Chapter 10 (Week 10)

Question 1

Organizational Culture

Answer 1

A system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations

Question 2

Primary characteristics of Organizational Culture

Answer 2

• Innovation and risk taking
• Attention to detail
• Outcome orientation
• People orientation
• Team orientation
• Aggressiveness
• Stability

Question 3

Dominant Culture vs Subculture

Answer 3

Dominant:
A system of shared meaning that expresses the core values (primary or dominant values) shared by a majority of the organization’s members

Subculture:
Mini-cultures within an organization, typically defined by department designations and geographical separation

Question 4

Strong vs Weak Culture

Answer 4

Strong - culture in which the core values are intensely held and widely shared

Weak - when opinions about organization’s mission and values vary widely

Question 5

Function of Culture

Answer 5

Defines the rules within an organization:
- boundary-defining role because creates distinction between organizations
- conveys sense of identity to members of organization
- helps create commitment to something larger than individual’s self-interst
- enhances stability; social glue holing organization together by providing standards for what employees say and do
- serves as control mechanism that guides and shapes attitudes and behaviour of employees and helps them make sense of organization

Question 6

Ethical Work Climate

Answer 6

shared concept of right and wrong behaviour in the workplace that reflects the true values of the organization and shapes the ethical decision making of its members

Five prevalent categories:
- Instrumental (assumes employees and organizations are motivated by self-interest)
- Caring (expectation that management decisions will positively affect the greatest number of stakeholders possible)
- Independence (relies on personal moral ideas of employees to dictate their workplace behaviour)
- Law and Code (require managers and employees to use an external standardized moral compass like a professional code of conduct for norms)
- Rules (operate by internal standardized expectations from something like an organizational policy manual)

*Organizations often progress through different categories as they move through business life cycle

Question 7

Sustainability

Answer 7

Organization practices that can be sustained over a long period of time because the tools or structures that support them are not damaged by the processes

Question 8

Innovation

Answer 8

Innovative companies are often characterized by their open, unconventional, vision-driven, accelerating cultures

Question 9

Culture Creation

Answer 9

Three ways to create culture
- hire and keep employees who think and feel the way the founder or leader does
- indoctrinate and socialize employees to leaders’ way of thinking and feeling
- leaders’ own behaviour encourages employees to identify with them and internalize those beliefs, values, and assumptions

Question 10

Maintaining Culture

Answer 10

• Selection (identify and hire individuals who have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform successfully and whose values are consistent with most of the organization)
• Top Management (through their words and behaviour, they establish norms that filter through the organization about level of risk-taking that is desirable, how much freedom managers give employees, appropriate dress, what actions result in pay raises, promotions, etc.)
• Socialization (process that adapts new employees to an organization’s culture - prearrival, encounter and metamorphosis)

Question 11

How Employees Learn Culture

Answer 11

Stories, rituals, material symbols and language