Organisational Culture

1. Organisational Culture This session will enable delegates:- To debate the concept of culture and its use in describing and explaining organisational behaviour. To apply the concept to everyday organisational life with particular reference to culture in policing. To identify various ways of measuring or capturing culture and its impact on behaviour.

2. Assumptions What is an organisation? Metaphors: machine, organic, cultures, communication and role systems… Implications: of different metaphors e.g. machine metaphor How we view (lens, perspective) organisations, language we use, influences how we explain and address behavioural issues. For example…..??

3. Assumptions - 2 Limits to metaphors – partial, potentially constraining Multiple metaphors – what consideration are salient in association with each metaphor, what questions are raised, what explanations are offered, what interventions are afforded? What metaphors are being used? What ‘narratives’ (stories) underpin these metaphors and the way they are being used? What do these narratives lead to (end points)? What end points are not possible? How might the narrative need to change?

4. Assumptions – 3 The ‘human factor’ – how do we conceptualise this? -Socio-technical systems approach -Soft-Systems approach • Social nature of humanity • Interaction is highly structured and regulated • We act as members of organisations as well as our place within it • Understanding psychological (mental states and processes) underpinnings of behaviour is critical • Contribution to understanding individuals within organisations as well as organisations as a whole

5. Assumptions - 4 ‘social system that coordinates people’s behaviour by means of roles, norms and values’ (Katz & Kahn, 1978) Roles = place, function Norms = attitudinal and behavioural expectations and prescriptions Values = guiding principles for behaviour Regulatory function – some say, synonymous with ‘culture’ For organisations to have a regulatory function, they must be psychologically ‘real’ to employees Organisations comprise inter-related groups o

6. Assumptions - 5 Culture as metaphor not explanation Culture as resource for sense-making and comprehending reality, process not reality itself, not homogenous Communication is the medium of interaction and sense-making processes

7. Perspectives Traditional conceptualisation Homogenous, ‘thing like’, in which one becomes subjectively immersed, rooted in history and integral to identity • e.g. Schein, Hofstede Assumptions Values Norms Artefacts

8. Perspectives - 2 Deterministic view- assumes: Culture equivalent to reality itself (lack of theory about relationship culture and psychological reality) Culture determines attitudes and behaviours Culture is homogenous and relatively unchanging Culture is promulgated and manipulated by leaders Culture is acquired through process of ‘acculturation’

9. Perspectives - 3 But, Little agreement on what culture is, how to define or measure it Changeability – simplistic assumptions about what and how to change culture e.g. top-down, recipe driven Detracts from complexity of culture issue and therefore undermines its explanatory value

10. Perspectives - 4 Contemporary conceptualisation Cultural heterogeneity Culture as communication Culture as resource Culture as not entirely arbitrary Organisations are not synonymous with culture - people make the place, culture is constructed - the proactive nature of socialisation - the self-referential nature of culture

11. Summary Culture is content and process Content = shared meanings, template for action, regulatory Process = sense-making, negotiated, dynamic, reciprocal Culture = communication resource as well as a medium of interaction and communication Key considerations:- Culture (and values, sentiments, attitudes, beliefs and practices) is self-defining, self-protective, self-expressive Culture is a group consideration – systems of meaning created by groups

12. Definitions Schein (1990) ‘a 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 as such it taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel…manifest in…’

13. Measurement Considerations Qualitative or quantitative? Numerical reduction possible…or Nebulous, implicit, holistic Other issues: climate versus culture??