Hoorcollege 1
What is organizational culture?
What is culture?
From the Latin word colere = to till the ground/to grow.
Cultus (past participle): cultivated/nurtured/cared for.
An agricultural term.
Culture is a fuzzy concept:
Culture is studied across many disciplines.
Enormous variation in the definition of the term.
The concept is used to cover everything and nothing.
Culture as an umbrella team: different disciplines focus on different aspects of
culture.
Pop culture: voetbal, instagram, netflix.
Mass culture vs high culture (ballet).
Organizational culture: google, clothes industry, professional culture.
Culture and ideology: united nations human rights, fight against climate change.
What is organizational culture?
Parameters of organizational culture:
A widely shared understanding of organizational culture.
Culture is broadly seen as a shared and learned world of experiences,
meanings, values and understandings which are expressed and reproduced
partly in symbolic form.
Most studies share the following assumptions about cultural phenomena:
- They are related to history/ tradition
- They have some depth
- They are difficult to grasp and must be interpreted
- They are collective/ shared by members of groups
- They have to do with meanings, understandings, beliefs
- They are emotional rather than strictly rational
Organizational culture is significant as a way of understanding organizational
life in all its richness and variations.
Culture as social and taken-for-granted
, Culture is not primary inside people’s heads, but somewhere between the
heads of people.
Culture is done without anyone really thinking about it – it is emergent,
dynamic, situationally adaptive and co-created in dialogue.
It helps to interpret behavior, social events, institutions and processes in
meaningful ways; in this way, it helps to reduce uncertainties.
Warning: frequently, ‘culture’ refers to little more than a social pattern/ surface
phenomena rather than exploring the meanings and ideas behind them -> there is a
need to dig deeper.
Edgar Schein’s model of organizational culture: iceberg
Artifacts: what we see (physical, behavioral, verbal)
Values: what we can talk about (strategies, goals, philosophies)
Basic assumptions: what we take for granted (unconscious beliefs, how we
perceive, think, feel)
Meanings and symbols
Alvesson considers symbols and meanings as the most significant concepts for
understanding organizational culture.
Meanings:
- Refers to how an object or utterance is interpreted.
- Through culture, interpretations become more homogeneous.
- In a cultural context, socially shared meanings are of interest.
Symbols:
- An object – word, statement, action or material item that stands for
something else.
- It is rich in meaning and calls for considerable interpretation.
- Collective (vs private) symbolism is of interest.
How to study organizational culture?
, Culture is not only a fuzzy term – it also refers to complex, inaccessible and
fuzzy phenomena.
Alvesson suggests a balance between rigor and flexibility when studying
culture.
Rigor: Be focused and precise when analyzing specific cultural phenomena,
seek interpretive depth.
This includes critical thinking-through of hidden motives and objectives in
organizational life.
Flexibility: There is no formula or model for studying culture, causal links lead
to oversimplification.
Studying culture requires careful reflection of one’s own cultural bias.
Studying organizational culture with books, articles, movies, ethnography, etc.
Why do people study organizational culture?
Organizational culture is a major topic in research & practice.
Central to how people in organizations think, feel and act.
Facilitates critical inquiry of taken-for-granted aspects (values, beliefs,...)
Historical interest: In the 1980s, boom of Japanese companies.
Focus on ‘shared values’, commitment and high-quality output.
Pop-management authors/ consultants suggested that Western countries
learn the “art of Japanese management”.
The culture hype did not live up to its promises.
Ongoing interest: in organizational scandals/ failure: blame the culture!
Considerable attention during periods of change (e.g. M&A situations).
Shift from mass production to the service and knowledge economy (remote
‘brain work’ more difficult to control).
Three interests for studying a phenomenon:
Hoorcollege 2
How to study organizational culture?
, Metaphor as a literary device
Metaphor known as a literary device – useful in poetry and rhetoric.
Evokes powerful images.
Describes an object or person in a way that is not literally true : “the black
sheep of the family”.
States that one thing is (like) another thing.
When taken literally, it becomes absurd.
It transfers a term from one system of meaning to another.
But how is this useful in for studying organizations???
Images of organization (Morgan, 1986)
Develops the ‘art of reading’ organizational life.
Premise: All organizational theories based on images/ metaphors.
Metaphor leads to a particular way of seeing/ interpreting.
Brings valuable insights, but is also one-sided, incomplete, biased and
potentially misleading.
No right or wrong perspective, each metaphor illuminates and hides.
Solution: We need multiple metaphors/ perspectives.
Machine, organism, brain, culture (most powerful, but difficult to grasp),
political system, psychic prison, change/flux, domination (suppression, etc.).
Technical interest: machine.
Practical-hermeneutic interest: brain, culture, organism, change/flux.
Emancipatory interest: domination, psychic prison, political system.
Organization as a pyramid
Organization viewed as similar to the Egyptian buildings.
Characterized by a broad base, linear reduction in volume for every layer,
ends in a sharp point at the top.
Person at the top (CEO) in command over those at the bottom.
In-between the middle-level managers.
People can move upwards, downwards or sideways.
The pyramid suggests strongly asymmetrical relations.
Language reinforces this asymmetry: ‘top & bottom’ or ‘high & low’.
Material arrangements support this image: top management is often on the top
floor.
Culture: critical variable vs root metaphor
What is organizational culture?
What is culture?
From the Latin word colere = to till the ground/to grow.
Cultus (past participle): cultivated/nurtured/cared for.
An agricultural term.
Culture is a fuzzy concept:
Culture is studied across many disciplines.
Enormous variation in the definition of the term.
The concept is used to cover everything and nothing.
Culture as an umbrella team: different disciplines focus on different aspects of
culture.
Pop culture: voetbal, instagram, netflix.
Mass culture vs high culture (ballet).
Organizational culture: google, clothes industry, professional culture.
Culture and ideology: united nations human rights, fight against climate change.
What is organizational culture?
Parameters of organizational culture:
A widely shared understanding of organizational culture.
Culture is broadly seen as a shared and learned world of experiences,
meanings, values and understandings which are expressed and reproduced
partly in symbolic form.
Most studies share the following assumptions about cultural phenomena:
- They are related to history/ tradition
- They have some depth
- They are difficult to grasp and must be interpreted
- They are collective/ shared by members of groups
- They have to do with meanings, understandings, beliefs
- They are emotional rather than strictly rational
Organizational culture is significant as a way of understanding organizational
life in all its richness and variations.
Culture as social and taken-for-granted
, Culture is not primary inside people’s heads, but somewhere between the
heads of people.
Culture is done without anyone really thinking about it – it is emergent,
dynamic, situationally adaptive and co-created in dialogue.
It helps to interpret behavior, social events, institutions and processes in
meaningful ways; in this way, it helps to reduce uncertainties.
Warning: frequently, ‘culture’ refers to little more than a social pattern/ surface
phenomena rather than exploring the meanings and ideas behind them -> there is a
need to dig deeper.
Edgar Schein’s model of organizational culture: iceberg
Artifacts: what we see (physical, behavioral, verbal)
Values: what we can talk about (strategies, goals, philosophies)
Basic assumptions: what we take for granted (unconscious beliefs, how we
perceive, think, feel)
Meanings and symbols
Alvesson considers symbols and meanings as the most significant concepts for
understanding organizational culture.
Meanings:
- Refers to how an object or utterance is interpreted.
- Through culture, interpretations become more homogeneous.
- In a cultural context, socially shared meanings are of interest.
Symbols:
- An object – word, statement, action or material item that stands for
something else.
- It is rich in meaning and calls for considerable interpretation.
- Collective (vs private) symbolism is of interest.
How to study organizational culture?
, Culture is not only a fuzzy term – it also refers to complex, inaccessible and
fuzzy phenomena.
Alvesson suggests a balance between rigor and flexibility when studying
culture.
Rigor: Be focused and precise when analyzing specific cultural phenomena,
seek interpretive depth.
This includes critical thinking-through of hidden motives and objectives in
organizational life.
Flexibility: There is no formula or model for studying culture, causal links lead
to oversimplification.
Studying culture requires careful reflection of one’s own cultural bias.
Studying organizational culture with books, articles, movies, ethnography, etc.
Why do people study organizational culture?
Organizational culture is a major topic in research & practice.
Central to how people in organizations think, feel and act.
Facilitates critical inquiry of taken-for-granted aspects (values, beliefs,...)
Historical interest: In the 1980s, boom of Japanese companies.
Focus on ‘shared values’, commitment and high-quality output.
Pop-management authors/ consultants suggested that Western countries
learn the “art of Japanese management”.
The culture hype did not live up to its promises.
Ongoing interest: in organizational scandals/ failure: blame the culture!
Considerable attention during periods of change (e.g. M&A situations).
Shift from mass production to the service and knowledge economy (remote
‘brain work’ more difficult to control).
Three interests for studying a phenomenon:
Hoorcollege 2
How to study organizational culture?
, Metaphor as a literary device
Metaphor known as a literary device – useful in poetry and rhetoric.
Evokes powerful images.
Describes an object or person in a way that is not literally true : “the black
sheep of the family”.
States that one thing is (like) another thing.
When taken literally, it becomes absurd.
It transfers a term from one system of meaning to another.
But how is this useful in for studying organizations???
Images of organization (Morgan, 1986)
Develops the ‘art of reading’ organizational life.
Premise: All organizational theories based on images/ metaphors.
Metaphor leads to a particular way of seeing/ interpreting.
Brings valuable insights, but is also one-sided, incomplete, biased and
potentially misleading.
No right or wrong perspective, each metaphor illuminates and hides.
Solution: We need multiple metaphors/ perspectives.
Machine, organism, brain, culture (most powerful, but difficult to grasp),
political system, psychic prison, change/flux, domination (suppression, etc.).
Technical interest: machine.
Practical-hermeneutic interest: brain, culture, organism, change/flux.
Emancipatory interest: domination, psychic prison, political system.
Organization as a pyramid
Organization viewed as similar to the Egyptian buildings.
Characterized by a broad base, linear reduction in volume for every layer,
ends in a sharp point at the top.
Person at the top (CEO) in command over those at the bottom.
In-between the middle-level managers.
People can move upwards, downwards or sideways.
The pyramid suggests strongly asymmetrical relations.
Language reinforces this asymmetry: ‘top & bottom’ or ‘high & low’.
Material arrangements support this image: top management is often on the top
floor.
Culture: critical variable vs root metaphor
