Organizational Behavior (Organizational Culture) Answer Key Part 6

102) What is workforce spirituality and how is it similar to a positive organizational culture? Answer: Workplace spirituality is not about organized religious practices. It's not about God or theology. Workplace spirituality recognizes that people have an inner life that nourishes and is nourished by meaningful work that takes place in the context of community. Organizations that promote a spiritual culture recognize that people have both a mind and a spirit, seek to find meaning and purpose in their work, and desire to connect with other human beings and be part of a community. A positive organizational culture emphasizes building on employee strengths, rewards more than it punishes, and emphasizes individual vitality and growth. Let's consider each of these areas. Although most organizations are sufficiently focused on extrinsic rewards such as pay and promotions, they often forget about the power of smaller (and cheaper) rewards such as praise, which helps employees find meaning in the work they do if they feel it is appreciated. A positive organizational culture emphasizes not only organizational effectiveness but also individuals' growth. No organization will get the best from employees who see themselves as mere tools or parts of the organization. A positive culture recognizes the difference between a job and a career and supports not only what the employee does to contribute to organizational effectiveness but also what the organization can do to make the employee more effective (personally and professionally). This idea is closely linked to the spiritual idea of helping employees find meaning in their work lives. 103) Discuss the difference between strong and weak organizational cultures and discuss the effect that a strong culture can have on an acquisition or merger. Answer: Strong cultures have a greater impact on employee behavior and are more directly related to reduced turnover. In a strong culture, the organization's core values are both intensely held and widely shared. The more members who accept the core values and the greater their commitment to those values is, the stronger the culture is. A strong culture will have a great influence on the behavior of its members because the high degree of sharedness and intensity creates an internal climate of high behavioral control. One specific result of a strong culture should be lower employee turnover. A strong culture demonstrates high agreement among members about what the organization stands for. Such unanimity of purpose builds cohesiveness, loyalty, and organizational commitment. These qualities, in turn, lessen employees' propensity to leave the organization. In recent years, cultural compatibility has become the primary concern. All things being equal, whether the acquisition actually works seems to have more to do with how well the two organizations' cultures match up. The primary cause of failure is conflicting organizational cultures, when people simply don't match up. Therefore, when considering an acquisition or merger, management would need to carefully evaluate the cultures of each organization. 104) How does organizational culture develop? Answer: An organization's current customs, traditions, and general way of doing things are largely due to what it has done before and the degree of success it has had with those endeavors. The founders of an organization traditionally have a major impact on that organization's early culture. They have a vision of what the organization should be. They are constrained by previous customs or ideologies. The small size that typically characterizes new organizations further facilitates the founders' imposition of their vision on all organizational members. The process of culture-creation occurs in three ways. a) First, founders only hire and keep employees who think and feel the way they do. b) Second, they indoctrinate and socialize these employees to their way of thinking and feeling. c) And finally, the founders' own behavior acts as a role model that encourages employees to identify with them and thereby internalize their beliefs, values, and assumptions. When the organization succeeds, the founders' vision becomes seen as a primary determinant of that success. At this point, the founders' entire personalities become embedded in the culture of the organization. 105) What can management do to create a more ethical culture within an organization?Answer: To create a more ethical culture, management can take a number of steps. a) Management can be a visible role model. Employees will look to top management behavior as a benchmark for defining appropriate behavior. b) Management can also communicate ethical expectations. Ethical ambiguities can be minimized by creating and disseminating an organizational code of ethics. It should state the organization's primary values and the ethical rules that employees are expected to follow. c) Management can also provide ethical training. Training sessions can be used to reinforce the organization's standards of conduct, to clarify what practices are and are not permissible, and to address possible ethical dilemmas. d) Management can visibly reward ethical acts and punish unethical ones. Performance appraisals of managers should include a point-by-point evaluation of how his or her decisions measured against the organization's code of ethics. Appraisals must include the means taken to achieve goals as well as the ends themselves. e) Finally, the organization needs to provide formal mechanisms so that employees can discuss ethical dilemmas and report unethical behavior without fear of reprimand. This might include creation of ethical counselors, ombudsmen, or ethical officers. 106) What are the characteristics of a spiritual organization? Answer: There are five cultural characteristics that tend to be evident in spiritual organizations. Spiritual organizations build their cultures around a meaningful purpose. Spiritual organizations recognize the worth and value of people. They seek to create cultures where employees can continually learn and grow. Spiritual organizations are characterized by mutual trust, honesty, and openness. Managers aren't afraid to admit mistakes. And they tend to be extremely up front with their employees, customers, and suppliers. The high-trust climate in spiritual organizations, when combined with the desire to promote employee learning and growth, leads to management empowering employees to make most work-related decisions. Managers in spiritually-based organizations are comfortable delegating authority to individual employees and teams. They trust their employees to make thoughtful and conscientious decisions. The final characteristic that differentiates spiritually-based organizations is that they don't stifle employee emotions. They allow people to be themselves. 107) Identify and describe the seven primary characteristics that capture the essence of an organization's culture. Answer: Organizational culture refers to a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations. This system of shared meaning is, on closer examination, a set of key characteristics that the organization values. There are seven primary characteristics that capture the essence of an organization's culture. Each of these characteristics exists on a continuum from low to high. Appraising the organization on these seven characteristics, then, gives a composite picture of the organization's culture. This picture becomes the basis for feelings of shared understanding members have about the organization, how things are done in it, and the way members are supposed to behave. a) Innovation and risk taking are the degree to which employees are encouraged to be innovative and take risks. b) Attention to detail is the degree to which employees are expected to exhibit precision, analysis, and attention to detail. c) Outcome orientation is the degree to which management focuses on results or outcomes rather than on the techniques and processes used to achieve these outcomes. d) People orientation is the degree to which management decisions take into consideration the effect of outcomes on people within the organization. e) Team orientation is the degree to which work activities are organized around teams rather than individuals. f) Aggressiveness is the degree to which people are aggressive and competitive rather than easygoing. g) Stability is the degree to which organizational activities emphasize maintaining the status quo in contrast to growth. 108) When can culture be a liability? Answer: a) Barriers to Change. Culture is a liability when the shared values are not in agreement with those that will further the organization's effectiveness. This is most likely to occur when an organization's environment is dynamic. When an environment is undergoing rapid change, an organization's entrenched culture may no longer be appropriate. So consistency of behavior is an asset to an organization when it faces a stable environment. It may, however, burden the organization and make it difficult to respond to changes in the environment. These strong cultures become barriers to change when business as usual is no longer effective. b) Barriers to Diversity. Strong cultures put considerable pressure on employees to conform. They limit the range of values and styles that are acceptable. A strong culture that condones prejudice can even undermine formal corporate diversity policies. Organizations seek out and hire diverse individuals because of the alternative strengths these people bring to the workplace. Yet these diverse behaviors and strengths are likely to diminish in strong cultures as people attempt to fit in. Strong cultures, therefore, can be liabilities when they effectively eliminate the unique strengths that people of different backgrounds bring to the organization. Moreover, strong cultures can also be liabilities when they support institutional bias or become insensitive to people who are different. c) Barriers to Acquisitions and Mergers. Many acquisitions fail shortly after their consummation. The primary cause of failure is conflicting organizational cultures. 109) Explain the primary methods of maintaining an organization's culture. Answer: Once a culture is in place, there are practices within the organization that act to maintain it by giving employees a set of similar experiences. Three forces play a particularly important part in sustaining a culture: selection practices, the actions of top management, and socialization methods. a) First, the explicit goal of the selection process is to identify and hire individuals who have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the jobs within the organization successfully. It would be naive to ignore that the final decision as to who is hired will be significantly influenced by the decision maker's judgment of how well the candidates will fit into the organization. This attempt to ensure a proper match, whether purposely or inadvertently, results in the hiring of people who have values essentially consistent with those of the organization, or at least a good portion of those values. In addition, the selection process provides information to applicants about the organization. Candidates learn about the organization and, if they perceive a conflict between their values and those of the organization, they can self-select themselves out of the applicant pool. b) In addition to selection, the actions of top management also have a major impact on the organization's culture. Through what they say and how they behave, senior executives establish norms that filter down through the organization as to whether risk taking is desirable; how much freedom managers should give their employees; what is appropriate dress; what actions will pay off in terms of pay raises, promotions, and other rewards; and the like. c) Finally, no matter how good a job the organization does in recruiting and selection, new employees are not fully indoctrinated in the organization's culture. Because they are unfamiliar with the organization's culture, new employees are potentially likely to disturb the beliefs and customs that are in place. The organization will, therefore, want to help new employees adapt to its culture. This adaptation process is called socialization. This is when the organization seeks to mold the outsider into an employee "in good standing." Employees who fail to learn the essential or pivotal role behaviors risk being labeled "nonconformists" or "rebels," which often leads to expulsion. But the organization will be socializing every employee, though maybe not as explicitly, throughout his or her entire career in the organization. This further contributes to 110) Discuss four ways that employees learn culture. Answer: Culture is transmitted to employees in a number of forms, the most potent being stories, rituals, material symbols, and language. a) Stories contain a narrative of events about the organization's founders, rule breaking, rags-toriches successes, reductions in the workforce, relocation of employees, reactions to past mistakes, and organizational coping. These stories anchor the present in the past and provide explanations and legitimacy for current practices. b) Rituals are repetitive sequences of activities that express and reinforce the key values of the organization, what goals are most important, which people are important and which are expendable. c) The layout of corporate headquarters, the types of automobiles top executives are given, and the presence or absence of corporate aircraft are a few examples of material symbols. These material symbols convey to employees who is important, the degree of egalitarianism desired by top management, and the kinds of behavior that are appropriate. d) Many organizations and units within organizations use language as a way to identify members of a culture or subculture. By learning this language, members attest to their acceptance of the culture and, in doing so, help to preserve it. Organizations, over time, often develop unique terms to describe equipment, offices, key personnel, suppliers, customers, or products that relate to its business. New employees are frequently overwhelmed with acronyms and jargon that, after 6 months on the job, have become fully part of their language. Once assimilated, this terminology acts as a common denominator that unites members of a given culture or subculture.