Detailed notes on all lectures of the Changing Organizational Culture course at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Lecture 1 to 13, organized as suggested in the syllabus of .
Lecture 1: Introduction,
Lecture 2: Planned Change Programs,
Lecture 4: Critique of top-down change planned change: A...
Lecture 8: Multi-level change and productive resistance……………………………..21
Lecture 9: Change Work in Practices…………………………………………………23
Lecture 10: Rituals and change work, transformative spaces. ………………………26
Lecture 12: Post-acquisition integration process ……………………………………28
Lecture 11: Experiencing and learning from change…………………………………30
Lecture 13: Organizational space, sociomateriality and cultural change……………..34
, Lecture 1: Introduction
How can we intervene in a culture and what kind of change interventions are available?
We criticize a more planned approach and come up with an alternative approach, with a
stronger focus on looking at processes. Not so much following the (N)steps, but really look at
the process itself. What do we do, when we say that we change culture? What do managers,
HRM people etcetera, do?
- Processual understanding of organizing, instead of a more fixed understanding of
organizations (stable). (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002): changing is something that is
constantly happening, over time. We assume it to be a process
- (We assume that) Bottum-up, emergent changes are more interesting and dominant
then top-down, grand technocratic change programs. There is much power in new
emerging practices that can be helpful for organizing new bottom-up practices.
(Thomas et al, 2011): paper on how this emerges (a meeting between change agents
and those that are opposed to change, what emerges from that setting)
- Discursive based: based upon what we say, how we talk, the change of our narrative.
Covid: change is very discursive, Rutte tells us that we should take responsibility and
reduce our social contacts. The tone of the discourse in what he is saying, listening to
the new narrative for us citizens. (Heracleaous and Barrett, 2001): we have to
understand change is narrative.
- Practice-based: focus and take the practices that people do seriously when they are
changing organizational culture. What kind of actual practices do they do. (Yanow and
Tsoukas, 2009. Bjorkeng et al, 2009): study changes through practices. When does a
new practice emerge? How does it work in a community?
- Multi-level and muli-actor. Multi-level: we do not focus only on the management level
(top-down) or the other way (bottom-up). We tend to forget looking at the middle
managers, though frequently the failing of a culture is within that layer. Multi-actor:
every person can be a change agent or a change resister (both managers or workers)
(Ogbonna and Wilkinson, 2003): about multi-levelness. (Van Marrewijk, 2018): about
mulit-actor.
Dichotomy of change versus resistance: resistance can also be a form of change
(if your boss wants to go left but you want to go right, is that resistance or is that
wanting to engage in a changing process?)
- Ethnography and intervention: what kind of interventions are there? (Van Marrewijk
et al, 2010): ethnoventionist approach, a combination between ethnography and
intervention (they look very closely at what is going on in an organization and its
change processes, and then intervene)
- Change work (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2016)
- Symbols and rituals of change. A highly symbolic process of change (like the
‘tradition’ of Rutte at a persconferentie every other Tuesday during the Corona
pandemic). (Higging and Mcallaster, 2004).
- Mergers and acquisitions: a strong intervention of organizations merging together,
what kind of mechanisms are in the post-merger integration process. (van Marrewijk,
2016)
- Sociomateriality and organizational spaces: e.g. the creation and design of an office,
all to change the behavior of people in offices. (Irving et al, 2019).
A&S: it is strange that most literature states that after changing processes, it is stable again.
2
,Thinking about those involved, the subjects, of change: understand changing work in the daily
live, trying to understand the meaning: how is it perceived from within
- Longitudinal study. An in-depth investigation of a cultural change program in a high-
tech firm. Not just from an ethic perspective/superficial, but very in depth.
- The case in the book has a new department to develop new technology: that is why
they had to rethink their organizational culture, what are our values and practices?
Business anthropology: the business anthropological background
- Applying anthropologic theories and methods for commercial activities in
organizations (Baba 1986)
- Business anthropology makes the exotic normal and the normal exotic (Eriksen
2006:34). (E.g. the blessings of construction work: a priest comes to bless a finished
construct. Why do they do that? For us it is exotic, for construction workers it is
normal)
Business anthropological perspective
- Looking from a holistic perspective: taking into account the economic, historic and
cultural context why do people behave the way they do based on the context and
history?
- Interested in daily life of organizational members (emic understanding)
- Focus at process rather than outcome: How does a process evolve?
- Focusing on meanings, rituals and symbolism
- We assume that organizations are not homogeneous, cultural events. But
heterogeneity, differentiation and situational behavior is assumed: sub-cultures,
different professional cultures are around. A fragmented cultural environment.
- Translation (Latour 2005).
Important in the developing of the alternative approach = Understanding that grand-
technocratic change approaches frequently fail (and why). Why the alternative approach helps
in many of the cultural questions of innovation, organizational change/adaption and
merger/acquisitions. The alternative approach works well for these kinds of questions.
Lecture 2: Planned Change Programs
From A&S chapter 2: We understand change to be something very intentional, with clear
goals, with a timeline: a start and a finish.
Top-down change: The initiative of change processes come from top management, meaning
that the design but also the implementation starts at upper levels, involving HR-departments,
consultancy firms that together design processes and change programs.
- You need middle managers to ‘translate’ stories and implement it, in order to make it a
successful change.
Internal and external triggers for change. Why would you change an organizational culture?
- Internal: Wanting to grow/expand, changing workforce (the people that work at a
company start to differ e.g. from young people to older people), a different leader.
- External: regulations, competition, societal needs
They are planned approaches: a clear goal, you want to go somewhere
- Background in Human Relations
3
, - Also roots in Open System School: change projects are complex and unpredictable;
the outcomes can be unintentional. ‘if you fully focus on e.g. the new technology,
you might miss out on economic or marketing departments’.
- Sequential process approach: Change as an N-step process, still very popular today.
Change as a stepwise approach, making an analysis > coming with a solution >
implementing different interventions > measuring its progress > stabilizing/making it
fit as a result of a change process.
- Organization Development School (OD): focus on the idea that organizations are
stable situations, then a disruption happens, but afterwards they are stable again. This
is the dominant in thinking how organizations change:
Punctuated equilibrium model (Lewin, 1951)
Start with a stable situation where practices and methodologies that are familiar
within an organization. Stage 1 = to ‘unfreeze’ the old, frozen situation. Try to
get the old situation changed, to announce a change, e.g. by firing people or make
a clear indication that a new situation is being created. The motivation of change.
The company is unfrozen: everybody is aware of the changes, there is an
understanding of the need of change (e.g. to escape bankruptcy or competition).
Stage 2 = the actual ways to transform an organization: change business
process models, e.g. new structures, development of technologies. Running the
change process.
New business design, technologies and processes are created. Stage 3 =
refreezing. Make sure everybody knows what the new processes are, educate and
communicate. Stabilizing the new situation.
Bate, 1994: Cultural Change = Strategic Change (you have to anticipate on historical and
contextual time)
- The Cultural Development Strategy: evolutionary. A slow process in where is tried
to build upon a longer tradition of a culture, towards a stronger culture. You have the
time and money for it (e.g. the time to send people to courses and slowly develop the
culture into a certain direction).
- Transforming strategies: radical changes. There is no time for a long process of
change, e.g. there is a crisis or a problem.
- Mutual Dependency of Order and Change: Looking in time, you see a first order
change (the easier changeable artifacts in culture). Second order of change (on a
deeper level)
Integrated Strategy (Bate)
- Has the components of transformation ánd development.
- Culture is a heterogenous phenomena
- Culture is continuous in development
- Historical perspective
- Fit with development of organization
- Not prescriptive but descriptive
- Not normative but exploring (more openness towards sudden innovations/changes that
were not foreseen)
- Creation of hybrid culture as a optimum for situation (acknowledging differences of
culture)
- Fit between ambitions and results
4
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller sarahtermeulen. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $7.55. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
