Questions and Answers of Organizational Culture

1. What struck you as most different in the two cases?
2. What do you think are the bases of those differences?
3. How much is attributable to their technologies?
4. How much is attributable to their national locations?
5. How much is attributable to their history, size, and age?
6. How well do you think you would fit into either company?
1. In what way is this “government” agency different from a business?
2. How do the national cultures affect how the EDB functions?
Have you observed the need to become “more personal” in your various relationships to buildtrust and open communication?
1. Think of one or two organizations that interest you and look up their histories on the internet.
1. Visit a local supermarket or bank, find someplace to sit, and observe the interactions of employees and managers for as long as you are comfortable. Note especially the interactions with managers,
2. Ask a friend who works in a large company, how he or she knows what is acceptable in that organization in dealing with the boss? How open can you be? How does the boss respond to bad news? What
1. What changes, if any, have resulted from the financial scandals of recent years?
2. What changes have resulted from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?
3. Can you think of any major changes in recent years that have resulted without a scandal or crisis of some sort?
If you are a scholar or researcher, try to classify all that you observe and know about the group that you are a member of into the basic categories of artifacts, espoused values, and basic
If you are a student or potential employee, take a potential organization you are interested in, visit it to gather impressions and feelings, and then see whether what the organization claims fits
If you are a change leader, bring together a representative group of members of the organization you are trying to change and ask them to identify as many behavioral artifacts of the organization as
If you find discrepancies, ask the group to identify what the deeper assumption might be that would explain the artifacts, especially observed routine behavior.
If you are a consultant or helper and are sure you know what specific changes the change leaders have in mind, invite them to bring together a group from their organization and take it through the
For all readers, the main thing to do at this point is to reflect on the complexity of this organization’s culture and how its micro and subcultures are nested in both the U.S. culture and the
Can you think of other organizations that resemble DEC? What is similar and what is different, and why?
2. For each of these groups, figure out the environment they are nested in and how that affects their culture.
3. See if you can identify lack of alignment between the cultures of the three groups.169
Visit and observe
Identify artifacts and processes that are puzzling
Ask insiders why things are done that way
Identify espoused values that are appealing and ask how they are implemented within the organization
Look for inconsistencies and ask what really determines day-to-day behavior
1. Why are you reading this book? What is your interest in culture?
2. Have you given some thought to your own cultural history and how you would decipher the various cultures you have come from: family, peer group, school, jobs, community?
3. What culture-deciphering issue do you face, and what is your plan for culture assessment?
Explain the role of leader as “manager of meaning”AppendixLO1
Explore symbolic forms through which the leader shapes meanings within the culture AppendixLO1
Recognize ideology and identification as forms of unobtrusive control AppendixLO1
Develop optimal competence as a leader through multiframe thinking AppendixLO1
Evaluate yourself as a cultural leader or potential cultural leader AppendixLO1
1. Which of the dimensions surprised you most, because you had never thought of culture in that way?
2. Which issues have bothered you most when you interact with someone from another culture?
3. What are your own attitudes about time? How late can a person be without offending you? How late do you allow yourself to be when you are running late?
4. Which excuses are legitimate for being late?
2. If there are biographies of founders listed, consider reading those to deepen your understanding of how cultures form.
Think of an organization that you are interested in and contrast the activities of the designers and engineers, the operators, and the executives.
1. Think of several organizations with which you are familiar either as a customer, an employee, or a manager. Take two or three of the typologies discussed in this chapter and see whether you can
2. If you have trouble fitting some organizations into the types, try to figure out which dimensions don’t work and use them to create new types for yourself.
3. Ask yourself whether or not you believe that quantifying culture dimensions is useful, and under what conditions.
What of DEC, Ciba-Geigy, and Singapore? Did Their Cultures Evolve and Change?
The best way to test this qualitative model is to bring together a small group (three to five) of people from your own company, club, or other group and take an hour to discuss: (1)
what does it feel like to enter this group,
(2) what are the values we live by in this group, and
(3) what are the deep assumptions that drive us. If you can think of changes you would like to make in how this group operates, ask yourself how what you identified previously would help you or
1. Apply these stages to some change that you have personally experienced, some habit that you tried to break, or some new skill you tried to learn.
2. Determine which stage and which process was most difficult.
3. Now think about an organizational change you want to make and apply the same thinking.
What you want and need in addition is a model of the change process itself and some guidelines for how to get started. In this chapter we will define you as the “change leader” and provide you a
If you are a scholar or researcher, before you plunge into your research consider that you are about to study a complex, patterned, multifaceted human socio-technical system and decide
what it is you are really trying to find out, what research method you will use, and how that research method might affect the system.If you are a student or potential employee, ask the recruiter
If you are a change leader, ask yourself the following question: If the group or organization I am trying to change has a learning history, what can I learn about that history before I begin to plan
If you are a consultant or helper who has been asked to build or change culture, be sure to ask the potential client what he or she has in mind and get as concrete a picture as possible of what
What You Imply When You Use the Word Culture
Can Culture Be Inferred from Behavior Alone?
Do Occupations Have Cultures?
Where Does Leadership Come In?
Identify examples of major forces that drive change AppendixLO1
Articulate five assumptions about the relationships between change and organizational culture AppendixLO1
Explain four perspectives on the way organizations view change AppendixLO1
Develop a change plan for an organization based on insights on managing change AppendixLO1
Apply your cultural analysis to professional communication goals AppendixLO1
Apply your cultural analysis for organizational development AppendixLO1
Explain the interpretive nature of cultural analysis AppendixLO1
Learn how to combine elements to develop cultural themes AppendixLO1
Create an overall characterization of the culture based on multiple themes AppendixLO1
Appreciate the value of a cultural analysis AppendixLO1
Explain the theories of social constructivism and structuration as a foundation for a cultural analysis AppendixLO1
Learn the five major steps in the cultural analysis process AppendixLO1
Distinguish among the major types of textual analysis AppendixLO1
Explain major guidelines for analyzing a text AppendixLO1
Explore the paradox of culture and diversity AppendixLO1
Promote skills for understanding organizational subcultures AppendixLO1
Explain the importance of diversity in today’s creative economy AppendixLO1
Describe the progression organizations take in becoming multicultural AppendixLO1
Explain the essential nature of cultural understanding for minority subcultures within the organization AppendixLO1
Explain the concept of culture AppendixLO1
Differentiate between the different images and metaphors for understanding organizations AppendixLO1
Recall the three “levels” of organizational culture AppendixLO1
Deduce that most organizations do not have a single commonly understood “culture”AppendixLO1
Discuss the approach to defining culture used in this workbook AppendixLO1
Appreciate the challenges involved in interviewing members AppendixLO1
Apply six general interviewing principles AppendixLO1
Explain the different factors to consider when interviewing as a member of the culture versus as an outsider to the culture AppendixLO1
State the five principles for conducting ethnographic interviews AppendixLO1
Describe basic features of qualitative surveys AppendixLO1
Learn the major value tensions that influence communication and ethics AppendixLO1
Develop critical questions to ask concerning culture and ethical value tensions AppendixLO1
Describe three major perspectives on the relationship between culture and effectiveness AppendixLO1
Explain the dimensions of an effective organizational culture AppendixLO1
Reflect on the pervasiveness of organizations in our lives AppendixLO1
State the goal of cultural analysis AppendixLO1
Apply guides for selecting an organization for analysis AppendixLO1
Gain an awareness of major cultural elements AppendixLO1

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