The focus of this week is on an organization's culture - the shared values, beliefs, meaning, understanding and sense making. According to Morgan, an organization's culture is "an ongoing, proactive process of reality construction which people jointly create and recreate." Three important questions raised by Morgan in analyzing an organization's culture are:
Pick one of the following organizations where you have access to its cultural characteristics. Examples would include:
If you pick an organization where you have worked, be sure to interview some of your coworkers to verify your own observations against the views of others.
If you are familiar with a local organization such as a police department, school district, nonprofit organization or library district, you may analyze its organization culture. Some of the sources might include the local newspaper, first hand experience, information from friends and neighbors, and the "look and feel" or the organization's web site.
The objective of this assignment is to take an organization and describe its culture and the impact of its culture on its performance, ability to change, and integration of minorities and women as leaders. After picking your organization, use the following questions as a springboard for analyzing its culture.
1. What are some of the organization's dominant values, norms, rituals, beliefs, language and ideology?
2. How do these cultural elements listed in the previous question reveal the shared meanings and understandings that contextualize organizational life?
3. Where do these shared meanings come from? Charismatic founder? The organization's origin or early history?
4. Are their competing subcultures within the organization?
5. Does the dominant culture impede or facilitate organizational change?
6. To what extent have recent or current leaders shaped the organization's culture?
7. How well does the dominant culture integrate women and minorities into leadership positions?
8. Why would a new employee in this organization fail if he or she did not understand the organization's culture?
Write a one page essay on the organization's culture. Use the questions above as a springboard for discussing the organization's culture. First describe as much as you know about the culture and then explain what impact it has on the behavior of the organization and its members. Submit your essay to the bulletin board under the topic "Organizations as cultures."
created by Dennis Hostetler, dhostet@siue.edu
last updated January 8, 2002