HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Organisation Culture &

Intervention:
Process, structure
and re-structuring.

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Questions

 How are characteristics of organisational culture

variously described?

 Merits and limitations of descriptions?

 Themes and tensions in debates about
organisation culture.

 Hard structure & technical systems vs. soft

humanistic concerns

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Questions

 What is "organisational development" (OD?)

 What models can be defined and how do these
shape understanding of organisational change?
 What issues face a "change agent" - someone acting
as an OD consultant/player?
 What "pearls of wisdom" would you offer someone
initiating an OD programme - taking their first steps?

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Change, improve, perform better,

re-orientate, lead, trim your sails,
be different, differentiate
products/services and costs

Hard systems Soft systems

Policies Values
Procedures Interactions
Systems Commitments
Performances Motivations
Technologies Loyalties
Efficiencies Perceptions
Leadership & teams
Communication

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Interventions to change soft culture

R.H. Kilmann 1985, in Harvey and Brown, 1992

The organisation itself has an invisible quality - a

certain style, a character, a way of doing things -
that may be more powerful than the dictates of
any one person or any formal system. To
understand the soul of the organisation requires
that we travel below the charts, rule books,
machines, and buildings into the underground
world of the corporate culture

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

What is a corporate culture?

a system of shared values and beliefs which interact

with an organisation’s people, structure and
systems to produce behavioural norms - “the way
we do things around here”.
e.g Sackmann, 1989: Walck, 1989

Whose norms?
Shared or based on dominant power source
and/or ideology?

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Other points on “culture”

 Profit vs. not-for-profit organisations (NPOs)

 sub-cultures
conflict
in the organisation which differ or

 Is"success"
management style & corporate culture a key
factor influencing
 survival?
 modes of membership and commitment?
 communication and leadership behaviour?
 problem-analysis and decision-making
for the entire system?
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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

The influence of “corporate culture”

 legitimisation of purpose and control

 gives members a sense of what to do, how to behave and
what priorities to focus on
 helps members bridge the gap between formal directives
and how the work actually gets done
 enables “supervision and control” thru. mind-set

 Compare with precision "engineering" model of

organisation structures, work-technology, methods and
controls

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Mintzberg: Five Glues

Mutual adjustment
Direct supervision
Standardisation of

Systems and procedures
 Skills
 Results
Acceptance of legitimate authority (power) is
assumed. Neo-Weberian bureaucracy.

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Observations

 No one culture works best for all organisations

 Management styles and norms, values and beliefs of organisation

members combine to form the corporate culture.

 Deal and Kennedy (1983 )

A shared history between members builds a distinct corporate

identity or character.

What is the problem with this statement?

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Mintzberg, in French and Bell, 1995

 “..organisational behaviour is a power game in which various

players seek to control the organisation’s decisions and actions.”

Pre-requisite sources or bases of power

 expenditure of energy
 political skill
 Control of
 1. a resource
 2. technical skill (1-3 must be critical to the organisation)
 3. a body of knowledge
 4. Legal prerogatives - exclusive rights/privileges to impose
choices
 5. Access to those who have power based on 1-4.

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Bases of social power

French and Bell 1959 Morgan 1997 - Images of Orgn

• Reward Power
• Coercive Power
• Legitimate Power
• Referent Power &
Charismatic Power
• Expert Power
http://sol.brunel.ac.uk/~jarvis/bola/power/power.html
• Resource-based
• Bureaucracy-based
• Decision Control
• Know-How
• The Contingent Hero
• Managing Boundaries
• Technological Dependence
• Alliances and Networks
• “Countervailers”
• Symbolism
• Gender
• Groupthink

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Organisational politics

 Sub-set of power? Informal power? Illegitimate in nature?

 Conflicts of interests

 Conflict or competition for scarce resources

 Pay-off matrix - how goods & services are to be distributed

between different parties

 Stakeholder (claimants, lobbyists) analysis - grievances, power,

ability to resist change, winners-losers,

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

OD - dominant paradigm of OD

 Normative
 Learning, adaptation, empiricist, rationalist
not
Power-coercive (de-personalise power & politics)

 Weak accommodation and avoidance?

 OD - used as a pawn
or
"Transcends the negatives of power & politics" ??

 French & Bell. "OD programs are unlikely to be successful in

organisations with high negative faces of politics & power".
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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

How can OD interventionists gain and wield power?

OD change agents need to

know about bargaining,
 Competence
negotiation, power shifts &  Political access & sensitivity
politics, strategies of
influences & the
 Sponsorship

characteristics of power  Stature & credibility

holders  Resource management

Hard, technical expert

 Group support

Beer (1980)
Intuitive, soft, influential
behavioural expert.

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Evaluating Structures & Processes

Techniques of:
• Hard & soft systems analysis
• meta-system analysis
• re-engineer key business processes (e.g. BPR)
• Planning processes (power plays)
• Historical ‘evolutionary’ models (Quinn & strategy)
• Pro-active structuring (Mintzberg)
• Hybrid organisations - mechanistic with organismic
• Virtualisation
• Changing units of currency (knowledge)
• Analysis of networking

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Exercise

Consider your organisation

 Draw a mind map of considerations to be made
when restructuring a significant part of the
organisation?
 What are the particular factors - from your
observation point - that influence your analysis?

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Mintzberg 1970: The structuring of organisations

evangelise

strategic apex
centralise

ideology middle thin, distribute,

line devolve?
Techno Support
structure staff
collaborate

operating core
standardise professionalise

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Business process re-engineering

Imperatives, limitations and

failures of BPR

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

BPR Manifesto

 Definition

‘Re-engineering is the fundamental re-thinking and radical

re-design of business processes to achieve dramatic
improvements in critical contemporary measures of
performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed.’

BPR Re-engineering the Corporation:

A manifesto for business revolution
Michael Hammer & James Champey 1993

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Backgrounds

 Hammer - former MIT computer science professor turned management

consultant
 Problems facing companies not based on organisational
structures but process structures (echoes of value chain)
 Process structures are legacy structures ñ developed
incrementally and hence patched
 Re-engineering vs. CQI/kaizen, TQM
 Involves re-design & implementation - start with a clean sheet
 How?

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

The business system

Business processes

Jobs and structures Values and Beliefs

Management and measurement systems

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

The Impact of Technology

Disruptive
Old rule technology New rule
Managers make Decision support Decision making is
all decisions tools ??? part of everyone’s job

Field staff need offices - Data Field staff can

points to receive, communication send & receive
store, retrieve & transmit & portable PCs information wherever
information they are.

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Examining BPR - Commentaries

BPR - difficult to mobilise, energise and sustain in very

large, technically complex organisations

 Hugh Wilmott (UMIST)

‘Will the turkeys vote for Christmas? The re-engineering of
human resources.’
 Enid Mumford (MBS)
BPR versus socio-technical design - employee
perceptions/Morgan’s holographic organisation
 Wood et al (Salford and MMU)
BPR as re-tinkering - need to imagine new processes &
strategies
 Mintzberg
excesses of BPR practices (BBC Radio 4)

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 HRM: Organisation Culture and Intervention

Practice examination question

1. Why do organisation development interventions

frequently fail to live up to expectations?
2. Evaluate the merits and difficulties associated
with cultural intervention strategies.

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