Business 2.5 Flashcards
Organizational culture is influenced by numerous factors, including:
Organization Size: Larger organizations often have more formal policies and bureaucratic processes.
Organizational Traditions and Values: The culture of a small charity will differ from that of a large multinational fast-food restaurant chain.
Attitudes of Senior Managers: Organizational culture is shaped by the personalities and traits of senior managers, such as their approach to risk-taking and risk management.
Societal and Cultural Norms: Different regions and countries have varying societal and cultural norms that shape business ethics and corporate social responsibility and affect the receptiveness to female leadership and participation in the labor force.
Elements of organizational culture (that impact different types of culture include):
Vision: An organization’s purpose is a key element of its corporate culture. A strong culture must align with the vision, ensuring employees understand the business’s strategic direction.
Values: A values statement specifies a firm’s beliefs and moral standards, essential for guiding it towards its overall vision.
Practices: What a firm does and how it does it is an element of its culture. Practices like time management and dress code influence culture and should align with the firm’s values, e.g., sustainable practices.
People: This element of culture pertains to all aspects of human resources, such as hiring, training, development, teamwork, and protocol for dismissing workers.
Traditions: An organization’s history, customs, celebrations, and codes of conduct contribute to its traditions and signify “the way things are done around here.”
Leadership styles: Leadership style is a significant element of organizational culture, such as Google’s empowerment of employees to run their own projects, while the military requires a different leadership style.
Explain Charles Handy four types of organizational culture
Power culture:
Power is centralized, quick decision making
Results-based, likely flat
Role culture:
Jobs are clearly stated, little creativity
Highly structured, tall organization/bureaucratic
Task culture:
Focuses on getting results from work done
Individuals and teams are empowered and given flexibility
Decentralized power
Person culture:
Staff have similar positions with similar expertise
Staff form groups to share knowledge
Individual may benefit which may carryover to firm
Power culture is centralized, with decision-making concentrated in one person or a small group. There are few rules and high levels of risk-taking, and results matter more than the means of achieving them. This culture is represented by a spider web and Zeus.
Role culture is characterized by well-defined roles and hierarchical structures with formal procedures and rules. Creativity and risk-taking are hindered by excessive rules. This culture is illustrated as a house and associated with Apollo.
Task culture prioritizes the task at hand, with power transferring depending on who can complete it better. Matrix structures and project-based organizations are examples. Task culture is represented by a net and Athena.
Person culture prioritizes the individual over the organization, making it difficult to manage. People pursue their personal goals over organizational goals. This culture is illustrated by stars in the sky and Dionysius and is managed under laissez-faire leadership.
Explain Edgar Shein organisational culture
Artefacts: The visible and superficial indicators of organizational culture, such as the physical environment, dress code, and other visible symbols. These are the easiest to see but do not necessarily reveal the true values and beliefs of the organization.
Norms and values: The principles and beliefs that are communicated to members of the organization through mission/vision statements, slogans, and official channels of communication. These are the values that the organization expects its members to uphold, although they may not necessarily be fully committed to them.
Underlying assumptions: The deeply ingrained values and beliefs that guide people’s behavior in the organization. These are not officially stated and may not even be fully recognized by members of the organization, but they are the actual values demonstrated through behavior and decision-making. Understanding these underlying assumptions is crucial to truly understanding an organization’s culture.
Advantage of Edgar Shein org culture
Advantages:
Helps leaders understand how the beliefs and values of an organization influence behavior.
Provides a framework for improving organizational culture.
Can be used to create a better work environment.
Disadvantage of Edgar Shein org culture
Can be difficult to measure and assess.
May oversimplify certain aspects of culture.
Can be time-consuming and resource-intensive to implement.
May not fully capture the complexity of organizational culture.
Reasons for cultural clash or sources of organizational change that causes cultural clash are:
M&As
Change of leadership
High turnover
Relocation
Consequences of cultural clash can include
Resistance to change
Diseconomies of scale
Lower job satisfaction
Lower productivity
“Us and them” culture
Lower profitability
Theories that could help alleviate cultural clash include:
Kotter & Schlesinger’s “change theory”
Charles Handy’s Gods of Management
Edgar Schein’s organisational culture model
Geert Hofstede’s culture dimensions
Explain Hofstedes
Power distance: The degree to which people in a society accept and expect power to be distributed unequally.
Individualism vs. collectivism: The extent to which people prioritize individual goals and achievements versus group harmony and collaboration.
Masculinity vs. femininity: The degree to which a society values traditionally masculine traits such as assertiveness and competition versus traditionally feminine traits such as empathy and cooperation.
Uncertainty avoidance: The level of comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty in a society.
Long-term vs. short-term orientation: The extent to which people prioritize future rewards and planning versus immediate gratification and tradition.
Indulgence vs. restraint: The degree to which a society values indulging in pleasurable experiences and impulses versus controlling and suppressing them.
