Artifacts – the first levels of organizational culture

At the surface is the level of artifacts, which includes all the phenomena that you would see, hear, and feel when you encounter a new group with an unfamiliar culture. Artifacts include the visible products of the group, such as the architecture of its physical environment; its language; its technol­ogy and products; its artistic

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Espoused Beliefs and Values – the second levels of organizational culture

All group learning ultimately reflects someone’s original beliefs and values, his or her sense of what ought to be, as distinct from what is. When a group is first created or when it faces a new task, issue, or problem, the first solu­tion proposed to deal with it reflects some individual ’s own assumptions

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Basic Underlying Assumptions – the third levels of organizational culture

When a solution to a problem works repeatedly, it comes to be taken for granted. What was once a hypothesis, supported only by a hunch or a value, gradually comes to be treated as a reality. We come to believe that nature really works this way. Basic assumptions, in this sense, are different from

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Example of Organizational culture: case of Digital Equipment Corp.

Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) is a major case running throughout this book because it not only illustrates aspects of how to describe and analyze organizational culture, but it also reveals some important cultural dynamics that explain both DEC ’s rise to the position of the number two computer company in the world and its

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Example of three levels of organizational culture: case of Ciba-Geigy

The Ciba-Geigy Company in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a Swiss multidivisional, geographically decentralized chemical company with sev­eral divisions dealing with pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals, indus­trial chemicals, dyestuffs, and some technically based consumer products. It eventually merged with a former competitor, Sandoz, to become what is today Novartis. I was originally asked to

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Macrocultures, subcultures, and microcultures

Organizational culture has been the focus of the analysis so far, but as pointed out earlier, both DEC and Ciba – Geigy existed in national and regional macrocultures. To fully understand what goes on inside the organi­zation, it is necessary to understand both the organization’s macro context, because much of what you observe inside

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The Operator Subculture

All organizations have some version of what has been called “the line” as opposed to the “the staff,” referring to those employees who produce and sell the organization’s products or services. I will call these the “operators” to identify the employees who feel they run the place. They will be distin­guished from the designers

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The Engineering/Design Subculture

In all organizations, there is a group that represents the basic design ele­ments of the technology underlying the work of the organization, and this group has the knowledge of how that technology is to be used. Within a given organization, they function as a subculture, but what makes this group significant is that their

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The Executive Subculture

A third generic subculture that exists in all organizations is the executive subculture based on the fact that top managers in all organizations share a similar environment and similar concerns. Sometimes, this subculture is represented by just the CEO and his or her executive team. The executive worldview is built around the necessity to

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Microcultures

Microcultures evolve in small groups that share common tasks and histories. Shared assumptions will arise especially in groups whose task requires mutual cooperation because of a high degree of interdependency. Perhaps the best examples are football teams that clearly develop certain styles of playing based on many hours of practice under the tutelage of

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Shared Assumptions About Mission, Strategy, and Goals

Every new group or organization must develop a shared concept of its ulti­mate survival problem, from which usually is derived its most basic sense of core mission, primary task, or “reason to be.” In most business organiza­tions, this shared definition revolves around the issue of economic survival and growth, which, in turn, involves the

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Shared Assumptions About Goals Derived from the Mission

Consensus on the core mission and identity does not automatically guar­antee that the key members of the organization will have common goals or that the various subcultures will be appropriately aligned to fulfill the mission. As noted in the previous chapter, the basic subcultures in any organization may, in fact, be unwittingly working at

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Shared Assumptions About Means to Achieve Goals: Structure, Systems, and Processes

Some of the most important and most invisible elements of an organiza­tional culture are the shared basic assumptions about “how things should be done, how the mission is to be achieved, and how goals are to be met.” As indicated before, leaders usually impose structure, systems, and processes, which, if successful, become shared parts

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Shared Assumptions About Measuring Results and Correction Mechanisms

All groups and organizations need to know how they are doing against their goals and periodically need to check to determine whether they are performing in line with their mission. This process involves three areas in which the group needs to achieve consensus leading to cultural dimensions that later drop out of awareness and

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Shared Assumptions About Remedial and Repair Strategies

The final area of consensus crucial for external adaptation concerns what to do if a change in course is required and how to make that change. If information surfaces that the group is not on target—sales are off, market share is down, profits are down, product introductions are late, key custom­ers complain about product

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Creating a Common Language and Conceptual Categories

To function as a group, the individuals who come together must establish a system of communication and a language that permits setting goals and interpreting and managing what is going on. The human organism cannot tolerate too much uncertainty or stimulus overload. Categories of mean­ing that organize perceptions and thought filter out what is

Defining Group Boundaries and Identity

For a group to function and develop, one of the most important areas for clear consensus is the perception of who is in the new group and who is not in, and the criteria by which such decisions are made. New members can­not really function and concentrate on their primary task if they are

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Distributing Power, Authority, and Status

A critical issue in any new group is how influence, power, and authority will be allocated and what the rules will be for “deference and demeanor” (Goffman, 1967). The process of stratification in human systems is typi­cally not as blatant as the dominance-establishing rituals of animal societ­ies, but it is functionally equivalent in that

Developing Rules for Relationships

Every new group must decide simultaneously how to deal with author­ity problems and how to establish workable peer relationships. Whereas authority issues derive ultimately from the necessity to deal with feelings of aggression, peer relationship and intimacy problems derive ultimately from the necessity to deal with feelings of affection, love, and sexuality. Thus, all

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Allocating Rewards and Punishment

Every group must develop a system of sanctions for obeying or disobeying its norms and rules. There must evolve some consensus on what symboli­cally and actually is defined as a reward or punishment and on the manner in which it is to be administered. The shared assumptions concerning this issue constitute some of the

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