THE LEVELS OF CULTURE session 2 Course : J1653 – Organization Culture and Power Year : July 2014 THE LEVELS OF CULTURE session 2
Learning Outcomes After studying this chapter, the students should be able to : Know that culture can be analyzed at several different levels Identify cultures in organizations 3 Bina Nusantara University
THE LEVELS OF CULTURE The major levels of cultural analysis Visible organizational structures and processes (hard to decipher) Strategies, goals, philosophies (espoused justifications) Unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. (ultimate source of values and action) Artifacts Espoused beliefs and values Underlying assumptions Bina Nusantara University
Artifacts At the surface is the level of artifacts, which includes all the phenomena that one sees, hears, and feels when one encounters a new group with an unfamiliar culture. Artifacts include the visible products of the group, such as the architecture of its physical environment; its language; its technology and products; its artistic creations; its style, as embodied in clothing, manners of address, emotional displays, and myths and stories told about the organization; its published lists of values; its observable rituals and ceremonies; and so on. 5 Bina Nusantara University
Espoused Beliefs and Values All group learning ultimately reflects someone’s original beliefs and values, their sense of what ought to be, as distinct from what is. When a group is first created or when it faces a new task, issue, or problem, the first solution proposed to deal with it reflects some individual’s own assumptions about what is right or wrong, what will work or not work 6 Bina Nusantara University
Basic Underlying Assumptions Basic assumptions, in this sense, are different from what some anthropologists called “dominant value orientations” in that such dominant orientations reflect the preferred solution among several basic alternatives, but all the alternatives are still visible in the culture, and any given member of the culture could, from time to time, behave according to variant as well as dominant orientations. 7 Bina Nusantara University
CULTURES IN ORGANIZATIONS TWO CASE EXAMPLES : The Digital Equipment Corp. Ciba-Geigy 8 Bina Nusantara University
The Digital Equipment Corp. Artifacts: Encountering the Company Espoused Beliefs and Values Basic Assumptions: The DEC Paradigm 9 Bina Nusantara University
Ciba-Geigy Artifacts—Encountering Ciba-Geigy Espoused Beliefs and Values Basic Assumptions — The Ciba-Geigy Company Paradigm Bina Nusantara University