This is a brief summary of the lectures. I did not read the book but studied the lectures and movies as discussed during the lectures. I got a 9 for the final exam. Good Luck!
OCC - All concepts and questions from lectures and literature
Uitgebreide College Aantekeningen Organizational Culture and Change
Samenvatting van het boek 'Understanding Organizational Culture'
Alles voor dit studieboek (14)
Geschreven voor
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
Onbekend
Organizational Culture and Change (S_OCC)
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Verkoper
Volgen
KEvO
Voorbeeld van de inhoud
Topic 1: Studying Culture (CH 1 & 2)
Lecture 1:
What is Culture?
• Concepts is used to cover everything and nothing
• 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.
o Alvesson
• Culture as Social and Taken-for-granted
o culture is ‘done’ without anyone really thinking about it
o not ‘inside’ people’s heads, but ‘between’ people
o it is not fixed, but situationally adaptive
o shared interpretations reduce uncertainties
What is Organizational Culture?
• Shared assumptions about organizational culture
o related to history/ tradition
o collectively shared by members of a group
o to do with meanings, understandings, beliefs
o some depth
o difficult to grasp and must be interpreted
o emotional rather than strictly rational
o helps to understand richness of organizational life
• Most significant concepts of organizational culture
o Symbols
§ words, actions, material items that stand for something else
§ rich in meaning – calls for interpretation
§ collective (vs private) symbolism of interest
o Meanings
§ how an object or utterance is interpreted
§ makes more interpretations more homogeneous
§ socially shared meanings are of interest
• Edgar Schein’s Model of Organizational Culture (Iceberg)
o What we see – Artifacts (physical, behavioral, verbal)
§ physical – i.e., buildings, logo dress code
§ behavioral – i.e., traditions, rituals, rewards
§ verbal – i.e., stories, jargon, jokes
o What we can talk about – Values (strategies, goals, philosophies)
§ i.e., social principles, ideals, ethical code -> emotionally charged
o What we take for granted – Basic Assumptions (unconscious beliefs, how we
perceive, think, feel)
§ i.e., assumptions about human nature (people motivated vs lazy)
§ i.e., human relationships (competitive vs cooperative)
§ i.e., truth, reality, knowledge, time
• How to study organizational culture – three interests for studying a phenomenon
o Technical Interest – “improve efficiency and performance”
, § control organizational culture
§ improve organizational performance and effectiveness
o 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
o Emancipatory Interest – “protect from negative effects”
§ targets taken-for-granted beliefs and instrumentality
§ not interested in disadvantages for organizations, but for employees
Lecture 2:
Metaphors
• describes an object or person in a way that is not literally true
• states that one thing is (like) another thing
• when taken literally, it becomes absurd
• it transfers a term from one system of meaning to another
• metaphor leads to a particular way f 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
o solution: we need multiple metaphors/ perspectives
o images of organizations – Morgan
§ machine, organism, brain, culture, political system, psychic prison,
change/flux, domination
Culture: Critical Variable vs Root Metaphor
• Culture as variable
o culture is one of the several sub-systems making up the organization
o main idea: the organization has a culture (that can be measured)
o aim: improve organizations
o implications: cultural values can be instrumentalized
o aspired outcomes: getting the culture ‘right’ in order to increase loyalty and
productivity
• Culture as root metaphor
o culture is not outside anything: it permeates the entire organization
o main idea: the organizational is a culture (or as if it is a culture)
o aim: explore organizations as socially shared experience
o implications: nothing is ‘outside’ culture
o aspired outcomes: reflection versus increased effectiveness
How does Alvesson think about culture as metaphor:
• metaphors – help to think and talk about complex phenomena
• Culture metaphor: richer view of what goes on
o thoughts, feelings, values, actions
• Limitation: culture can become too general and too vague
• It should not be seen as a ‘final image’; need to go further to sharpen the perspective
• draw on other metaphors for culture
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