Dit zijn mijn aantekeningen van vorig jaar. Ook bevat het de antwoorden op de vragen uit de les en aan het eind een compacte samenvatting waarin alle belangrijke begrippen per college in staan.
Hoorcollege 1: What is organizational culture
• Alvesson, Chapter 1: The Concept of Organizational Culture (p. 1-15)
Wat is cultuur: vibe, normen en waarden, traditie, symbols
Al deze fotos op de slide ( starbucks, netflix, apple,fietsen, concerten, jip/janneke) hebben te
maken met consume culture. Dit is wat je consumeert, vaak te maken met merken.
Taal heeft ook een rol.
Origine van de term cultuur:
From the Latin word colere = to till the ground/ to grow
● Cultus (past participle) = cultivated/ nurtured/ cared for
● An agricultural term
> grows over time
Culture is a fuzzy concept (vaag?)
● Culture is studied across many disciplines
● Enormous variation in the definition of the term
● The concept is used to cover everything and nothing
● Has a lot of disciplines (niet weten voor TT)
Shared assumptions about org culture:
• Related to history/ tradition
• Collectively shared by members of a group
• To do with meanings, understandings, beliefs
• Some depth
• Difficult to grasp and must be interpreted
• Emotionalrather than strictly rational
• helps to understand richness of organizational life
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
(Alvesson,2013,p.3)
Most significant concepts of org culture:
1. Symbols:
- Words, actions, material items that stand for something else
- Rich in meaning -calls for interpretation
- Collective(vs. private) symbolism of interest
2. Meanings:
- How an object or utterance is interpreted
- Makes interpretations more homogeneous (zelfde)
- Socially shared meanings are of interest
,Culture as social and taken for granted:
- Culture is “done” without anyone really thinking about it
- Not ‘inside’ people’s heads, but ‘between’ people
- It is not fixed, but situationally adaptive
- Shared interpretations reduce uncertainties
> For example in het verkeer, je moet sociaal op elkaar reageren
Edgar Schein’s Model of Organizational Culture (de ijsberg)
We zijn alleen bezig met de bovenkant van de ijsberg,
dus hoe mensen zich gedragen (artefacten; wat je ziet)
Maar wat daaronder ligt en je niet ziet, is nog veel
belangrijker, zoals de waarden en basic assumptions.
Deze zet je bvb niet op je cv, maar zijn wel belangrijk.
2.Waarden:
- Social principles, ideals, ethical code > emotionally charged
3.Basic assumptions:
Assumptions about human nature (people motivated vs
lazy), human relationships (competitive vs. cooperative), truth, reality, knowledge, time
Why do people study organizational culture?
• In the 1980s, US industry was facing a crisis (they did not know why)
• At the same time, boom of Japanese companies > US wanted to know what they did
differently
• Focus on ‘shared values’, commitment and high-quality output > we have to create a
culture to take the employers along
• 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)
• Shiftfrom mass production to the service and knowledge economy (remote ‘brain work’
more difficult to control)
>org cult kan ook interessant zijn vanuit een powerperpective
Verschillende motivaties waarom cult studeren: (TT)
,1. efficiëntie
2.wat is er gaande in de organisatie
3.kritisch kijken
How to study org cul:
• Culture: complex, inaccessible, fuzzy phenomena
• Alvesson suggests:balance between rigor/flexibility
- Rigor: Be focused and precise,analyze specific cultural phenomena,seek interpretive
depth, examine motives and objectives
- Flexibility:Noformula or model for studying culture, causal links lead to
oversimplification (complex en rich)
• Requires careful reflection of one's own cultural bias
Hoorcollege 2: How to study organizational culture
• Alvesson, Chapter 2: Culture as Metaphor and Metaphors of Culture (p. 16-33)
• Bell, E. (2008). Reading Management and Organization in Film. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan. (Introduction, p. 1-12)
Metaphor as a late device (readings):
• 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” > beschrijft iets als iets anders …net als…
• States that one thing is (like) another thing
• When taken literally, it becomes absurd
• It transfers a term from one system ofmeaning to another
• But how is this useful for studying
organizations???
-Taal metaforen: potato on a couch
-levens metaforen: het leven is een battlefield.
, -politiek: dead end reached, the ship is full
-swearwords: holy shit
-nicknames voor loved ones: honey
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 > de meer metaforen we hebben des
te meer perspectief we hebben om te analyseren en des te holistischer het is.
8 metaforen van Morgan:
- Machine: de organisatie functioneert als een machine, het functioneren is belangrijk
en er wordt als een robot gewerkt
- Organism: organisatie is als een levend organisme, alles is related (to envornment)
en connected. Net als een levend organisme
- Brain: een lerende organisatie, steeds aan het leren en ontwikkelen, oneindige
capacity, er is kennis in elke cel van de organisatie
- Culture: organisatie als een cultuur, waar normen/waarden, idealen en geloof
centraal staan
- Political system: organisatie is een politieke arena, het gaat om machtsspel,
coalities tussen mensen en conflicten
- Physic prison: mensen zijn blind geworden over wat er gaande is in het bedrijf,
people took it for granted, ze zijn trapped in het systeem. Als er iets ergs gebeurt
wordt er gezegd: hoe kon dit gebeuren! Ze zijn niet kritisch meer.
- Change / Flux: constant in verandering, als het milieu verandert en zijn flexibel en
adaptable, domino effect
- Domination: mensen en bronnen worden uitgebuit, de hoofden legen, goedkoop
werk, vrouwen en etniciteiten onderdrukken
Three interest for studying a phenomenon (tentamen):
1. Technical interest: verbeteren van efficiëntie en prestatie
- machine
2. Practical Hermeneutic interest: kennis omwille van kennis
- organism
- brain
- culture
- change
3. Emancipatory interest: beschermen van negatieve effecten
- domination
- prison
- political
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