Session 3: Organisational culture and the internal context

Question 1

Corporate Culture is …

Answer 1

a common theme is that it is shaped by the organisation’s social and informal dimensions. These dimensions are what set the expectations and values within the organisation and provide people with a set of social guideposts for acceptable behaviour, suggesting that an organisation’s social characteristics are fundamental to its culture.

Question 2

Effective cultures vs dysfunctional cultures

Answer 2

Effective cultures are unitary and integrative; they provide the glue that aligns organisational goals and individual needs and leads to higher performance (“sense-making”)

Pluralistic cultures are dysfunctional and unproductive because they accommodate dissent and conflict

Question 3

Integration, Differentiation and Fragmentation cultures are…

Answer 3

1. Integration: culture as an organisation-wide agreement with values espoused by top management (“corporate culture”)
2. Differentiation: plural cultures exist in organisations (dominant and subordinated subcultures)
3. Fragmentation: little consensus, ambiguity and transient and issue-specific consensus