Comprehensive College Notes on Organizational Culture and Change
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Course
Organizational Culture And Change
Institution
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
Book
Understanding Organizational Culture
Comprehensive lecture notes from the course Organizational Culture and Change (2022/2023) including notes about the films covered (movie analysis) and a number of references to the required literature.
OCC - All concepts and questions from lectures and literature
Brief summary of main points.
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Organizational Culture And Change
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Organizational Culture and Change 2021/2022
Lecturer: Patrizia Hoyer
Lecture 1: 04 november 2021
Introduction: What is Organizational Culture?
Culture is a fuzzy concept. Culture is studied across many disciplines, it has an enormous
variation in the definition of the term and the concept is used to cover everything and nothing.
From the Latin word colere = to till the ground/ to grow
Cultus (past participle) = cultivated/ nurtured/ cared for
An agricultural term
Different disciplines focus on different aspects of culture. Human geography: national and
regional culture. Psychology: cultural identity. Sociology: family and community culture.
Media & Arts: pop and consumer culture…
This course is about organizational culture, but what is 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.
Shared assumptions about organizational culture:
It is related to history and tradition
It is collectively shared by members of a group
It has to do with meanings, understandings and beliefs
It has some depth
It is difficult to grasp and must be interpreted
It has emotional rather than strictly national
It helps to understand richness of organizational life
The most significant concepts of organizational culture are symbols and meanings.
Symbols are words, actions and material items that stand for something else. They
are rich in meaning and call for interpretation. It usually is a collective symbolism of
interest.
Meanings are about how an about object or utterance is interpreted. It makes
interpretations more homogenous and are socially shared, the meanings are of interest.
Culture as social and taken-for-granted. Culture is ‘done’ without anyone really thinking
about it. Culture is not inside people’s heads, but ‘between’ people. It is not fixed, but
situationally adaptive. Shared interpretations reduce uncertainties.
Alvesson (2013): but watch out. Often ‘culture’ refers to little more than a social pattern/
surface phenomenon, there is a need to dig deeper. But wat is this depth? How do we need to
understand and use it?
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,Edgar Schein’s 1990s model of organizational culture. What we see: artifacts in physical,
behavioral and verbal forms. What we can talk about: values and strategies, goals,
philosophies. What we take for granted: basic assumptions like unconscious beliefs, how we
perceive, how we think and how we feel.
Artifacts: buildings, logos, dress code, traditions, rituals, jargon, jokes, stories…
Values: social principles, ideals, ethical code, emotionally charged
Assumptions: about human nature (people motivated vs lazy), human relationships
(competitive vs cooperative), truth, reality, knowledge…
Why do people study organizational culture? In the 1980s, the US industry was facing a crisis,
while at the same time, there was a 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 difference with the US was in the way the industry was managed.
But, the culture hype did not live up to its promises
Ongoing interest: in organizational scandals/ failure the culture got the blame
Shift from mass production to the service and knowledge economy, ‘brain work’
Culture comes into play when something goes wrong and people want to know why. There is
a considerable amount of attention for culture during periods of trouble or dramatic change.
You can use culture in a way that people will believe in what they do, that they are
committed. For example, supervising not their outcomes, but their input.
How to study organizational culture? Culture is a complex, inaccessible and fuzzy
phenomena. It can mean different things, so there is no best way to study culture.
Alvesson suggests balance between rigor and flexibility
Rigor: be focused and precise, analyze specific cultural phenomena, seek interpretive
depth, examine motives and objectives
Flexibility: no formula or model for studying culture, causal links lead to
oversimplification
Doing this requires careful reflection of one’s own cultural bias
Three interests for studying a phenomenon
The technical interest: ‘improve efficiency and performance’, control organizational
culture and improve organizational performance and effectiveness
The practical-hermeneutic interest: ‘knowledge for the sake of knowledge’,
understand how shared meaning is created in organizational communities, what the
natives think they are up to
The emancipatory interest: ‘protect from negative effects’, targets taken-for-granted
beliefs and instrumentality, not interested in disadvantages of organizations, but for
employees
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, Studying organizational culture: ethnography. Observing the day-to-day functioning of an
organization: patterns of interaction between individuals and groups, variations in language
used, topics and questions explored in conversations and various habits/ rituals of daily
routine.
Lecture 2: 09 november 2021
How to Study Organizational Culture?
Metaphor known as a literary device, useful in poetry and rhetoric. It evokes powerful images
and describes an object or person in a way that is not literally true. It states that one thing is
(like) another thing, it transfers a term from one system of meaning to another.
Images of organization (Morgan, 1986). Came up with the idea of metaphors. Develops the
‘art of reading’ organizational life. Premise: all organizational theories are based on
metaphors.
A metaphor leads to a particular way of seeing and interpreting
It brings valuable insights, but it is also very one-sided, incomplete, biased and
potentially misleading
There are no right or wrong perspectives, each metaphor illuminates and hides
Solution: we need multiple metaphors and perspectives, the more we have, the
more holistic that analysis will be
He came up with 8 metaphors:
The machine, organizations function like a machine focus is on functioning smoothly
The organism, organizations are like a living organism, everything is connected, it has
a life and connects with the environment
The brain, sees the organization as a learning thing, it is constantly developing
Culture, the organization is held together by people’s beliefs and values and ideals,
one of the most powerful metaphors, organizations have its own cultures
The political system, organizations are political arenas, power games, conflicts of
interest and fighting for resources
Psychic prison, suggest that people have become blind to what is going on in the
organization, they take it for granted, they are trapped in a certain culture
The change/ flux, organizations are constantly changing, they adapt and are flexible
Domination, looks at if people are being exploited, are natural resources being
exploited, suppression and more
Organization as a pyramid (Alvesson). Characterized by a broad base, linear reduction in
volume for every layer and it 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.
Certain language reinforces this asymmetry: ‘top and bottom’ or ‘high and low’. Material
arrangements supports this image, the top management is often on the top floor.
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