Culture III - Organizational Culture

In this article I argue against managers undertaking culture projects. I do this by making a case that organizational culture:

is an analytic and explanatory construct, not a tangible thing, that uses a common label whilst lacking a common definition or application,
operates at too high a level of abstraction to be of practical use, and
is associated with claims that are at best arguable.

Introduction

Academics and consultants continue to breathe life into ‘organizational culture’ as a tool, and sometimes foil, to assert approaches for managers to achieve superior outcomes. While the foundational concept, culture, is drawn on by an eclectic mix of theory, research, applications, and narratives the extraordinary variety of “culture” makes it less clear:

what it is,
where it is to be found,
how, if at all it can be understood and managed,
which, if any, performance outcomes are responsive to the shape of an organization’s culture, and
if indeed there is such a ‘thing’.

From culture to organizational culture

Originally, interest in organizational culture arose from a desire to understand a range of human behaviour in the workforce. On my read, the culture concept was imported into the management literature from the structural-functionalism school of anthropology, most likely by the psychologist Elliot Jaques in his 1953 book The Changing Culture of a Factory¹. In making this selective appropriation, a history and diversity of cultural theorising was left behind while structural-functionalist assumptions of culture as a normative, and thus unifying and conforming force were firmly retained. According to that theory, such unifying outcomes resulted from the interaction of closely knit groups who internalised, from external sources, a range of phenomena including philosophies, ideologies, values, assumptions, beliefs, expectations, attitudes, and norms. These phenomena were “shared”, resulting in a consistent understanding leading to equally consistent behaviour and commitment to “what really matters”. Organizational culture ideas flourished and evolved through the 80’s and 90’s especially, in the Human Relations literature, but were also picked up and adapted by other branches of management science. Organization culture achieved wide-spread prominence when the concept was seized upon by the consulting industry who proffered it as a solution to the challenges of national competitiveness prominent at the time; a ‘lever’ available to management to achieve through the mechanical manipulation of symbols, myths, and customs enhanced productivity², thereby implying that management sits outside its organizational culture.

There has been a vast body of work, from the 60’s through to today, arguing for and challenging these and other theories of culture in general, and organizational culture more specifically. Rather than digging into these, the remainder of this post will explore some examples of the ‘stuff’ that is commonly associated with culture in organizational contexts to exemplify the breadth of the claims associated with the term.

“A culture of many colours”

One way we think of culture is as the accumulation of knowledge (in a broad sense) that is common to a group³. This knowledge has been amassed through (in many jurisdictions compulsory) engagement with formal educational institutions where a common curriculum structures similarity. Through engagement with other institutions, for example the family, religion, organizations and law, much of what was taught and learned formally has been reinforced. For example, an educational understanding of economics, democracy, and the legal status of a firm often accords with career experience. All experiences, whether gained firsthand or via interactions with others (vicariously), shape knowledge too, whether in support of, or to challenge and refute, prior understandings. Although this accumulated knowledge has been acquired socially, some notions of this version of culture view the content as belonging to the individual person and residing in the mind/brain⁴. A contrarian view is that culture is not an individual property and instead shared by a social group – people who work in organizations, for example⁵. Another perspective situates knowledge in artifacts such as books, computer data, other materials along with circulating ideas (beliefs for example) that represent various understandings.

Here I’ll segue to culture as representation and the associated field of semiotics where a sign and its signified are the semiotic field’s ‘meat and potatoes’. Yes, that metaphor was a deliberate attempt to claim that a signifier, ‘meat and potatoes’ in this case, points to the signified meaning ‘primary unit of interest’. In this category I am including not just symbols such as flags, language and artifacts, but also myths, and rituals. Importantly, it is when representations are broadly accepted, lasting over time, and reified (made concrete, objective, ‘thing’ like) that they are, if unquestioned, capable of shaping aspects of our perceptions and its corollary, reality. When representations are shared, and they are relied on to structure a way of perceiving reality⁶, to motivate, it is possible to observe patterns of actions that correlate with them. Yet, there are also abundant examples where representations fail to shape behaviour. More on that later.

Again, a segue, this time to frameworks. Frameworks are representations too. They are used deliberately to emphasize a point of view. These are argued to be especially powerful in shaping action when they too become taken-for-granted. Linear time is probably the most notable example, the general shape of what constitutes a family is another, and theories of all sorts yet another. The thing about frameworks is that in ‘framing’ one aspect or dimension, other aspects are diminished and even prohibited. Ponder, for example, what a family consists of today? Can the same question be asked of the constitution of an organization? Frameworks are often used to categorise and classify ‘things’ – to differentiate and make claims about them. Over time they contribute to embedding phenomena such norms, values, beliefs (themselves concepts that are often reified) which can also be correlated with common, repeatable patterns of action.

Segueing for the final time, another perspective takes patterns of behaviour as the primary expression of culture as normative. Here norms are rules and expectations arising from espoused values and stories of past rewards and sanctions relating to these. As with the preceding examples, a process of internalisation underpins the normative perspective aided by the power managers have in defining standards through policies and procedures, sanctions and rewards, modelling behaviour, and interactions. In some instances, normativity follows from consultant classifications that relate to notions of generalised ideal behaviours. In this sense, behaviour models draw on other notions of organizational culture, blurring delineations between them.

There are, of course, many other ways of thinking about organizational culture (as an entrepreneur’s toolkit or as institutional logics for example) than those selected here. And many other ways of grouping the phenomena mentioned. There are also many additional aspects to organizational culture not covered such as the methodology and methods used to study organizational culture, whether it is even possible to do so for some of the phenomena described, and the resulting cogency of findings⁷. Another aspect left undiscussed is how findings are ‘read’ by organization members and translated into strategies i.e. reflecting on the relationship between information and enlightenment⁸. A further deficiency of this article is the absence of alternate theories, such as practice theory, that offer different approaches to understanding and explaining social action in organizational contexts.

Why is culture a topic for organizations?

Before concluding I want to briefly touch on the reason why organizational culture has the prominence it does. The overwhelming stated objectives relate to maximising human, and thus organizational performance by managing organizational culture. Underlying this notion is that people act in a way consistent with their cognitive content. That is to say, (most) actions are determined by cognitive processes underpinned by their stock of cognitive ‘stuff’ whether it’s values, beliefs, understandings, attitudes, rules, worldviews etc. While culture more generally is about this “stuff”, in organizational usage, the “stuff” and actions are linked explicitly or implicitly. In many cases this linkage goes further, connecting actions (behaviour) to an explanation for, or a promise of, superior organizational performance. Aligned with this theory is that to varying degrees, cultural ‘stuff’ can be manipulated by skilled operatives who can thus, again to varying degrees, exert control over the actions of the unsuspecting manipulated. These theories are arguable and their scope to vast to cover here⁹.

By contrast, humans have free will. They are also capable of reflexive (autonomous, critical) thought. Combined, these capabilities mean that humans aren’t captive dupes constrained to acting in ways ‘set’ by mental phenomena or social mores. Instead, they are quite capable of innovation. In the same way that advertising can influence some behaviour, but is unable to determine it, those phenomena grouped under the culture concept do not and cannot determine behaviour even though they may shape and influence it. Furthermore, the early ideas of a culture, established by anthropologists venturing to far-flung and isolated lands as being homogeneous, are difficult to defend today. For example, the notion of an Australian culture is fraught with evidence that refutes such broad commonality – there are a myriad of (so to speak) beliefs, values, norms etc. that make up the totality of such phenomena notable across Australia today. It’s a similar story for organisations, too. There may be some commonality and overlap in how an organization’s people make sense of the world, but a claim of homogeneity is difficult to substantiate. Importantly too, cultural phenomena are said to be subject to continual change, suggesting that what was understood yesterday may be understood differently tomorrow. As a result of an eclectic mix of cultural “stuff” and its propensity for continual change, rather than producing compliant behaviour, conflict, constructive or not, may also arise.

Before closing

I want to wrap up with a few points:

Organizational culture (OC) is an analytic concept (one among many) and, as such has no single meaning, definition or use or tangible property. It is real only in its analytic application in the same way as, say, a centimetre or inch is (although the latter are standardised-ish where the former (OC) is not)
In the same way that an organization does not have a centimetre or inch, to say one has or should have “a culture” reifies the term. Likewise, to say “it” does something also reifies the term, giving “it” elemental force “it” (OC) does not have. Said differently, culture is real only in its ongoing and varied use
Many of the concepts and phenomena associated with organizations are prone to continual change, where many notions of organizational culture suggest stability and homogeneity. This poses a question for those taking OC as a project
Used implicitly, the term conflates many alternate and sometimes incompatible notions of culture circulating today
People who work in organizations are smart and, to varying degrees, immune (if not antagonistic) to narratives that run differently to their experiences. There are many options available to managers to achieve outcomes with their people, manipulation of cultural phenomena is not one I would recommend
If managers want to instil an ethos (another complex term) one recommended approach is to model it … and do so consistently
There are many approaches to analysing organizations, and culture, in one of the commonly understood notions, is just one way. From my perspective the concept is far too abstract and incorporates many, often implicit concepts and theories for local application

This is a necessarily short sketch that omits, in its brevity, many other notions of the culture concept and purposely avoids the philosophical arguments accompanying them. There are, for those interested in a broader exploration, academic papers in the public domain that may satisfy that itch¹⁰.

Summary

The motivation for outlining the points above is to argue that culture is not only complex¹¹, but also operates at a high level of abstraction and is coupled with considerable ambiguity. This comes to light when one asks, ‘which notions of culture an organization is implicitly drawing on when it undertakes culture work?’ and ‘what outcomes are we aiming for when we try to manage culture?’, let alone asking ‘can it be managed?’ Additionally, the relationship between organizational culture as a managerial control over a team’s actions is widely refuted. These arguments, when left unaddressed, lead me to question the usefulness of the concept as an analytic for professionals within organizations and to recommend others do too.
Instead, I recommend organizations, at minimum, clarify what is meant by, and desired of, culture work, and to make explicit the related assumptions, using these to reflect on and structure future projects. Better still, engage with less abstract and more contextually relevant approaches.

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Footnotes

Hofstede, Geert (2001). Culture’s consequences: comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. P. 392 ↩︎
Lynn (1988). Organizational Culture: Origins and Weaknesses. Organization Studies ↩︎
Archer, M. S. (1996). Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory. Cambridge University Press ↩︎
Goodenough, W. H. (1957). Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics ↩︎
Schein E. H. & Schein P. (2016). Organizational Culture and Leadership ↩︎
Coopmans et. al (2014). Representation in scientific practice revisited ↩︎
Daston and Galison (2007). Objectivity ↩︎
De Laet, M. (2017). Personal Metrics: Methodological Considerations of a Praxiographical Approach ↩︎
However, see Hagger (2010). Ego Depletion and the Strength Model of Self-Control: A Meta-Analysis https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44689726_Ego_Depletion_and_the_Strength_Model_of_Self-Control_A_Meta-Analysis as one example ↩︎
See, for example, Glynn et. al. (2015). The Many Faces of Culture: Making Sense of 30 Years of Research on Culture in Organization Studies. https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/the-many-faces-of-culture-making-sense-of-30-years-of-research-on/ ↩︎
Lamb (2020). https://medium.com/curious/nature-the-most-complex-word-in-the-english-language-8992b983f0e3 ↩︎