The document discusses why organizational culture is difficult to change. It argues that an organization and its culture are both environments that interact and influence each other. Modifying one has the potential to affect the other significantly. An organization's structures facilitate some behaviors and inhibit others, while a culture reinforces some intentions and resists others. The culture generally affects the organization more than the organization affects the culture. For an organization to change its culture, it needs to change the incentives and security it provides to key actors in order to encourage new behaviors and a recomposition of the organization that better achieves its mission.

1. ©2016 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
WHY ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IS HARD TO CHANGE
Both culture and organization are environments.
The importance of recognizing "environment" is in recognizing a prevailing set of co-present, persistent,
interacting conditions that foster certain kinds of events, outcomes and transformations more readily
than others.
For that reason, the coexistence of a culture and an organization is an interaction of the two
environments. By definition, then, modifying either one of them has the potential to affect the other in
a significant way.
The reaction of the affected environment is a factor in any probable future state. it may be supportive,
benign, or suppressive of the modification to the affecting environment, according to how strong it is.
Although the specific type and intensity of reaction is not necessarily predetermined,, there is still a
"reasonable expectation" that may be developed or expected case-by-case, along the lines of
“chemistry”. That is, the reaction occurs along the lines of regular general principles of interaction
among elements.
KEY ELEMENTS
First, an organization is an environment made of structures.
Second, a culture is an environment made of behaviors.
The structures represent the opportunity for the behaviors to be effective at something. What that
"something" is may change from time to time.
The behaviors represent the probability of the structures being supportive in some way. What that
"way" is may change from time to time.
The main problem to solve is the relationship of the structures to the behaviors.
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2. ©2016 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
[adapted from designapplause.com]
KEY INTERACTIONS
The structural environment facilitates some behaviors and inhibits others. Most often, this means that
the organization is a permitted accessible infrastructure within which activity is expected.
The behavioral environment reinforces some intentions and resists some others. Most often, this means
that the culture is explicitly agreed relationships within which intentions are accommodated.
Organization generally acts on a culture by staging behaviors. The consequence it desires of that is the
development of production and performance.
 Achievement is a goal of organization.
 One of the key factors of productive achievement is co-operation.
 Behaving parties are invested in co-operations, sometimes mutually and sometimes not.
 There are many variants of co-operation. They include, among other types, symbiosis,
client/provider, host/guest, and agent/broker.

3. ©2016 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
Culture generally acts on an organization by refining and customizing structures. The consequence it
desires of that is patterns of occupation and utilization.
 Confidence is a goal of culture.
 One of the key factors of confident occupation is forms of security.
 Parties solicit security, sometimes competitively and sometimes not.
 There are many variants of security. They include, among other things, authority, rules,
ownership, protection, abundance, priority, tolerance, and reward.
GENERAL EFFECTS
This next statement is not supported with evidence here, but what follows it addresses the reason why
we have brought up the topic in the first place and bulleted the factors above.
Knowing that numerous factors of organization and culture may combine and recombine in a huge
number of different ways, we still observe that any combination having staying power also has a
gyroscopic inertia, with momentum maintaining its orientation, not merely an inertia of stability.
[Learnersdictionary.com] [The World of Motorcycles, Orbis Publishing, London]
We can attribute the inertia to the organization, while we can attribute that momentum mainly to the
culture.
This claim asserts that a culture "affects" organization more than an organization "affects" culture. This
discussion asserts, further, that any historical survey will bear that out.

4. ©2016 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
SPECIAL EFFECTS
At the same time there are important exceptions to recognize – where an organization is used, in effect,
to re-produce or transmit a desired culture. Two important limitations on that notion are that such
transmission may not equal "receipt" (successful adoption), and that receipt may not equal
"performance" (viability or strength).
If the organization is used as a filter or a template, the use is prescriptive. This indicates that the key
issue of proposing culture is not the particular organization but instead is the influence of management.
FRAMING THE PROBLEM
Given the distinctions above, the concept of the Culture of an Organization is not a paradox, a
confusion, or a redundancy. It simply means that we continue to point at "an organization" as a defined
instance of multiple co-located conditions. – a structural environment within which there is a behavioral
environment.
But we must be fully aware that when we say "organization" we are talking about a composed
environment, not a confining container. An organization is a composition with a mission.
This clarifies the subject at hand: why would an organization want “its” culture to change?
The precise presumption must be that a culture in question is affecting the ability of the organization to
compose itself in a way that is beneficial to pursuing the organization’s mission of “achievement”.
CHANGE THE ORGANIZATION
A prime objective of an organization is to constantly regenerate its equilibrium in its role as an enabling
infrastructure for action.
We identified investors in cooperation as the cohesive force within the composition of the organization.
Those investments carry the current priorities of those actors.
Before the organization adopts modifications, it must map any proposed or encountered alterations to
the priorities of the invested actors. In that way it encourages coherence of their various activity.
The management of the organization enforces the regeneration of equilibrium.
 Organizational management stresses continuity of function through form.
 Continuity can be time-bound by prior agreement or real-time decision.

5. ©2016 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
CHANGE THE CULTURE
A prime objective of a culture is to reliably propagate opportunities that promote certain types of
outcomes for the actors in the culture.
Those outcomes are desired by the organization's actors as opportunities that are identified with
secured involvement.
Before the culture retains modifications, it must align the modifications as opportunities (by plan or
coincidence) with the actors' desire for security. The modifications must represent credible values.
Management fosters a culture by creating confidence through providing compatible security to the key
actors in the culture who will pursue the opportunities.
 Culture is deliberately produced by management as a mechanism for reinforcing values.
 Reinforcement can be actual or perceived.
The consequence of the above managed results is two questions. They are equally important questions
but there is some debate as to whether one is a prerequisite consideration to the other.
One, how will the organization reward actors? And two, what values are offered to the actors to
represent the organization?
Both questions point at the same idea: change of the culture of an organization requires changing the
actors.
This discussion proceeds from here with the assumption that reward precedes values, but only when
there is low choice of alternative organizations for the actors.
TYPES OF CHANGES TO THE CULTURE
Proposed changes prescribe or imply both values and rewards. These are often measured by individuals
for their credibility, in ways raging from intuition to negotiation. In the measurement, there is also a
logic based in the differences between types of change.
Under conditions of less choice of organizations, the basic proposition of change for an individual is
about translation (and its rewards), while the corporate entity of the organization sees the change as a
transformation.
Under conditions of greater choice of organizations, the basic proposition of change for an individual is
about transition (and its rewards), while the corporate entity of the organization sees the change as a
transposition.

6. ©2016 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
Top-down, those differences progress from the most impersonal or abstract impact on behaviors, to the
most personal and concrete. For the individual, each one begs the question, “why should I?”
 translation – a change representing (effectiveness, accountability)
 transformation – a change to ( improvement, competency)
 transmission – a change for (leverage, compatibility)
 transition – a change within (responsibility, acceptance)
 transposition – a change enabling (inclusion, autonomy)
CHOICE OF ENVIRONMENT
Put most simply, the above argues that, by default, organizations are chosen by individuals in terms of
values, but activity within the organization (culture) is chosen by individuals in terms of rewards.
In asking why an organization would want its culture to change, we can describe the matter of choice as
a case in which the baseline narrative of resistance by individuals is:
 current rewards do not sufficiently encourage…
 the orientation (co-ordination) of activities…
 to sufficiently target the outcomes that are…

7. ©2016 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
 attractive as the critical personal investments needed for…
 making the differences that support the organization’s mission.
In that case, the most prominent mechanisms of change acceptance will be ones that encourage
personal investment in the outcomes.
 Parties solicit security, sometimes competitively and sometimes not.
 There are many variants of security. They include, among other things, authority, rules,
ownership, protection, abundance, priority and compensation.
Greater levels of security – through managing requests, challenges and risks – make the proposed future
state environments more realistic and easier to adopt.
The least likely to succeed will be changes where anticipated personal investment in the outcomes is
not overtly linked to a reasonable expectation of desirable security.
Individuals are likely to expect the combination of various kinds of security to be formed tangibly into
what is finally perceived as the organization.
In attempting to change the culture, influencing the actors has the objective of encouraging a
re-composition of the organization to produce with effectiveness from the culture. The re-composition
comprises the actors’ investments in cooperation – the “chemistry” producing reactions, which are the
energy that produces the angular momentum of the company’s orientation.
POSTSCRIPT
Desire Paths: The term desire line is found in the book Universal Principles of Design which describes
the term as 'Traces or use or wear that indicate preferred methods of interaction with an object or
environment (also known as Desire Path).
The difference between inertia and momentum: Mass is a fundamental measure of inertia; it measures
the resistance of the body to changes in its motion. Thus, inertia is resistance to motion changes.
Whereas, momentum is mass in motion, and, is defined as the mass times the velocity.
- USA Today http://usat.ly/1XQbanv