Ch19

Organizational
Behavior, 9/E
Schermerhorn, Hunt, and
Osborn
Prepared by
Michael K. McCuddy
Valparaiso University

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Chapter 19 Study Questions
 What is organizational culture?
 How do you understand an organizational
culture?
 How can the organizational culture be
managed?
 How can you use organizational
development to improve the firm?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 19
2

Study Question 1: What is
organizational culture?
 Organizational culture.
– The system of shared actions, values, and
beliefs that develops within an organization
and guides the behavior of its members.
– Called corporate culture in the business
setting.
– No two organizational cultures are identical.

3

 External adaptation.
– Involves reaching goals and dealing with
outsiders regarding tasks to be accomplished,
methods used to achieve the goals, and
methods of coping with success and failure.
– Important aspects of external adaptation.
• Separating eternal forces based on importance.
• Developing ways to measure accomplishments.
• Creating explanations for not meeting goals.

4

 External adaptation involves answering important
goal-related questions regarding coping with
reality.
– What is the real mission?
– How do we contribute?
– What are our goals?
– How do we reach our goals?
– What external forces are important?
– How do we measure results?
– What do we do if specific targets are not met?
– How do we tell others how good we are?
– When do we quit?
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 Internal integration.
– Deals with the creation of a collective identity
and with finding ways of matching methods of
working and living together.
– Important aspects of working together.
• Deciding who is a member and who is not.
• Developing an understanding of acceptable and
unacceptable behavior.
• Separating friends from enemies.

6

 Internal integration involves answering important
questions associated with living together.
– What is our unique identity?
– How do we view the world?
– Who is a member?
– How do we allocate power, status, and authority?
– How do we communicate?
– What is the basis for friendship?

7

 Subculture.
– A group of individuals with a unique pattern
of values and philosophy that are not
inconsistent with the organization’s dominant
values and philosophy.
 Counterculture.
– A group of individuals with a pattern of values
and philosophy that outwardly reject the
surrounding culture.
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 Problems associated with subcultural divisions
within the larger culture.
– Subordinate groups are likely to form into a
counterculture pursuing self-interests.
– The firm may encounter extreme difficulty in coping
with broader cultural changes.
– Embracing natural divisions from the larger culture
may lead to difficulty in international operations.

9

 Taylor Cox’s five step program.
– Step 1: The organization should develop pluralism.
– Step 2: The organization should fully integrate its
structure.
– Step 3: The organization must integrate the informal
networks.
– Step 4: The organization should break the linkage
between naturally occurring group identity and
organizational identity.
– Step 5: The organization must actively work to
eliminate identity-based interpersonal conflict.
10

Study Question 2: How do you
understand an organizational culture?

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 Sagas.
– Heroic accounts of organizational accomplishments.
 Rites.
– Standardized and recurring activities that are used at
special times to influence organizational members.
 Rituals.
– Systems of rites.
 Cultural symbols.
– Any object, act, or event that serves to transmit
cultural meaning.
12


 Culture often specifies rules and roles.
– Rules.
• The various types of actions that are appropriate.

– Roles.
• Where individual members stand in the social
system.

13


 Shared values.
– Help turn routine activities into valuable and
important actions.
– Tie the organization to the important values of
society.
– May provide a very distinctive source of
competitive advantage.

14


 Characteristics of strong corporate
cultures.
– A widely shared real understanding of what
the firm stands for, often embodied in slogans.
– A concern for individuals over rules, policies,
procedures, and adherence to job duties.
– A recognition of heroes whose actions
illustrate the company’s shared philosophy
and concerns.

15

 Characteristics of strong corporate cultures
(cont.).
– A belief in ritual and ceremony as important to
members and to building a common identity.
– A well-understood sense of the informal rules
and expectations so that employees and
managers know what is expected of them.
– A belief that what employees and managers do
is important and that it is essential to share
information and ideas.
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 Organizational myths.
– Unproven and often unstated beliefs that are
accepted uncritically.
– Myths enable managers to redefine impossible
problems.
– Myths can facilitate experimentation and
creativity.
– Myths allow managers to govern.

17


 National culture influences.
– Widely held common assumptions may be
traced to the larger culture of the host society.
– National cultural values may become
embedded in expectations of organization
members.

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Study Question 3: How can the
organizational culture be managed?

 Strategies for managing corporate culture.
– Managers help modify observable culture,
shared values, and common assumptions
directly.
– Use of organizational development techniques
to modify specific elements of the culture.

19

 Why a well-developed management
philosophy is important.
– Establishes generally understood boundaries
on all members of the firm.
– Provides a consistent way for approaching
new and novel situations.
– Helps hold individuals together by showing
them a known path to success.

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 Strategies for building, reinforcing, and changing
organizational culture.
– Directly modifying the visible aspects of culture.
– Changing the lessons to be drawn from common
stories.
– Setting the tone for a culture and for cultural change.
– Fostering a culture that addresses questions of external
adaptation and internal integration.

21

 Mistakes that managers can make in building,
reinforcing, and changing culture.
– Trying to change people’s values from the top
down:
• While keeping the ways in which the organization
operates the same.
• Without recognizing the importance of individuals.
– Attempting to revitalize an organization by
dictating major changes and ignoring shared
values.
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Study Question 4: How can you use
organization development to improve the firm?

 Organization development (OD).
– The application of behavioral science
knowledge in a long-range effort to improve
an organization’s ability to cope with change
in its external environment and to increase its
internal problem-solving capabilities.

23


 Organizational development.
– Designed to work on both issues of external
adaptation and internal integration.
– Used to improve organizational performance.
– Seeks to achieve change so the organization’s
members maintain the culture and longer-run
organizational effectiveness.

24

 Underlying assumptions of OD.
– Individual level.
• Respect for people and their capabilities.
– Group level.
• Belief that groups can be good for both people and
organizations.
– Organizational level.
• Respect for the complexity of an organization as a
system of interdependent parts.
25


 Organization development goals.
– Outcome goals.
• Mainly deal with issues of external adaptation.

– Process goals.
• Mainly deal with issues of internal integration.

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 In pursuing outcome and process goals, OD helps
by:
– Creating an open problem solving climate.
– Supplementing formal authority with knowledge and
competence.
– Moving decision making where relevant information
is available.
– Building trust and maximizing collaboration.
– Increasing the sense of organizational ownership.
– Allowing people to exercise self-direction and self-
control.
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 Action research.
– The process of systematically collecting data
on an organization, feeding it back to the
members for action planning, and evaluating
results by collecting and reflecting on more
data after the planned actions have been taken.

28


29


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 Organizationwide OD interventions.
– Survey feedback.
• Collection and feedback of data to organization
members for action planning purposes.
– Confrontation meetings.
• Activities for quickly determining how an
organization can be improved and taking initial
actions for betterment.

31


 Organizationwide OD interventions
(cont.).
– Structural redesign.
• Realigning the organization’s structure or major
subsystems.
– Collateral organization.
• Using representative organizational members in
periodic small group problem-solving sessions.

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 Group and intergroup OD interventions.
– Team building.
• Activities to improve the functioning of a group.
– Process consultation.
• Activities to improve the functioning of key group
processes.
– Intergroup team building.
• Activities to improve the functioning or two or
more groups.

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 Individual OD interventions.
– Role negotiation.
• Clarifying expectations in working relationships.
– Job redesign.
• Creating long-term congruence between individual
goals and organizational career opportunities.
– Career planning.
• Structured opportunities for individuals to work
with managers or staff experts on career issues.

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