Organizational culture.

Abstract

The concept of organizational culture has received increasing attention in recent years both from academics and practitioners. This article presents the author's view of how culture shouM be defined and analyzed if it is to be of use in the field of organizational psychology. Other concepts are reviewed, a brief history is provided, and case materials are presented to illustrate how to analyze culture and how to think about culture change.To write a review article about the concept of organizational culture poses a dilemma because there is presently little agreement on what the concept does and should mean, how it should be observed and measured, how it relates to more traditional industrial and organizational psychology theories, and how it should be used in our efforts to help organizations. The popular use of the concept has further muddied the waters by hanging the label of"culture" on everything from common behavioral patterns to espoused new corporate values that senior management wishes to inculcate (e.g., Deal & Kennedy, 1982;Peters & Waterman, 1982).Serious students of organizational culture point out that each culture researcher develops explicit or implicit paradigms that bias not only the definitions of key concepts but the whole approach to the study of the phereason for this diversity of approaches is that culture, like role, lies at the intersection of several social sciences and reflects some of the biases of eachwspecifically, those of anthropology, sociology, social psychology, and organizational behavior.A complete review of the various paradigms and their implications is far beyond the scope of this article. Instead I will provide a brief historical overview leading to the major approaches currently in use and then describe in greater detail one paradigm, firmly anchored in social psychology and anthropology, that is somewhat integrative in that it allows one to position other paradigms in a common conceptual space.This line of thinking will push us conceptually into territory left insufficiently explored by such concepts as "climate," "norm," and "attitude." Many of the research methods of industrial/organizational psychology have weaknesses when applied to the concept of culture. If we are to take culture seriously, we must first adopt a more clinical and ethnographic approach to identify clearly the kinds of dimensions and variables that can usefully lend themselves to more precise empirical measurement and

Variation in caregiver perceptions of teamwork climate in labor and delivery units

“…24 Whereby climate can be captured by survey instruments, culture is better understood through ethnographic and anthropologic studies of the artifacts, 25,26 values, 27 and assumptions 26,28 that make an organization distinct. 29 Metaphorically, culture is a complex grid of interconnected highway systems, while climate is the traffic that maneuvers the streets.…”

“…10,11 Organizational culture also plays a major role in guiding individual behaviors and ultimately team performance. [12][13][14] Recently, JCAHO announced that hospitals will be required to measure culture annually, possibly in 2007 (www.jcaho.org). Aviation has measured culture for decades, initially with the Cockpit Management Attitudes Questionnaire (CMAQ) 15 and its successor the Flight Management Attitudes Questionnaire (FMAQ), 16 both of which are reliable, sensitive to change 17 and the attitudes elicited shown to predict performance.…”

Contradictory values in the process of organizational change: a case study

“…Besides values, this construct also includes other layers of organizational members' mental schemes, such as assumptions, norms, attitudes, etc., but values are often underlined as the central element of organizational culture's content (Schein & Schein, 2017;Janicijevic, 2013;Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayiv & Sanders, 1990). Unlike individual values, collective values as organizational culture element synchronously guide the behaviour of many organizational members, thus creating the effect of coordinated collective action, which is the foundation of the very organization.…”

“…Unlike individual values, collective values as organizational culture element synchronously guide the behaviour of many organizational members, thus creating the effect of coordinated collective action, which is the foundation of the very organization. Collective values emerge in the process of organization members' social interactions while solving the organization's problems (Schein & Schein, 2017). Social interaction process leads to social construction of reality, and thereof emerge the shared values of the members of social community (Berger & Luckman, 1966).…”

“…Extensive empirical research has documented that organizational culture affects strategy (Klein, Values, both individual and collective, are difficult to change because they are subconscious categories; it takes a long time to create them and they become part of individual's identity, so changing them is always unpleasant (Schein & Schein, 2017;Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2016, Janicijevic, 2013). This does not mean that they are unchangeable and they are not changing at all.…”