What is organizational culture?
The actions, ways of thinking, practices, stories and artifacts that characterize a particular approach.
What are the 3 approaches to organizational culture?
- Practical view
- Interpretive view
- Critical and Postmodern view
What does the practical view reflect?
The manager’s desire for practical advice and specific COM strategies to enhance competitiveness.
How does the practical view treat cultural elements?
As a tool to build more effective organizations.
Who is Jim Collins?
Culture that preserves values and core purposes usually practices “cult like” culture through fervently held ideology, indoctrination, and tightness of fit.
What three ways does Jim Collins think culture is shown?
1) Fervently held ideology
2) Indoctrination
3) Tightness of fit
What are Peters and Waterman’s 8 common cultural characteristics of successful companies?
- Active decision making
- Close relation to customers
- Autonomy & entrepreneurship
- Productivity through people
- Hands on, value driven
- Stick to knitting
- Simple form
- Simultaneous loose-tight perspectives
What does the interpretive view seek to develop?
A richer understanding of how cultures emerge through everyday interactions.
What is integration?
- Portrays culture
- No room for ambiguity
- Monologue- no dialogue
What is differentiation?
- Highlights differences across units and subcultures.
- Differentiated subcultures can coexist in harmony, conflict and indifference to one another
- Islands of clarity/bunkers
What is fragmentation?
- Ambiguity is inevitable
- Cultural elements can be interpreted many ways.
- Clear consensus among org. subculture cannot be attained
What is the critical and postmodern view?
- Focuses on the challenges to power relationships and the status quo
- Study by Martin Suggested 3 ways to view it.
What are the 3 ways Martin to view critical and postmodern view?
- Integration
- Differentiation
- Fragmentation
What is identity?
How individuals position themselves in the world through language and action.
What is authenticity?
Being real and honest in how we live and work with others. (being the same in and out of season)
What are the 4 ways identity and difference is viewed?
- Org practices and performances
- Essential or fixed aspects of self
- Features of the org that influences members
- Products of social and popular narratives
What are the 7 images of identity?
self-doubter, struggler, surfer, storyteller, strategists, stencil, soldier
What is the self-doubter?
-Uncertainty and insecurity
What is a struggler?
Deals with conflict and contradictions between self and external factors (can be class based and racialized)
What is a surfer?
Tossed about by shifting tides and currents. Pressure to create fragmented identities to fit multiple situations.
What is a storyteller?
Seeks to build an integrated and meaningful identity by creating a story of self that is coherent across time/space.
What is a strategist?
Utilitarian/goal directed in their self-making efforts. Often moves between what feels true/authentic and that one that more closely aligns with a preferred org. self
What is a stencil?
Members are understood as copies, outlines, or templates of a standard identity position.
What is a soldier?
Identity is stamped by organization the soldier willingly embraces the organization preferred identity.
