Corporate Culture Fundamentals - E-book - ePub

Where Does Culture Reside? Culture is a property of a group. Whenever a group has enough common experience, a culturebegins to form. One finds cultures at the level of small teams, families, and work groups. Cultures are found at everyhierarchical level. Culture exists at the level of the wholeorganization if there is sufficient shared history. That is whyunderstanding of corporate or organizational culture becomes anintegral part of the understanding of the organization itself. It is even found at the level of a whole industry because ofthe shared occupational backgrounds of the peopleindustry-wide.
Finally, culture exists at the level of regions andnations because of common language, ethnic background, religion, and shared experience. But if you spend the bulk ofyour life in a given occupation and organization, you not onlytake on many of the cultural themes that others in theoccupation or organization share, but they can very well be wellformed assumptions and may elude your awareness. And therelies the real power of culture, this unconscious quality for sure!! You are not aware of your cultural biases until someonechallenges them or until you have offended someone with adifferent cultural background.
Having thought broadly aboutculture, it is now time to think more precisely about how todefine culture, how to assess it, and how to begin to evolve it. Questions to be pondered uponAs you begin to think about culture, think about it first in yourown personality:Review your family, ethnic, national, and educationalbackground to identify the major influences on your currentvalues and ways of doing things.
Review your current formal and informal group affiliations toidentify what current norms and values matter to you. Think about your place of work, its history, and traditionsand see how that relates to your own values and ways ofdoing things. The discussion here is directed towards undergraduate as wellas postgraduate students, academics and practitioners interestedin corporate culture and the changes in leadership, managementconsultancy, corporate culture.
The discussion in the subsequentsections here is to investigate and discuss a range of questionssuch as:How do managers, consultants and HRM people work withcultural change projects? How do they design and executesuch projects? How do they think, get information and followup their work? Is there a set of shared meanings makingcoordinated work possible or are there varieties ofinterpretations and meanings among those engaged in thechange work producing difficulties? ?What is happening in terms of processes? Are the intentionsof the design of change projects realized in theimplementation events? Are instruments of change used asintended? How do those involved in these processes, forexample the managers and employees seen as the recipientsand carriers of change initiatives, make sense of this andwhat do they do?What are the outcomes in terms of responses andconsequences? Is it possible that changes those initiallyintended or are the consequences unforeseen? If there areno changes, how can this be understood?What can be learned about culture change projects andother forms of organizational changes? What are the trapsand problems? What do managers, consultants, HRM peopleand other people involved need to consider in planning, designing, executing and learning from such projects?