Organizational culture

  • Organizational culture endures like personality - climate is a brief mood.
  • A culture is made up of NORMS governing the behaviour of members.
  • Norms are a bit like rules, just less explicit.
  • A typical norm is the expectation to work long hours.
  • No explicit policy, just an implicit rule that no other behaviour is acceptable.
  • Norms are based on values but values alone are not enough to constitute a culture.
  • Your culture could value the development of people but no one may be doing it.
  • A norm is in effect when people are actually behaving in accordance with it.
  • Norms imply underlying values, but the latter does not mean norms are operating.
  • A norm specifies what behaviour will be accepted/rewarded/reinforced in what situations
  • The only way to cultivate norms is to ensure that the desired behaviours are reinforced and role models exhibit the required behaviours consistently.
  • Punish deviants, but role models and positive reinforcement are more powerful.
  • Those who try to change a culture often fail because they stop at exhortation.
  • They do not consistently reward or model the appropriate behaviours.
  • Behaviour change can mean compliance - we would like people to WANT to change.
  • But there is nothing wrong with combining reinforcement with rational persuasion.
  • The problem is only in expecting rational persuasion to be enough.
  • While people can comply just to be rewarded or accepted they can change their attitudes after behaving in line with new norms for awhile and getting rewarded for so doing.
  • The culture concept suggests a uniform set of norms across the entire organization.
  • You need to be sure that the culture appropriate for one part of the organization isn't imposed on parts for which it would be counterproductive.
  • A risk orientated culture shouldn't be applied where you need efficiency to ensure profitability.
  • A "right first time" culture is too risk averse for the entrepreneurial parts of the business.
  • You might want a single cultural umbrella over a diversity of subcultures.

             

All pages written by Mitch McCrimmon, Ph.D. and copyright © Self Renewal Group 1996-2008
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