Organizational culture is difficult to see but profoundly shapes how an organization functions. It is comprised of artifacts like symbols, behaviors, beliefs, assumptions, and values. These elements can be understood through models that classify them at surface, deeper, and core levels. Culture provides meaning and norms that guide employee actions and priorities. It is shaped by societal influences, the founder's impact, and industry demands. Cultures tend to perpetuate through hiring, socializing, and rewarding employees who uphold shared behaviors and removing those who deviate.

1. The Organizational Culture
Perspective
(J. Steven Ott)

2. Organizational Culture Perspective
Organizational culture is like air.
It cannot be touched, felt or seen.

3. The Essence and Functions of
Organizational Culture

4. 11. Symbols
Signs that connote meanings greater than themselves and express
much more than their intrinsic content. (Example: word, phrase,
policy, logo, flag, building, office, seating arrangement, etc.)

5. 2. Artifacts
Material and nonmaterial
objects and patterns that
intentionally or unintentionally
communicate information
about the organization’s
technology, beliefs, values,
assumptions and ways of doing
things. (Example: annual
reports, internal memos,
brochures, jargon, acronyms,
metaphors, stories, jokes,
myths, heroes, ceremonies and
celebrations)
Lee Iacocca

6. 3. Patterns of Behavior
Routinized activities which cause members to continue to do things, such
as rites, rituals, and behavioral norms, which through repetition
communicate information about the organization’s technology, beliefs,
values, assumptions and ways of doing things. (Example: management
practices as holding staff meetings, training, conducting performance
reviews, etc.)

7. 4. Beliefs and Values
Hard
Quality Work
Commitment
Beliefs are consciously held, cognitive (mental) views about truth and
reality. Values are conscious, affective (emotion-laden) desires or wants.
(Example: Ethical and moral codes, ideologies)

8. 5. Basic Underlying Assumptions
Lee Iacocca
A Transformational Leader
Comprehensive, potent, but out-of-conscious system of beliefs,
perceptions and values. (Example: view of customers, competitors,
openness to technology)

9. Organizational Culture:
Concepts, Definitions and a
Typology

10. Culture is a Concept not a Thing
It is created in peoples’ minds – it must be conjured up, defined and refined.
There is no final authoritative source or experiment to settle disagreements
about it is and what comprises it.

11. Culture is not something an Organization has….
Culture is something an Organization is.

12. Culture as a Puzzle
Organizational Culture is not just another piece of the puzzle, it is
the puzzle. (Pacanowsky & O’Donnell-Trijillo, 1983)

13. Culture is not just Structural Elements
It is also a DYNAMIC process – a social construction that is
undergoing continual reconstruction.

14. A Typology Level 1A
Artifacts
Schein’s three level
model provides the Level 1 B
most useful TYPOLOGY Patterns of
Behavior
published to date for
classifying elements of
Organizational Culture Level 2:
into usable groupings. Values
Separating Level 1 into
Level 1A (artifacts) and
Level 1B (patterns of
behavior) appears to Level 3:
Basic Assumptions
make it even more
useful.

15. A Functional Definition for Culture..
Social force that
controls patterns of
organizational
behavior by shaping
members’ cognitions
and perceptions of
meanings and
realities, providing
affective energy for
mobilization, and
identifying who
belongs and who
does not.

16. Culture provides shared patterns of cognitive
interpretations or perceptions, so team members
know how they are expected to act and think.

17. Culture provides shared patterns of affect, an
emotional sense of involvement and commitment to
organizational values and moral codes, so team
members know what they are expected to value and
how they are expected to think.

18. Culture defines and maintains boundaries,
allowing identification of members and non-
members.

19. Culture functions as an organizational control
system, prescribing and prohibiting certain
behaviors.

20. Origins, Development, and
Perpetuation of
Organizational Culture

21. Origins or Sources of Organizational Culture
Broader
Societal The Impacts
Culture of
Founder(s)
Nature of the
Business or
Business
Environment
Every organizational culture is the unique result of a composite blending of these
three sources. They are not independent of each other.

22. Organizational
Cultures tend to be
quite STABLE, they
do not remain
STATIC

23. Organizational Cultures have DEEP ROOTS
.. and they develop
over long periods of
time through
complex individual
and group
mechanisms.

24. How Culture Tends to Perpetuate Itself
1. Pre-selection and
hiring of new
members
3. Removal of
2. Socialization of CULTURE Members who
Members
Deviate
6. CULTURAL Vijay 4. BEHAVIOR
COMMUNICATIONS
Sathe’s Six
Step Model
5. JUSTIFICATION OF BEHAVIOR