Organizational culture change through training and cultural immersion

Abstract

Addresses the need for leaders in organizations to deal with the complexities of intercultural relationships through the process of training and cultural immersion. Specifically, the focus of the research report is on the building of positive relationships and attitudes between young police constables, largely from an Anglo‐Celtic, white Australian background and people from an Australian Aboriginal community, called Cherbourg, in the state of Queensland. Presents the project as one small but successful organizational attempt to bring about organizational culture change. Discusses the difficulties and complexities of endeavouring to change attitudes which have been affected by contemporary, mainstream negative stereotypes of Aboriginal Australians. Documents the project’s curriculum innovation, evaluation by external university‐based consultants, analyses and reflections about organizational culture change. Concludes that people in other organizations may benefit from similar initiatives; that there is a lot more to be done and studied about bringing about organizational cultural changes in the Queensland Police Services and, indeed, other service organizations through training and cultural immersion innovations such as the Cherbourg Project.

The Unintended Consequences of Culture Interventions: A Study of Unexpected Outcomes

“…The first category of studies consists of those writers who adopt the view that culture is an organizational variable, which, akin to other variables, is subject to direct management control. This perspective is illustrated by the work of many functionalists, some of whose models of culture change have previously been discussed in this paper (for example Bate, 1994;Silverzweig and Allen, 1976;Wilkinson et al, 1996). Furthermore, this view of culture management is apparent in the arguments of early culture theorists who championed the purported links between strong cultural traits and organizational performance (for instance Ouchi, 1981;Peters and Waterman, 1982;Wilkins, 1984).…”

“…However, despite general agreement that cultural evolution occurs (for example, Ogbonna and Harris, 1998a), espoused approaches to culture interventions are more commonly revolutionary in nature (a small sample including: Bate, 1994;Bowman and Faulkner, 1997;Brown, 1995;Silverzweig and Allen, 1976;Wilkinson, Fogarty and Melville, 1996). A number of these models advocate a 'generalist' approach to culture intervention that simplifies culture management by basing the approach to culture management on a typology or taxonomy of organizational culture.…”

“…Alternatively, there are the more 'specialist' or 'targeted' culture change models, which espouse the adoption of focused means of culture change. An example of this approach is the study by Wilkinson, Fogarty and Melville (1996), which reports a culture change effort dominated by training methods designed to change values. However, the most common type of culture change models could be labelled the 'analytical' or 'gap' frameworks of culture change.…”

“…armed forces (Bodnar, 1999). An extensive range of national contexts have also been examined, including, for example, studies of Turkey (Herguner and Reeves, 2000), Australia (Wilkinson, Fogarty and Melville, 1996) and Russia (Fey et al, 1999).…”

The False Promise of Organizational Culture Change: A Case Study of Middle Managers in Grocery Retailing*

“…In many ways, the popularity and practical acceptance of this perspective is evidenced by the large number of organizations which are frequently reported to be undergoing planned cultural intervention (see IRS Employment Trends , 1997; Worrall et al, 2000). Proponents of this perspective have also offered several models to assist managers in their quest to achieve planned cultural change (for example, Silverzweig and Allen, 1976; Wilkinson et al, 1996).…”