In which I make hesitant steps to grapple with the concept of organisational culture. I want to conclude that there is no such thing as organisational culture. Can I succeed?
Although I started out back in the 90s believing in the construct of company culture as a way of explaining common themes of behaviour in organisations, now I am not so sure.
It seems to me that many people in an organisation interact with one another and these myriad interactions make up the organisation. Tools, buildings, assets and property are utilised in the service of these interactions. These interactions are characterised by themes that are familiar, perhaps repetitive and perhaps even stuck, such as great new ideas coming from brainstorming meetings, or consistent bagging of management – these are both examples of themes emerging from multiple interactions.
The patterns emerging from the myriad interactions that take place in organisations have the quality of there being large numbers of small perturbations in the organisation and small numbers of large perturbations. What I mean by this is that over the many interactions that occur, there are lots that have small implications for the company and for the relationships between the people – these are the normal kind of interactions that might result in comradeship, antagonism, or in enabling normal work to be done. From time to time, there will be (relatively rare) occasions when certain interactions stir up a widespread response, such as New Zealand’s current anti-smacking law, by which the theme of the desirability of smacking children as part of discipline has been questioned in a national referendum. Such widespread take up of themes is relatively rare, however.
This phenomenon of large numbers of small perturbations and small numbers of large perturbations ilustrates a defining quality of complexity. (Note that elsewhere I have argued that organisations are not systems, not even complex systems). You could look at it this way – imagine a landscape with lots of small hills and a few large mountains. That is the kind of pattern you see in the disturbances and ripples of the impact of many interactions between people in an organisation over time.
Even the most powerful people such as CEOs are interacting with a relatively small number of other people. Some of those interactions have major impacts, perhaps through greater symbolic meaning such as on a road show or in an important meeting with the Board, management team or a crucial customer, while a much greater number of them have "ordinary" impact. Not every interaction results in revolutionary insight, most result in a pattern of sensemaking amongst those involved.
These population-wide patterns that emerge from many interactions, are, I think, what have typically been referred to as company culture. The company is made up of the members interacting in "local" ways, by which I mean that they interact with a relatively small number of others, and there is no overall blueprint or plan for those myriad interactions. At the same time as the members make up the organisation, so the organisation as a group collective influences the make up of the group.
Company culture is a term that refers to the impact that the company has on the individuals concerned. I have increasingly come to doubt whether there is such a thing as company culture. You may not be convinced yet and I will return to this theme in future posts. Perhaps I am just concerned about the idea that corporate culture is something (i.e. is a physical "thing" or something with properties similar to a physical thing) that can be managed in the service of the most powerful managers.
If culture is a phenomenon that emerges from myriad interactions amongst organisational members, then it cannot be managed from outside as a whole. Instead, the top managers can only influence culture from within their own participation in interactions with others. Senior managers cannot design the culture that they want, nor can they engage other specialists to design the desired culture. They can only influence culture through their interactions with others.
No wonder leaders say that communication is so important.
Not an expert like you yet as a longtime journalist I can’t help but feel that organization’s do have distinctive personalities / cultures. Some behaviors are rewarded, reinforced – others are penalized. Like any group where people are in contact much of the time, over time, they reinforce certain ways of thinking and being – not all but some.
In the books, The Big Sort and Going to Extremes authors cite research showing that, counterintuitively, in some situations, to stay a part of a partisan group, members take on extreme views within it, making the view of the group as a whole more extreme in some ways.
This may hold true for other organizations http://www.thebigsort.com/
~ another fan of this blog
Comment by Kare Anderson — August 17, 2009 @ 2:21 am
Thanks for this – it is a fascinating question, and I’m hesitant to come out against Schein, et al. But increasingly, as larger firms fail to “integrate cultures” through M&A and external affiliations create alternate attractors for individuals when the “internal culture” is found wanting; I am wondering if the focus on organizational culture is misguided and looking at the wrong unit of analysis. Dynamic networks, shifting relationships, seem to be more determinant in understanding individual and group behaviors.
Comment by John Bordeaux — August 17, 2009 @ 2:53 am
Stephen, I’m getting a really interesting visual interpretation of your idea that organisations aren’t systems. If your meaning is how I’ve interpreted it – that they aren’t systems YET, and can’t ever consider themselves as an isolated system if they are to stay alive – then it’s a lovely illustration of why organisational culture doesn’t actually exist, and how critical it is to understand internal dynamics and relationships and all the soft stuff that is now becoming not-so-soft…
Comment by Rachael West — August 17, 2009 @ 3:19 am
Hi, if you don’t see an organization as a complex system, how do you see it, then?
Comment by Marcelo — August 17, 2009 @ 5:08 am
I don’t think that it follows that because organisational culture is changeable, complex, and hard to manage that therefore it doesn’t exist. Things like “art” or “humour” or “love” are changeable and hard to define, but they still exist. Attempts to manipulate them often go wrong – using “art” to sell other things might end up turning it into an advertising cliche, trying to enforce “humour” becomes sinister, etc. That doesn’t mean we can’t tell the difference between “art” and “advertising” most of the time, just that some cases sit on the border and confuse us. So most organisations can be described as having a dominant “culture” at any given time because the pace of change is slow, but for some the dominant culture will be changing rapidly – perhaps deliberately to keep everyone on their toes. Managers in oganisations where the culture is fairly stable can probably issue directives and get fairly predictable results. The difficult bit is spotting when the old cultural stability is tipping over into a phase of uncertainty and the directives won’t work as expected. That’s why Dave Snowden of Cognitive Edge advocates a “light touch” approach – avoid too many diktats, but give a gentle steer or prod now and then if things seem to be drifting too far in one direction.
Comment by Fran — August 17, 2009 @ 6:05 am
I share your concern about giving managers the impression that culture can be managed.
However, I think that stories play a key role in constituting an organizational culture, and in how cultures involve. (I do believe that there is value to the concept of an organization’s culture.)
I wrote a bit more in response to your post, over at my blog; if you’d like, I’d welcome you over for a visit.
http://managementwisdom.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/08/organizational-culture-emerges-from-interactions.html
Comment by Sandy Piderit — August 17, 2009 @ 9:15 am
Does organizational culture exist? A view from the road less travelled…
In his latest blog post, Stephen Billing asks if there is such a thing as organizational culture. This is another of Billing’s interesting provocations, arising from his complex responsive process view of organizations (as advocated by Ralph Stacey a…
Trackback by informal coalitions — August 17, 2009 @ 10:18 am
Organizational culture which is related significantly with “action and performance”, is the outcome of interaction between “nature” and “nurture” in an organization. By the “nature” means to their certain explicit knowledge designated as their “Organizational DNA”. On the other side, “nurture” in an organization related with the implementation of their “Strategic and Action plan”.
To get more brief insight about “Enterprise DNA” and “Strategic and Action Plan” let me welcome you at (sign-in or sign-up needed) :
http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/enterprise-knowledge – ENTERPRISE KNOWLEDGE INFRASTRUCTURE (EKI) – THE CURRENT GLOBAL ISSUE IN KM : HELP US TO HELP YOU IN PRACTISING EKI and especially the Attachment : ENTERPRISE KNOWLEDGE INFRASTRUCTURE (EKI) .pdf,
On Complex System, we should differentiate between human and non human complex system. Human complex system highly related with their “action and performance” because they are already within Knowledge to Wisdom domain. Non human complex system, even among smart animal, they are still stuck in pre Knowledge domain or still in Data-Information domain
Comment by Md Santo — August 17, 2009 @ 2:21 pm
I fear this is one of those classic ‘nature vs nurture’ arguments which can never be resolved and in which any attempt to promote one side at the expense of the other both misses the point and only makes things worse.
If we expand the concept of ‘organisation’ to the scale of a region or nation, it’s immediately evident that there _is_ such a thing as culture. Some aspects remain relatively stable – the ‘organisational DNA’, to quote a previous commenter – but each of these can be emphasised or deemphasised, to change the impacts and effects of that nominal defined culture.
What is also clear is that leaders can have a major influence on this ‘nurture’-adjustment of culture. Look at influential politicians such as Kennedy or Reagan or Obama in the US, Thatcher in Britain or Howard in Australia, epitomising particular human traits that perhaps had little to do with their own real characters but heightened national traits and tendencies to hope and inclusiveness in some cases, self-centredness and bigotry in others. ‘Influence’ here is not just in the person-to-person sense described in your post, but is often something much more subtle and pervasive: in musical terms we would call it timbre and tonality, rather than the specific tempo or score.
So yes, whilst I would agree that culture is not something that can be ‘managed’ in the classic business sense of edict and ‘control’, personal behaviour and example certainly _do_ play a key role in influencing culture – and this applies in _every_ domain and direction within the enterprise, bottom-up and sideways-in as well as top-down. Being aware of the impacts of behaviour and example create choices to ‘do things differently’: in that sense, culture _can_ be ‘managed’, though the way we do so is more emergent – as you say – rather than classic ‘control’.
The same applies to business metrics, and to criteria for appraisals, hiring, firing, bonuses and much else besides within the organisation: each of these reflects cultural assumptions, and emphasises and/or deemphasises specific behaviours and interactions. So again, we need to become more aware of what these impacts are, and the psychological, social and other mechanisms through those impacts occur in practice. Only then do we start to have choices about culture.
One of the key themes I look at in my own work is the organisation’s cultural concept of power. The physics definition of ‘power’ is ‘the ability to do work’; most social definitions – especially in large organisations – are closer to ‘the ability to _avoid_ work’. Understanding the trade-offs and dysfunctionalities, and what to do about them, is core to co-creating a culture that works for all its stakeholders. More info on that at http://sempermetrics.com , if that’s of interest.
But yes, an important question, an important topic – and as you say, nothing like as simple as it may seem at first sight.
Comment by Tom Graves — August 17, 2009 @ 9:18 pm
[...] Stephen Billing’s Blog » Is There Such a Thing as Organisational Culture? via David Gurteen (tags: organisations od culture change changemanagement) [...]
Pingback by FutureGov » Useful links » links for 2009-08-17 — August 18, 2009 @ 1:04 am
Kare, I agree that there is a certain indefinable something that enables us to recognise our organisation. This is often referred to as culture, so it’s not easy to immediately agree with someone saying there is no such thing as culture.
I think that defining core competencies is another attempt to articulate what this “indefinable something” is. Core competencies in New Zealand seem to lead inexorably to Lominger’s 67 generic competencies and the generic descriptions you end up with seem woefully inadequate for this. As do aVI – a Values Inventory, which has one hundred and something different values identified.
The question is, what is that something that we recognise as the organisation? When we call it a personality we are giving the organisation the qualities of a human being. And yet an organisation is not made of flesh and blood like a human being. Rather it is a whole lot of people with different intentions, all interacting over time. I want to question whether or not it is actually culture that gives this very subtle yet recognisable quality of the patterns that emerge from the myriad interactions of those involved in the organisation over time.
Comment by Stephen — September 3, 2009 @ 1:16 am
John Bordeaux, i am likewise hesitant to come out against heavyweights like Schein. So we have to keep taking these ideas, working with them and developing them in the light of our experience and connecting them with other things we learn from other people.
It sounds like we are both questioning “culture”. Schein’s own thinking about culture has evolved since he first saw three levels of culture – basic assumptions, artefacts and espoused values. So should ours.
Comment by Stephen — September 3, 2009 @ 1:28 am
Rachael, I was most intrigued by your suggestion that organisations are not systems “yet”. This sounds like organisations are in the process of becoming systems, and that isn’t what I was getting at.
It sounds like you had something in mind when you wrote this comment, and I’m not sure what it was. I don’t think organisations are systems, and I don’t think they are becoming systems. The reason organisations are not systems, is because systems don’t have any place for humans as part of the system – rather, systems have parts in service of the whole – but organisations are comprised of humans in relationship with each other and they have human consciousness and choice, which are not part of any systems thinking.
Comment by Stephen — September 3, 2009 @ 1:36 am
Hi Marcelo,
You ask a very valid question – I am critical of systems thinking, so what do I in fact think organisations are, if I don’t think they are complex systems?
I am happy to refer you to the very first post I ever made on my blog “What is an organisation?” in which I attempted to answer this question.
http://www.changingorganisations.com/2008/08/what-is-an-organisation/
Cheers, Stephen
Comment by Stephen — September 3, 2009 @ 1:39 am
Ha ha ha, you made me smile Fran – with your suggestion that perhaps I am saying that because organisations are changeable, complex, and hard to manage that they do not exist.
Reminds me of being a child, wishing away the bully on bus at school. I used to get quite creative at avoiding catching the bus!
From that I learnt that you can’t wish away your problems.
I’m not saying either that culture is so fast moving or changeable that we can’t grab hold of it, compared to some cultures that are slower moving. To me, that’s like attributing physical Newtonian characteristics of velocity and direction to an abstraction that doesn’t exist in the physical world.
I guess I’m just wondering how helpful it is to have this concept of “culture” that exists on a different level from the humans involved, that is created by them and at the same time acts back on them.
This concept makes it sound like there is an actual thing called “culture” that you can manage if you are clever enough, perhaps by a “light touch”.
But I am wondering if this is so, and I suspect not. Still working on how to explain it!
Comment by Stephen — September 3, 2009 @ 1:48 am
Hi Sandy,
With regard to your affiliation with story, I agree that narrative is one important way that people interact with each other. Further, narrative is undervalued in managerial discourse.
I think narrative or stories though, are inseparable from the people telling them in specific circumstances in specific organisations.
So, it is tempting to think that as a manager you can manage the stories and so manage the culture.
I am not inclined to this view, but am willing to listen to attempts to persuade me otherwise.
Comment by Stephen — September 3, 2009 @ 2:06 am
Hi MD Santo, you raise an interesting question about whether there can be such a thing as human systems and non-human systems.
I think not.
Systems thinking was developed to explain a non-human world. Then we tried to adapt it to explain a human world (even though the orginator of systems thinking, Kant, warned us against doing this).
So I suspect that any thinking about a human systems theory would be, like soft systems theory, critical systems, emancipatory systems, postmodern systems, interpretive systems, system dynamics, living systems, autopoiesis, or complex systems are always going to be struggling to shoe horn a view of human consciousness into a theory that was not designed for dealing with social phenomena.
Very clever thinkers have been involved in attempting to adjust systems thinking for sociological situations, and I do not think this track has led to the breakthrough that was hoped for.
Comment by Stephen — September 3, 2009 @ 2:14 am
Hi Tom (Graves)
Thanks for your interesting post. It is true that I have given a rather individualist-sounding explanation of influence, which is not what you’d expect from one so oriented in social thinking as myself. The reason it sounds individualistic is that I am saying that even at a roadshow speaking to thousands of employees, a leader can only influence in a very strong way, a relatively small group of people – the executive team and perhaps some other key stakeholders.
At the roadshow, the CEO makes a grand gesture, but cannot control how that gesture will be taken up by the multitude of employees. How it is taken up will be influenced by their peer group and their supervisors.
So I am not pointing to an individualist view of influence, but rather to how the spheres of influence are limited in terms of how much the leader can control or greatly influence hundreds or thousands of others.
I am not sure how your musical analogy of timbre and tone applies and would love to hear more of your thoughts on this.
As for power, I agree that it is important. To me power is a relational thing, that fluctuates and is based on the need the parties have for each other. If I need you more, you have more power over me. But my need for you can change – hence negotiating strategies to reduce the appearance of my need for you and to increase the appearance of your need for me.
This is quite different from “ability to do work”.
Once again Tom, thanks for your interesting and stimulating post.
Comment by Stephen — September 3, 2009 @ 2:26 am
I share your thoughts. Found a link to IT culture in developing country and how managers decisions could impact Org Culture.
http://blog.rajesh.co.in/2009/04/organisational-culture-case-study-perot.html
Comment by siddhant — June 30, 2010 @ 2:20 am
[...] fewer points of common reference exist. Leadership and management consultants often contend a common organizational culture pulls teams together, even though distributed teams frequently span national, regional, and global [...]
Pingback by Social Flow and the Paradox of Exception Handling in ACM « Skilful Minds — September 29, 2011 @ 11:27 am
You have a really useful weblog I have been previously right here reading approximately a little while previously. I’m a newbie plus your success is incredibly much a great ideas for me personally. Keep up the good post!
Comment by organizational culture — January 3, 2012 @ 12:01 pm