Organizational Culture and Change

Organizational Culture and Change:

I have come to conclude that the two concepts; organisation culture and organisation change affect each other in unique ways. In this discussion the description of organisation culture by Mott (2008) which asserts that “a group’s culture is made of the practices, beliefs and values that help create how it functions” will be used.

How does organisation change affects organisation culture?

Yukl (2009) as reflected by Hickman (2010, p. 326) addressed a conflict that I have had for a long time on organisation culture, which is “underlying beliefs” are not necessarily the same as those outwardly promoted by an organisation. Many bureaucracies publicly promote, for instance, open door policy for employees to increase feedback and transparency within the organisation, when in essence, such staff members (SM) may never be free to openly walk into their leaders' offices to discuss matters affecting their lives at the work place. In this sense therefore, the true organisational culture to me is the underlying belief as opposed to the espoused values.

The second learning which again I found very useful from Yukl (2009) was that “underlying beliefs representing the culture of …organisation are learnt responses to problems” that affect the organisation from the outside and the inside; Yukl (2009) called this survival in the external environment and problems of internal integration.  The outside problems has to do with the business or purpose of an organisation while the internal problems have to do with recruitment, selection, placement, motivations and reward system, punitive measures and so forth and how all these are applied to an individual employee. The relationship of organisation change to culture in this regard is such that any form of change (in the internal or external environment) results into change in culture as well. This is because new changes pose new requirements for adaptation to organisations externally and internally and as organisations respond and adapt to these new challenges, a new culture is built.

What would be the role of leadership in this?

In my opinion, problems of internal integration are largely attributable to the ‘behaviour’ of leadership in any given organisation and the kinds of undertakings, arrangements, structures and cultural forms/symbols they put in place. Because of the fact that leaders provide the direction, vision in an organisation, they tend to dictate on how the vision(s) would be implemented, thereby setting new cultures and ways of working in an organisation. Any form of change leaders will cause with respect to any of the above elements of internal integration will require adjustments on the side of followers (workers) as they respond to them. Leadership therefore in a way facilitates or influences organisational culture, the degree of influence however varies. A leader may introduce new symbols such as lunch hour prayers, sharing a birthday cake for every staff whose birthdays fall within a working day (influencing culture) in a new organisation or one being established easily compared to trying to do the same in a district local government - so large and has been in existence for ages.

How does organisation culture affect organisation change?

There are many examples where efforts towards organisation change has failed due to what Mott (2008) describes as ‘cultural resistance’ (p.89). I have seen that in institutions where cultural values are strong, any change not in tandem with the beliefs and values of stakeholders is opposed but where proposed changes are congruent with the culture, it is easy. An example would be in large entities where staffs, through their representations (chairs of staff associations, unions etc), are part of decisions making bodies/committees.

Concluding on this therefore, while organisation change and culture affect one another in ways that need to be studied further, the role of a leader in all this is still critical.