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Deal and Kennedy went beyond describing
cultural elements with the book Corporate
Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate
Life. They argued that successful companies
had strong and cohesive cultures in which
employees identified with company goals
and banded together to achieve them. Less
well-performing firms had weak and disconnected
cultures in which employee loyalty was
minimal and people worked primarily for
money. The culture of the company, these
authors claimed, affected its policies,
decisions, activities and hence its success.
They wrote that a company culture was
capable of being managed from a weak one
to a strong one by the process of creating
and implementing supporting rites, ceremonials,
rituals and other cultural artefacts.
It helps to identify with the organisation,
and allows them to get more meaning and
satisfaction out of work.
So it is obvious that
these theories are not only based on the
myth that a leader or the top management
can control or manage the culture of an
organisation but these authors are even
of the opinion that just one person is
able to control and implement changes
in organisational culture. Thus this point
of view states that an organisation has
a culture, it is regarded as a key factor
to commitment, motivation, productivity
and profitability.
Why culture shouldn‚t
be studied?
Based studies of culture
presuppose a clear and obvious definition
of what culture really is. However there
is not one single definition of culture.
Our world globalises and our cultures
or better to say our population differs.
The way a culture views diversity depends
on the cultural values of people in that
society. Diversity is a range of differences,
including gender, race, ethnicity, and
age. It also includes differences that
are not visible, such as education, professional
background, and functional area of expertise,
sexual preference, and religion. As an
organisation becomes more diverse, differences
among groups can become more pronounced
and lead to questions of how to manage
diversity.
It is understandable that researchers
want to define corporate culture in order
to stipulate how to understand organisations
and explain why things are done by its
members. According to Peter Frost and
his book Refraiming Organisational Culture
the view is predominant among "pure
academics" that corporate culture
is considered as a whole connecting all
cultural elements. Cultural purists share
the opinion that culture as a whole is
not an independent variable. It cannot
be manipulated, created or changed by
management. Pure academics judge the attempts
of managing corporate culture as ridiculous,
unethical and even naive.
In the book Images of Organisation Gareth
Morgan mentions that culture is a metaphor
of an organisation. He draws the conclusion
that controlling corporate culture is
not directly possible, although managers
are able to influence or shape culture,
if they are aware of the symbolic meaning
of their actions. Concerning the question
whether corporate culture is something
fixed and stable or very soft and changeable
Hofstede himself does not take a clear
position. He has a very ambiguous perspective
that does not exclude any position. He
refers to an IRIC study (Institute for
research on Intercultural Co-operation
at the University of Maastrich, the Netherlands)
that revealed that collective "practices
are features an organisation has",
which are not independent on organisational
characteristics like for example corporate
structure. He concludes that in contrast
to values practices can be indeed influenced
and managed. Further he emphasises that
corporate cultures are also integrated
whole. He says that an inspiring leadership
plays an important role in influencing
such a whole. The task of leadership is
to give structural and system changes
a significance of meaning, which is clear
and coherent to the members of the corporate
culture.
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