1. Cultural Approaches
Chapter 5

5. Culture (Schein)
“Pattern of basic assumptions-invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration-that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems” (textbook, p. 88)

6. Culture
Both the ideology of a society and the actual, concrete practices that occur in a society.
Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance which he himself has spun. Culture is the web.
The totality of socially transmitted and constructed behavior patterns, arts, beliefs , institutional habits, & all other products of human work and thought characteristics of a community or population.

7. Culture
Culture consists of the abstract values, beliefs, practices, & perceptions that lie behind people’s behavior.
They are often shared by members of a society, & when acted on produce behavior considered acceptable by the community.

8. Overview Something an organization has Something an organization is
Something an organization does
Something that impacts organizational and individual identity
An org. is greater than the things that make it up!!!!

9. Strong cultures (Deal and Kennedy)
Prescriptive Approach: Seek to Explain What’s Wrong & Prescribe a Solution
Strong cultures (Deal and Kennedy)
Values
Beliefs
Heroes
Exemplify an org.’s values
Rites and rituals
Ceremonies
Cultural network
Communication system through which cultural values are instituted and inforced

10. Excellent Cultures-Themes (Peter & Waterman) A bias for action
Prescriptive Approach: Seek to Explain What’s Wrong & Prescribe a Solution
Excellent Cultures-Themes (Peter & Waterman)
A bias for action
Close relations to the customer
Autonomy and entrepreneurship
Productivity through people
Hands on, value-driven
Stick to the knitting
Simple form, lean staff
Simultaneous loose-tight properties

11. Descriptive Approach: Seek to Describe & Understand
Individuals make sense of their world through their communicative behaviors
Seek to describe an organization’s unique sense of place
Distinction b/t prescriptive and descriptive
Culture is complicated
Culture is emergent-socially constructed
Culture is not unitary
co-cultures w/in org.
Cultural penetration (slices)
Culture is not static

12. Schein’s Model of Organizational Culture
Org. culture is complex
Group phenomenon
Communication is important in developing, maintaining, and displaying culture
Pattern of basic assumptions
Often ambiguous
Culture is emergent and developmental

13. Scheins’s Levels of Culture
Level I: Behaviors and artifacts
Manifestations of the culture
Markers such as communicative behavior, objects, things
Level II: Values
Preferences of what ought to happen
Level III: Basic assumptions
Core beliefs/world views

14. Methods of Inquiry
Object of inquiry should drive method of assessment (refer to the reading by Burke posted on the additional reading page)
Empirically, traditional research in organizations has been quantitative
Qualitative research is also useful in getting at changing nature of culture
Ethnography, Observation, & Interviews
For consultants, this is often the first step of a Communication Audit in an organization

15. Check it out! Case in Point-Red Sox Nation (p. 83)
Spotlight on Scholarship (p. 86)
Case Study-The Cultural Tale of Two Shuttles (p. 97)