Sub Cultures Versus One Major Culture In Organizations

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

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Sub-cultures versus one ‘major’ culture in organizations Makkink, Floris 01.05.2013

This essay will discuss whether an organization might be better considered as consisting of many sub-cultures which are conceptually different, rather than one ‘major’ culture. The importance of understanding the cultural influences on organizations and management has increased because of the improved globalization and increased interdependency between different countries. Management faces more complex and difficult to interpret situations and situations are continuously changing. There has been much research on differences in organizations and in cultures. First this essay will outline a summery on important theoretical aspects of organizations and cultures. In the end these theoretical aspects will be worked out into a conclusion.

Organizations have social agreements and the need to control the performance of the organization itself and their common collective purposes. As people have goals, organizations don’t have them. There is an organizational dilemma, between the goals of individual members (self esteem, pride, status, money) which can have conflicts with the collective purpose of the organization (increased share income, reputation, investment, large product range etc.). Organizations are systems of power and influence. Employees want to protect their own values and interest and those values of their reference groups within the organization (Joan Harvey and George Erdos, 2013).

Culture can be defined as shared motives, beliefs, values, language, identities, and interpretations or meanings of significant actions that result from general experiences (history) of members of collectives and are to be spread across age generations. This definition can be used at organizational levels. Organizational culture consists of shared organizational values, and organizational history (Robert J. House et. al).

Hofstede prescribes culture as the collective programming of the mind which differentiates one category of people from another. Everyone in the group has learned the specific norms and values of that group. The central national culture is the values. Harisson prescribes the organizational culture as the ideologies, beliefs and deep-set values which take place in all firms and organizations are the prescriptions of the way in which people should work in those organizations. Culture is the traditional way of thinking and doing things, which is shared with almost all members and which is learned to the new members and needs to be (at least partially) accepted in order to be accepted in to the services of the firm (Jaques). Groups develop their way of behaviours quite quickly and these will rapidly become established. Changing norms and values of a culture of an organization is difficult and takes a long time but it is possible to achieve some movement if carefully planned (Joan Harvey and George Erdos, 2013).

Having the ‘right’ culture for an organization is very important for corporate successes and for human resource management to achieve commitment to organizational goals and strategies of the business. Cultures which make it easily possible to innovate, experiment, and have corporate entrepreneurship with investments in human recourses are often more successful. Organizations need to accomplish this to reward people on their behaviour, for example they could reward employees who try to innovate more than look at the outcomes. Very few organizations have only one culture, most often it is a mixture of cultures, or there is change in their culture. More often there is one existing culture which is more dominant and will be controlled by the senior management. To change the culture is as said before a very difficult and time taking process. The process steps are first having an analysis of the current culture, and then decide what to change and then plan for a strategy how to implement and accomplish this change. Organizational change depends crucially on cooperation and commitment. Big change needs confident and strong-willed individuals which have the support by teams of senior employees who are committed to the change(Joan Harvey and George Erdos, 2013).

There are four main ways to categorize cultures(Handy). There are power cultures which can be best seen as hierarchical culture. Most often this is part of smaller organizations. This type of culture depends on empathy, trust, little rules and procedures, and there is communication by personal contact. Employees need to do correctly what is expected from them. There is a lot of investment in the person or in committees, so selection of the right employees is important. The second way of classifying culture is role cultures in which are lots of rules, and the structure is bureaucratic. Role cultures are very common in older and non-innovative organizations. The position you have makes which power you have. Employees can work up their position when they acquire specialist expertises without taking much risk. Rewards are standardised per position. This culture is predictable and steady; the work will be in economies of scale. A problem for this culture can be that when there a situation changes that the organization faces difficulties with adapting to it. The third culture is a task culture in which there is no central single power basis based on hierarchical positions. Management assigns projects to different parts of the organization and teams work on them, who may only be together for that specific project. Teams are cross functional and rely more on expertise than on authority. This culture is associated with a matrix structure. Self interest is less important than the group work itself. Positive in this culture is the flexibility and responsiveness, and fewer routines in the work. This culture has the disadvantages that the economies of scale are not suitable (work is not quantity based). Part of the culture is the short life cycles, and this culture needs maintenance. The last main culture is the person culture which is relatively uncommon, and most often is part of large and complex organizations. In this culture, individuals of similar background cluster and form into groups to improve their expertise and share knowledge, skills etc. Organizations with this culture seldom survive for long, because most often they form into role or power cultures as the character becomes more organizational or professional (Joan Harvey and George Erdos, 2013).

There are several factors which determine the culture of the organizations. Which owner a company has will determine the type of culture. For example a centralized ownership will lead towards a power culture. The culture depends also on the size of an organization, the bigger an organizations, the more formal and more role culture. And employees of bigger organizations say they are more efficient or dictatorial than smaller organizations. The type of technology an organization uses for production is another factor which can have impact on the culture. The high costs of big technologies are better suited in role cultures with economies of scale. In organizations where technologies changing fast, power or task cultures are more effective. The goals and objectives can also have an impact on the culture; a role culture fits to organizations that focus on quality of their products, and for organizations which provide good jobs or places to work. When an organisation focussed on producing growth then a power or task culture fits better. The location of the organization has also impact on the culture; in different countries they have different cultures. Also the employees itself determine the organizational culture, because people with low tolerance and high needs for security for example fit better in role culture. People with individual skills and talents can fit better in power or task cultures(Joan Harvey and George Erdos, 2013).

Geert Hofsteede created five dimensions on which cultures per country could differentiate. One dimension is the power distance (PDI), how much power has a manager over lower people in the hierarchy, and how many levels are there in the organizational hierarchy? In a culture with low PDI there will be minimal inequality, equal rights, and there is kind of harmony between the powerful and the powerless instead of conflict. The opposite and high PDI has a high hierarchy and there should be ordering in inequality and people know their place. Another dimension is the uncertainty avoidance, if this is high, than the culture wants to control the future. Then there is high stress, and only known risks will be taken. With low uncertainty avoidance there less work stress, people are willing to take risks and compete each other, and the managers will be selected for their abilities. Lower uncertainty avoidance is more preferable in smaller organizations. Individualism or collectivism is the third dimension. This dimension emphasizes whether people commit to a group are not. With high individualism there needs to be freedom and challenges in the jobs, the identity of the organization is based on the individual and earnings are more important than interesting work. The characteristics of high collectivism are that the identity is based on the social system, interesting work is as important as earnings and there will be more loyalty to people in the organization. The fourth dimension is masculinity vs. feminity. Masculinity cultures are more competitive, the values of woman and men are very different, money is important, and they suppose that men should work and woman should be housewives. Decisions will be more individual. More feminine cultures are connective orientated, there is less difference between genders and the quality of life and people are central. The last dimension on which countries and cultures can be different is the long or short term orientation, long term orientation will focus on continuity, control, respect for tradition but also be prepared to adapt to new circumstances. Short term gain is not important, and they suppose that important events happen in the future. Cultures with short term orientation want to gain quick results. It is important to know how to spend, and the organisations are more or less focussing on the present time. Another dimension which can affect organisational culture is the expression of emotions (this is not from Hofstede), some countries and cultures held emotions under control and others can express their emotions very openly (Joan Harvey and George Erdos, 2013).

Some researchers questioned how well strong cultures improve the bottom-line performance, and more researches and some relevant examples show how organizations achieve strategic advantages through strong cultures. Strong cultures can give stability on organizations when they have traits such as an organization’s mission and reliability, which is related to its profitability. Organizations with strong cultures had greater returns on investments, but just in the short run; after three years the relationship between cultural steadiness and performance became negative (Boisnier, A. & Chatman, J.A. , 2002).

Most often organizations want to change its form over time and an organization most often have a range of different cultures. Organizations can have four situations which can require cultural diversity. When the organization is in steady state activities can be planned as regular, for this situation a role culture suits better. When the organization needs to innovate in the way of doing or what the organization does, than a task culture is more suitable. In times of crises or when policies need to change, than a power culture suits the situation better. Organizations should differentiate their cultures and structures according to the dominant sort of activity in that department, division or section. Organizations should not want to put all activities into one culture, but they should differentiate. These different cultures should be integrated altogether. High levels of differentiation between departments in terms of organizational culture are indicative for high performers amongst organizations, so a mixture of culture is effective(Joan Harvey and George Erdos, 2013). The conclusion out of this essay will be that it depends on which kind of organization you are, big or small, what kind of industry, in which culture and country, whether an organization will be better off as having one ‘major’ culture, or as consisting of many subcultures. Most often it can be said that for the long term having more subcultures will be better. So this essay outlined both sides of having one main or many (sub)cultures in organizations and concludes that there is no absolute ‘one truth’ for choosing between them.