely on teams to accomplish work tasks. Team building (see the point-counterpoint from the chapter on teams) uses high-interaction group activities to increase trust and openness among team members, improve coordination efforts, and increase team performance.

Question 32

intergroup development

Answer 32

A major area of concern in OD is dysfunctional conflict among groups. Intergroup development seeks to change groups’ attitudes, stereotypes, and perceptions about each other

Question 33

appreciative inquiry

Answer 33

Appreciative inquiry instead accentuates the positive. Rather than looking for problems to fix, it seeks to identify the unique qualities and special strengths of an organization, which members can build on to improve performance

Question 34

paradox theory

Answer 34

Managers can learn a few lessons from paradox theory, which states that the key paradox in management is that there is no final optimal status for an organization.266 In a paradox situation, we are required to balance tensions across various courses of action, which are caused by resource scarcity