The Symbolic Frame Understanding Culture

Assumptions of the Symbolic Frame Most of organizational life is ambiguous and uncertain; people create and use symbols to resolve the confusion. Activity and meaning are loosely coupled; events have multiple meanings because people interpret experience differently. What is important is not what happened but its meaning. People create symbols and use metaphor to resolve confusion, increase predictability, provide direction and anchor hope and faith. Myths, rituals, ceremonies and stories help people find meaning, purpose and passion Culture is the glue that holds an organization together and unites people around shared values and beliefs

Why Is It Important? Why Try to Understand It? Organizational Culture

Culture and Change in Organizations Problem: the challenge for leaders of organizations to guide successfully the growth or change processes in their organizations. Must understand culture

The Bottom Line Culture is Deep Culture is Broad Culture is Stable

So What Is It? Set of shared “mental models” that members hold and take for granted. What is the most stable and the most difficult to change. Sum total of all the shared, taken-for-grant assumptions that a group has learned throughout its history

Artifacts Visible organizational structures and processes (sometimes hard to decipher) Espoused Values Strategies, goals, philosophies mostly (espoused theories and justifications) Basic (Tacit) Underlying Assumptions Unconscious, taken-for- granted beliefs, perceptions,thoughts, and feelings (theories-in-use; ultimate source of values and behavior) Levels of Culture Schein, 1985

Evidence from Research Evidence of Faulty Change Strategies

More Evidence of Faulty Change Strategies... As many as three quarters of all reengineering, total quality management (TQM), strategic planning, and downsizing efforts have failed entirely or have created problems serious enough that survival of the organizations was threatened. Cameron and Quinn (1999). Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture

Why?... Most frequently cited reasons Incomplete understanding by leaders of their organization

Why Try To Understand It? It’s the way folks in organizations go about doing things

It is often an unconscious set of forces.

How We Often Become Blinded by Our Attempts to Understand Culture Dealing with complexity is not easy work. Understanding organizations is to understand their culture.