Asset Management, Second edition

Lloyd, Chris and Corcoran Michael

ISBN 978-0-7277-6143-9
https://doi.org/10.1680/amse.61439.069
ICE Publishing: All rights reserved

Chapter 4
Creating an asset management
culture
Charles Johnson
Technical Director, CAS

This chapter discusses how effective organisational cultures result in high-performing

companies while ineffective cultures result in internal conflict and poor performance.
Knowing how to create a culture that will produce the performance you want is key
to good Asset Management.

1. Introduction
Organisational culture is a slippery concept at the best of times. Yet, since the 1980s it
has regularly been invoked as a key influence on both commercial and safety performance.
For example, the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) states that it ‘knows’ from
data and anecdotal evidence that investment in a safety, health and environmental
programme is a sound business investment (ASSE, 2002) and that such a programme ‘is
where developing and maintaining a safety culture is key. This involves bringing the
concepts, practices and methodologies of safety and integrating them into the corporate
culture of a company, so safety is present at all levels’ (Duchsherer and Nyblom, 2008).
Similarly, the operational and safety benefits of having an effective organisational culture
have been demonstrated in the UK rail industry (Johnson, 2008).

2. What is organisational culture?

2.1 Ways of defining culture
So, what is organisational culture and how would you recognise it in the context of Asset
Management? One popular definition is that ‘culture is the way things are done around
here’ (Deal and Kennedy, 1982). Although simplistic, this definition captures an
important concept. Organisations need to do more than simply get things done. To have
a sustainable business, it is important that things are done in the right way.

There are any number of more sophisticated and elaborate definitions of organisational
and safety culture. Unfortunately, there is no one common, agreed definition. There are a

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number of reasons for this. There has been a degree of confusion over what exactly the
term ‘culture’ applies to. In particular, there has been a failure to distinguish between
culture and climate. Furthermore, different authors have approached the topic from
different perspectives. Some, such as Schein (1992), have adopted a descriptive approach,
sometimes described as a socio-anthropological perspective (Wiegmann et al., 2002).
Others, such as Bate (1992) and Thompson et al. (1996), have adopted a process-based
approach, sometimes referred to as an organisational psychology perspective, which is
more concerned with the processes and procedures that an organisation has in place and
how these can influence culture. As I shall argue later, both approaches are necessary
when one comes to consider how culture can be managed and changed.

2.2 Culture versus climate

In the past few years, there have been a number of reviews which, although not settling
on an agreed definition, have identified the common features of culture and climate. For
example, Wiegmann et al. (2002) identify the following characteristics of each.

Culture
g Refers to the shared values of everyone in the organisation
g Is relatively enduring, stable and resistant to change
g Impacts on the way staff behave at work.

Climate
g Refers to staff perceptions of the state of the organisation
g Is, therefore, a relatively unstable snapshot
g Is subject to change.

So culture refers to a long-lived set of values, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions, which
are thought to affect behaviour and performance over the longer term, while climate
refers to the way in which the underlying culture is manifested and expressed in current
staff attitudes and behaviours (Clarke, 2006; Mearns et al., 2003). Two points follow
from the transient nature of organisational climate. Firstly, the current climate may or
may not be consistent with the underlying culture. Recent events or experiences, such
as pay rises or redundancies, may result in short-term mismatches between climate and
culture. Secondly, company initiatives may change climate in the short-term but, in the
longer term, attitudes will revert to what they were previously if the initiatives do not
address the underlying culture (e.g. Schein, 1992).

2.3 Differentiating culture change and behavioural change

Often, when you talk to managers about organisational culture and the need for culture
change, you find that what they really want is for the staff who report to them, and some-
times their colleagues, to behave in ways that suit them. However, although culture may

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influence behaviour, culture and behaviour are not the same thing and changing one
does not necessarily change the other. The concept of behavioural change arose with the
concept of behavioural safety which was developed in the 1970s. In its first incarnation,
it was based on theories of behavioural learning, particularly those of BF Skinner
and DO Hebb on operant conditioning and reinforcement (see, for example, Hebb,
1949; Skinner, 1953). However, just as these theories were quickly thought to be
inadequate to describe human learning, so behavioural safety models quickly developed
into more cognitive and social models. Three main developmental stages have been
identified.

(a) In the initial prescriptive stage, managers and supervisors imposed desired
behaviours on employees through the use of positive reinforcement.
(b) In the systems stage, behaviour was seen as the result of interactions between the
organisation, management and employees and culture was seen as important a
determinant of behaviour as simple reward or reinforcement systems.
(c) In the engagement stage, the perceptions of employees about how activities should
be carried out become as important as, or more important than, what managers
think in the design of desirable behaviours.

As can be seen, the concepts of behavioural change and behavioural safety transformed
gradually through the inclusion of concepts of culture and culture change. This broad-
ened their appeal and an industry has grown up selling various similar models and
approaches. However, throughout its life, behavioural safety has been controversial.
There are several reasons for this. The main one is that failed behavioural safety inter-
ventions often have significant negative consequences for organisations in terms of both
performance and employee motivation. Proponents of the approach usually argue that
the reasons for these failures is that the behavioural approach has been poorly
implemented. This can be because the approach never gets past the first or second devel-
opmental stage, because the interventions only deal with the easy issues, because there is
a mismatch between the behavioural initiatives and other initiatives in the organisation,
because too little resource is applied to the implementation or a range of other organis-
ational issues. In particular, if you never get past the first stage, you end up dealing with
single behaviours, which you might improve in the short-term, but there is no read-across
from these behaviours to other, equally important, behaviours and employees are often
left unclear as to how to deal with new or different situations. There is also a tendency for
behaviour to regress to earlier patterns. Thus, behavioural change that does not also
utilise culture change is likely to fail.

One of the most common problems is that, because behavioural safety systems rely
heavily on the observation and reporting of certain behaviours, there is a tendency to
move towards a blame culture. This is one of the main reasons why unions have often

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been opposed to the approach. If a blame culture develops, employees become reluctant
to report instances of unsafe acts or non-compliances, resulting in significant under-
reporting, which can give management a completely inaccurate picture of what is
actually happening on the ground. The following is a useful summary from the UK HSE
of current views of behavioural change and safety (Anderson, 2007).

g There are many advantages to doing Behavioural Safety.

g But these programmes (and cultural change) take time, resources and a
concerted effort – senior management commitment.
g [It is a] useful addition to the toolkit for occupational safety, but [offers] limited
benefits for the control of major hazards.
g [There is] bias towards measurable success; [this] can pull focus away from
basics of [Safety Management System] and process safety.
g [Behavioural safety] must address engineering and systems as well [as individual
behaviours].
g [It is necessary to] include workforce and management behaviours.
g [The] effectiveness of the programme largely depends on existing culture.

2.4 Fair and just cultures

The concept of a ‘fair and just culture’ was introduced by Professor Jim Reason in 1997
(Reason 1997, 1998) although there were other researchers working on similar concepts
at the time. By 2006, the concept had been widely adopted in the aviation sector (which is
where Reason was researching at the time) and has since been introduced to many other
sectors, including rail, petrochemical, construction and hospitals. Typically, users only
talk about ‘just culture’ now, but it was important in Reason’s original concept that both
terms were used. The concept was developed because it had long been recognised that
blame cultures were unhelpful and, indeed, unhealthy, but that no-blame cultures were
also problematic. In particular, operators in the aviation sector were ‘alarmed that the
focus of governments in the wake of accidents is to conduct lengthy, expensive and highly
disruptive criminal investigations in an attempt to exact punishment, instead of ensuring
the free flow of information to understand what happened and why, and prevent recur-
rence’ (Learmount, 2006).

The central ideas in a fair and just culture are that it is crucial to develop a feeling of
reciprocal trust between employees and management, that responsibility for a (safety)
failure will be assigned correctly, taking into account systemic and organisational failings
as well as individual behaviours, and that appropriate interventions will be applied to
deal with the event. The interventions may be retributive if responsibility is assigned
to an individual or a group of individuals but may be restorative if responsibility is
assigned to system or organisational failings. A lot has been said about the features of
a fair and just culture. The following are some of the most important.

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g Justice should be seen to be done consistently by managers when making

decisions about their staff.
g When incidents occur, the staff involved are considered blameless until proven
culpable.
g A clear line is drawn between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable
behaviour.
g Staff are very clear about what behaviour and performance is expected of them.
g Staff are clear about the consequences of being found both blameless and
culpable.
g Reporting is valued, encouraged and listened to.
g Failure to report is not acceptable.
g It becomes clear that there are overlaps between these concepts and the concepts
that underlie ideas of behavioural safety.

The basic concepts of a fair and just culture have been widely accepted. Problems with
the approach begin when the concepts are put into practice. Reason realised very early
on that it was vital that there should be a consistent and valid method for assigning
responsibility. To do this, he developed a just culture decision tree, which was built
around his general error model. This model differentiates errors (unintended unsafe acts)
from violations (intentional acts) and personal causes from system causes. One problem
was that the decision tree was too simple and the binary nature of the decisions and the
order in which decisions were made frequently led to incorrect assignment of responsi-
bility. This was why Hudson et al. (2008), in the petrochemical sector, introduced a more
elaborate decision model, but although it was an improvement it still suffered from many
of the same failings. Another problem was the paucity of effective interventions that were
recommended for the various decision outcomes. We have seen in the rail sector where
the practical application of the fair and just culture model can go badly wrong because
the decision tree inevitably led to the same outcome for every unsafe act investigated and
the only intervention recommended was retraining, even when it was clear that this
would be ineffective. For fair and just culture approaches to be successfully
implemented, therefore, they have to be supported by a fully effective decision model,
which cannot simply be based on Reason’s or Hudson’s earlier models.

2.5 The origins of organisational culture

Left to their own devices, organisations will develop cultures in an organic and, often,
haphazard way. Furnham and Gunter (1993) identify three main ways in which organ-
isational cultures are created.

g The founders of the organisation impose their, usually dynamic, personalities

on the first staff to join; this then gets accepted as the norm for how things are
done.

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g Organisational experience of what has and hasn’t worked in the business

environment gets crystallised as the way to do things.
g The need for work colleagues to get on and to work effectively together means
that styles are adopted that work for them.

Various problems arise from the organic development of cultures. Founders retire or
hand over the reins to people who may not share their philosophy or leadership style and
may try to impose their own values on the organisation, but they conflict with the culture
built up over the organisation’s early years. As an organisation grows and different
divisions and departments are formed, the culture of the organisation may fragment, and
different cultures may develop in each. Over time, the nature of the organisation’s
business may change and the approach it has to take to survive in the new environment
may also change. For example, at first the organisation may need to be entrepreneurial
and adopt a culture suitable for rapid growth but, over time, as it becomes established, it
may need to adopt a culture suitable for consolidation and maintenance of market share.

2.6 The consequences of a failing culture

Cultures that develop organically sometimes get it just right. Most of the time, at some
point, problems start to arise. Culture clashes begin to appear. Performance begins to
suffer. The symptoms of an organisational culture in trouble will be recognised by all.
The following examples, drawn from experience with companies that have adopted Asset
Management, illustrate the main symptoms of cultures in trouble.

g A large company has a significant physical asset base and a mixture of

engineering, operational and customer-facing staff. The three types of staff rarely
meet each other and are often dismissive and sometimes rude to anyone outside
their own division. Cooperation between divisions is consequently low and
company-wide initiatives rarely successful.
g A large company with a significant asset base recognises the importance of Asset
Management but has no asset management department or roles. Asset
management activities are undertaken by a mix of staff in different engineering
disciplines, which are kept separate, operating within their own functional silos
with little multidisciplinary working. Cliques have formed within disciplines, who
both disparage and distrust outsiders and protect their own turf. An air of secrecy
has developed. Engineers in different disciplines have created their own asset
databases, which overlap but often contain uniquely valuable information that is
not made known to or shared with others.
g A medium-sized civil engineering company has a notably strong culture. Its staff
express high levels of satisfaction with the company’s management and the way it
is run. In particular, the culture emphasises devolved responsibility and staff
empowerment. The company has been successful and grown quickly. Then it

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moves into a sector that is very safety conscious and highly regulated. It becomes
clear that the company culture has led to inconsistent practices, which, in its new
safety-critical work, leads to worryingly high accident rates. So much so that the
company is suspended from working on their major contract.
g A medium-sized asset maintenance company is spun out of a larger company that
had a much wider set of activities and responsibilities. Unfortunately, the staff
have strong memories of the old company and their status within it. They find it
difficult to adjust to the new situation and their allegiances are confused. This
leads quickly to disenchantment and disillusionment. Efficiency decreases, buck
passing increases and overstaffing results.
g A moderately large government agency is privatised. The staff are used to doing
everything by the book but quickly find that they need to take greater personal
responsibility and be more flexible in the commercial environment. Many staff fail
to adjust. Turnover is inadequate, resulting in redundancies. Levels of insecurity
become high. Staff become inward-looking and defensive. Their interactions with
clients become more and more contract focused. Client dissatisfaction increases
but staff are in denial about this being anything to do with the company’s culture
and its approach to client relationships.
g A large company merges with a slightly smaller one so that it can extend the
range of asset management services it can deliver. The two companies were each
successful but had quite different cultures. The senior management of the smaller
company is removed, and the senior management of the larger company tries to
impose its culture on the small company. This results in much unhappiness,
leading quite quickly to apathy. From there it is a short step to mutual distrust
and a complete separation of work activities. Staff from the smaller company are
soon left scrabbling for work while all the choice jobs go to those from the larger
company. Performance and safety suffer among the smaller company’s staff.

3. Creating a culture that works

So, the development of your asset management culture cannot be left to chance because
this will often result in conflicting sub-cultures and inconsistent practices. Therefore,
senior managers need to have a clear idea of what they want their asset management
culture to be and how to go about establishing that culture. In doing so, they have to recog-
nise that not all sub-cultures are bad. Some can be beneficial. The dominant culture in an
organisation is usually related to its core business but specific functions within the
organisation may need to have different cultures to operate successfully. Therefore, if
an organisation’s core business strategy is Asset Management, the senior managers need
to ensure the dominant culture in the organisation is conducive to Asset Management. If
Asset Management is a support function, management must consider whether the
dominant culture will work for the asset management function. If not, an asset manage-
ment sub-culture needs to be created and properly integrated with the dominant culture.

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3.1 Change management models

Creating an asset management culture is a specific type of change management process.
As such, it needs to follow best practice in change management. Change requires you to
go through a number of stages. The following stage description is an elaboration of Kurt
Lewin’s three-stage model of change based on refinements suggested by a number of
authors (e.g. Bainbridge, 1996; Conger et al., 1999; Schein, 1999).

Stage 1: Unfreezing.
g Determine the need for change.
g Assess the readiness for change – this involves identifying the desired goal state,
assessing the current state and identifying barriers to change.
g Prepare for change – this involves identifying and addressing staff concerns about
change and ensuring that there is strong stakeholder support for change,
including the identification of change leaders and champions.

Stage 2: Changing.
g Identify the mechanisms through which change will be brought about.
g Inform people about the change and engage them in the process – this includes
the involvement of public, regular communication and the dispelling of rumours
and myths.
g Plan a migration process with clear stages over a feasible timescale.

Stage 3: Refreezing.
g Identify, communicate and apply rewards and benefits of the change.
g Maintain the change through support systems, training, etc.
g Avoid relapse – including dealing with residual barriers, reviewing progress and
being flexible.

Many companies engaged in the pursuit of Asset Management will only recently have
started it and, therefore, only just have started thinking about the need to develop an
asset management culture. The unfreezing stage for them is quite complex, since it
involves identifying what managers and staff believe their company has been all about
and then changing not only their thinking and practices but also the whole way business
is undertaken.

Although the change model says a lot about the stages to go through, it says little about
precisely what to do in each stage. For example, unfreezing requires you to carry out
some form of gap analysis of what your culture is like now and what you want it to
be like in the future. Then changing requires you to have a clear idea about what sorts
of mechanisms and interventions are most likely to promote the desired culture and help
the company move from the old culture to the new one. Refreezing then requires you to

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know what sorts of things staff will value as benefits and rewards best suited to maintain-
ing the new culture and what sort of support is needed over the longer term.

3.2 Culture management models

Interestingly, although there are many models of organisational culture and its manage-
ment, including specific ones focused on safety, security and the like, Guldenmund
(2000) notes that most models are either normative or descriptive and that what is needed
are models that deal with the causes, contents and consequences of culture. For example,
in the world of safety culture, no models take a recognisably systems approach to culture
management that covers Guldenmund’s criteria.

To address this limitation, Figure 4.1 shows the culture management model developed
(Johnson, 2008; Luther and Johnson, 2008) by CAS.

The model contains the following components

g a description of the desired culture, which may, of course, be different from, or

even conflict with, the current culture
g identification of the motivational mechanisms (incentives and management
commitment and actions) that need to be in place to embed the desired culture in
the current climate

Figure 4.1 Overview of the CAS culture management model (Reproduced by permission of
CAS)

Incentives Management
systems

Culture Climate Behaviour

Organisational goals Embed Individual attitudes Enable and
and aspirations and beliefs performance

Management Pressures
commitment

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g identification of the support systems (technical systems, processes and procedures)

needed to enable staff to behave and perform effectively
g identification of the constraints and barriers (pressures) that might block the
desired behaviours
g organisational climate, which appears in the model as the attitudes, perceptions
and feelings that individual members of staff have about the motivational
activities, support systems and pressures that exist
g identification of the desired behaviours and performance, which involves
specifying what counts as appropriate and acceptable behaviour and putting in
place assessment processes that can be used to judge whether the culture is
working effectively.

It is assumed that inconsistencies or conflicts, in any part of the model, are likely to lead
to undesirable or ineffective behaviours and performance. Two key questions arise.

(a) How big is the gap between the current and desired cultures (and the current and
desired behaviours associated with them)? Large gaps associated with high risk
will be the key areas for improvement.
(b) How well are the motivational and enabling mechanisms working and what
barriers to improvement exist?

Figure 4.2 The behaviour change wheel (Source: Michie et al., 2014)

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line social nmen
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G nin l/
ns Educatio g Intervention functions
ictio n
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3.3 Recent approaches to culture change

Two theoretical perspectives, which I have found particularly useful for planning culture
change interventions, are those of Bell and Phelps (2001) and Michie et al. (2014). Michie
et al. developed the concept of the behaviour change wheel. Figure 4.2 provides a
summary of the model.

This provides a list of the range of possible interventions that might be used to produce
the behaviours and the culture desired by the organisation. The outermost ring is con-
cerned with the policy constraints facing the organisation, the ring inside it lists the main
types of change interventions that might be considered and the innermost ring lists the
characteristics of individuals that affect the likelihood of desired behaviours being
realised and are relevant to the description of the organisation’s culture, particularly
opportunity and motivation.

The model also recognises that the most effective interventions for producing a desired
cultural or behavioural change depend on the current characteristics of the workforce
and on the organisation’s maturity. For example, interventions based on coercion are
unlikely to be effective in relatively mature organisations with an aware and skilled
workforce.

A report by Bell and Phelps (2001) for the HSE identifies the key change elements in
health and safety management but can readily be applied to any organisational change
process. Table 4.1 is a slightly amended summary of their suggestions for areas where the
workforce might usefully be involved in organisational change. This report also provides
a number of case studies of organisations that have implemented each of these types of
employee involvement schemes.

One of the main features of their examples is the extent to which it is suggested that
employees get involved in several of the intervention functions identified in the behaviour
change wheel. Setting up opportunities for employees to have these sorts of opportunities
for involvement should be a key element of culture change interventions.

3.4 Culture description and gap analysis

In a recent project, I had reason to review the full range of dimensions and categories
that have been used for describing organisational culture and found 257 different ones.
Of course, some of these are conceptually very similar and can be grouped into a smaller
set. Actually, some authors, adopting a qualitative approach to assessing culture, have
argued that all organisations are unique and that it makes little sense to attempt to
reduce descriptions of culture to a small number of dimensions (e.g. Reiman and
Oedewald, 2002; Schein, 1992, 1999). Nonetheless, to make the tasks of description and
gap analysis manageable, it is preferable to work with a relatively small set.

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Table 4.1 Key elements of health and safety management

Key elements of health Examples of types of involvement

and safety management

Policy Workforce involvement in the development or review of policy

statements
Organising
Control Giving employees specific health and safety responsibilities
Communication Employee involvement in delivering health and safety messages
Competence Employee involvement in design and delivery of training
Cooperation Employee involvement in safety committees; participation in
suggestion schemes
Planning
Objectives or plans Employee involvement in developing health and safety objectives
or plans
Risk assessments Employee involvement in risk assessments
Procurement Employee involvement in the procurement of equipment,
materials, etc.
Design Employee involvement in the design of new ways of working
Problem solving Employee involvement in solving workplace problems
Risk control systems Employee involvement in planning, designing and operationalising
risk control systems

Measurement
Active monitoring Employee involvement in carrying out inspections, site checks,
work observations, etc.
Reactive monitoring Employee involvement in accident, incident and near hit
investigations and hazard spotting
Audit and review Employee involvement in audits and reviews of the efficiency,
effectiveness and reliability of the health and safety management
system

Experience with a number of transport, civil engineering and construction companies

suggests that there are four primary dimensions and four secondary dimensions that are
particularly relevant for describing asset management culture. All of these dimensions
have frequently been identified in models of organisational culture in one guise or
another, particularly in the work of Hofstede (1980) and O’Reilly et al. (1991).

4. Dimensions of an asset management culture

4.1 Primary dimensions of asset management cultures
The primary dimensions of asset management culture, not surprisingly, relate to the
primary goals of Asset Management, namely, optimising the delivery, performance and

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safety of assets (e.g. see IAM, 2014). Note, however, that all the dimensions are bipolar.
This is important. If every organisation has a different culture because they operate
under different constraints and choose to achieve their goals in different ways, it follows
that there is no such thing as one correct asset management culture. Asset-dependent
businesses working in the same sector can differ on every dimension, even being at the
opposite ends of some of the poles, yet still be high performing. The key is to create the
best type of culture for your organisation.

4.1.1 The participative–authoritative dimension

Companies at the authoritative pole run on strict command-and-control lines, where the
responsibilities of staff at different management levels are clearly defined and differen-
tiated, delegation is limited and decision making and control are centralised. An example
of this would be Asset Management Policy and Strategy being set at headquarters,
without any involvement of local staff, and then imposed on all parts of the organisation.
At the participative pole, delegation is widespread, staff at all levels are empowered to take
responsibility and make their own decisions and control is decentralised. An example
would be staff in local offices or depots being encouraged to design their own, unique asset
maintenance plans to cope with local conditions. Of course, companies are very rarely at
either of these extremes; their cultures will involve some mix of authoritative and partici-
pative features. External factors may also constrain their freedom to adopt a particular
culture. For example, companies involved in safety-critical work may be forced by the
regulatory environment to adopt a more authoritative culture than they would like.

4.1.2 The risk-taking–cautious dimension

An organisation’s culture with respect to risk-taking is also likely to be severely con-
strained by its regulatory environment. Actually, this is one of the most difficult areas
of culture to get right. For example, all levels of staff in highly regulated industries, from
senior managers to front line operatives, tend to feel frustrated by how long change takes
to accomplish. This will often be the result of thorough but time consuming change
control and acceptance processes. Similar problems arise with attempts at staff empow-
erment. Operatives often find themselves faced with an impossible dilemma. Senior
managers will tell them, on the one hand, that they are keen to encourage innovative
thinking, personal responsibility and delegated decision making while, on the other
hand, stressing that they want zero-accident, error-free performance. The position taken
up by management on this dimension often reflects wishful thinking – their being clear
about what the organisation can really tolerate by way of risk-taking is vitally important.

4.1.3 The short-term–long-term dimension

Where organisations stand on this dimension is often determined by the nature of their
asset base and the type of economic and commercial environment they operate in. So, for
example, companies with assets that last for decades, like buildings or bridges, need to

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have a long-term perspective. The biggest problem such companies have is getting staff to
raise their sights above day-to-day operational firefighting and take a more strategic view.
Companies with short-lived assets and a high rate of replacement can afford to be much
more short-term although, usually, they must also have an eye to their sustainability.

4.1.4 The individualistic–collective dimension

This dimension is concerned with how you choose to allocate responsibilities and
accountabilities and how you choose to recognise, reward and deal with desirable and
undesirable performance. In individualistic cultures, individual staff members are
explicitly given responsibilities for certain activities and personally rewarded, through
recognition, status, pay, bonuses and so on, for successful performance and personally
disciplined for unacceptable performance. In collective cultures, responsibilities are
assigned to groups or teams, individuals are never singled out for praise or recognition,
and rewards (and punishments) are allocated to the group as a whole. One of the
problems in many companies is that individuals are given demanding personal responsi-
bilities but are then not appropriately recognised or rewarded for it.

Conceptually, these four dimensions are independent. It is certainly possible, in prin-

ciple, for a company’s culture to have them in any combination, and all combinations
can be found. However, in practice, some cultural profiles are more likely to occur than
others. For example, long-term cultures are more likely to be cautious and collective,
while short-term cultures are more likely to be risk-taking and individualistic. Authori-
tative cultures are likely to also focus on individual responsibility but be cautious.

4.2 Secondary dimensions of asset management cultures

The secondary dimensions are more related to beliefs about the way asset management
companies should operate.

4.2.1 The outcome–process dimension

The main difference here is between companies whose goal is to achieve results at any
cost and companies who insist that work is always undertaken in the correct manner even
if that means deadlines are missed or profits constrained. Again, companies do not
always have a free hand in this. Those working in safety-critical and highly regulated
sectors often have to adopt a relatively process-oriented culture. Furthermore, position
on this dimension is often related to position on the risk-taking–cautious dimension.
Cautious cultures are more likely to be associated with process cultures.

4.2.2 The certainty–uncertainty dimension

This dimension is concerned with the extent to which you believe it is possible to under-
stand and control all the factors that might influence your business. The performance of
assets in closed systems, where there is little influence from external factors, will usually

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be much more predictable than those in open systems. The certainty arising from this
situation makes it easier to think long-term, design processes that can be used in all cir-
cumstances and avoid risk.

4.2.3 The accepting–questioning dimension

This dimension is often closely associated with the authoritative–participative dimension
and relates to the extent to which subordinates are expected to do what they are told
without question. In particular, organisations that have a culture of centralised control
are more likely to want an accepting culture. Questioning cultures are more common in
organisations with high levels of delegation and a decentralised, risk-taking culture.

4.2.4 The information-restricting–information-sharing dimension

Where you stand on this dimension often depends on the company’s security require-
ments. Security can involve physical, public, personal, financial and commercial issues.
Companies need to be clear about the extent to which they expect staff to share infor-
mation with each other, with competitors, with members of the public and so on. Most
asset-dependent businesses want to encourage information sharing between relevant
staff even if they want to restrict it otherwise. However, this goal is sometimes blocked
by conflict between sub-cultures. This is often a result of individuals or groups wanting
to hold onto their own information as a way of increasing their own status or power.

5. Culture assessment methodology

Two quite different aspects of culture assessment methodology need to be taken into
account, as follows.

g The first concerns the methods you might use for defining and establishing the
culture you want.
g The second concerns how to measure what your current organisational climate is
and whether it is consistent with the desired culture.

It has already been stressed that culture development and culture change stem, primarily,
from the top of the organisation. Certainly, they are heavily influenced by leadership
style and different leadership styles can result in completely different but equally effective
cultures. Therefore, any attempt to define and establish the desired culture must start
with the top management team. Initial investigations may involve the identification of
personal opinions; this can be done either through questionnaires or interviews. One
of the key advantages of doing this on an individual basis initially is that it allows you
to identify areas where there is marked disagreement between senior managers.

Disagreement is not always a bad thing. Senior managers may, quite legitimately, value
different cultures in their parts of the organisation. However, too often, different cultural

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aspirations reflect fundamentally different beliefs, values and philosophies; this can be
very counterproductive – with senior management sending contradictory messages to
staff about their cultural and behavioural expectations, producing uncertainty and
inconsistency. So the process of establishing the desired culture must include a discussion
between senior managers in which they identify and resolve disagreements and establish
cultural aspirations that they are all willing to support. This takes time that all too few
top management teams are willing to commit.

The existing climate can be measured in a number of ways. Good assessment uses a
combination of methods. One of the most common is questionnaire surveys, which have
the advantage that they can be done company-wide, making them highly inclusive and
standardised, in turn, allowing for meaningful comparisons to be drawn across different
parts of the organisation. The downsides are that they provide a high-level snapshot,
which may be too coarse-grained to suggest meaningful interventions. In addition,
questionnaires typically have to be kept short so that participants will complete them;
this means that important areas can be missed. Interviews, focus groups and content
analysis of written submissions can all be used to address these problems but tend either
to be time consuming and expensive or to provide poor coverage.

All these methods are faced with the danger that participants may either lack awareness
of what is really going on or have their own agendas, which distort the picture being pre-
sented. Direct observation of such events as team meetings, interdisciplinary meetings,
briefing sessions and work groups can address this problem but, of course, also has the
problem of being time consuming, costly and partial. The final method, therefore, is to
identify performance indicators collected by the company that shed light on the current
climate. These data indicators my be more objective but often suffer from being only
indirectly related to climate and culture and having very poor data characteristics – safety
data being a prime example of the latter problem.

This mix of advantages and disadvantages should make it clear why a combination of
approaches is preferable.

6. Shaping the asset management culture

6.1 Incentives for people in Asset Management roles
As noted previously, it is not enough to have a vision of the desired culture. You also need
to work out how best to motivate staff to adopt it and persist with these motivational
mechanisms until it is embedded in the organisation. A key part of these embedding
mechanisms are the incentives offered to staff to adopt the desired culture. These can
be physical and psychological and include the full range of factors that influence job
satisfaction. So you need to consider tangible rewards, such as pay and bonuses, intangible

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rewards, such as praise and recognition, and status-related rewards, such as empowerment
and delegation – all associated with personal involvement and engagement.

Different incentives are appropriate for different types of culture. There is little point in
encouraging empowerment and delegation in a highly authoritative culture. Personal
bonuses may be an effective incentive in an individualistic culture but counterproductive
in a collective culture. Incentives, therefore, need to be carefully chosen so that they will
support the desired culture.

6.2 Management commitment to Asset Management

The relationship between management and staff is perhaps the most commonly identified
factor in culture development (see, for example, Dedobbeleer and Béland, 1998). The
extent to which staff believe in the culture being promoted is strongly influenced by their
perception of whether managers demonstrate belief in and acceptance of the culture.
Managers can effectively scupper a company’s culture through any of the following.

g Inconsistency. This is particularly the case in the decisions they make and the rules
they apply.
g Unjust decisions. Staff will put up with a lot as long as they believe they are being
treated equably.
g Under-resourcing. There is no point telling people how important Asset
Management is if it is understaffed and underfunded.
g Inattention. Evidence that managers do not pay serious attention to Asset
Management will reduce the impact of any senior-level pronouncements. If
Asset Management does not appear in meeting agendas, job titles or
organisational structures, or asset management issues are not listened to and
learnt from, it will not be taken seriously.

Failures in these areas can have disastrous consequences. For example, Rear Admiral
Grace Hopper, in her review of the Challenger disaster, identified the following failings
at NASA

g inconsistent definitions across the organisation

g inconsistent management practices across the organisation; for example, some
centres make extensive use of planning and analysis tools while others relied only
on following existing processes
g the invalid assumption that classifications in job descriptions are sufficient to
understand the knowledge possessed by holders of those jobs
g no consistent, systematic aggregation of data so that the organisation never had a
complete picture of its resources
g no organisation-wide buy-in or, indeed, approach to capital management.

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Even if managers are committed to the desired culture, they need to consider which man-
agement styles will best suit their purpose. A number of tactical approaches might be
considered. These can be roughly grouped into three main classes

g leadership (including education, communication, facilitation and management

support)
g accommodation (including participation and negotiation)
g enforcement (including manipulation, co-option and coercion).

The leadership approach assumes that management action can directly influence and
change culture. This approach is central to many process models, which tend to empha-
sise the importance of management activities related to commitment, communication,
competence management (especially assessment and training), procedure and process
design (e.g. Flin et al., 2000; Gadd and Collins, 2002).

The accommodation approach assumes that culture is very difficult to change and that
the best tactic is to recognise what sort of culture already exists and make sure that all
changes are consistent with that culture. Approaches that recognise the importance of
sub- and counter-cultures tend to fall into this group.

Enforcement approaches assume that culture results from behaviour and not the other
way around. The core notion is that behaving in a particular way has consequences for
the individual. If those consequences are sufficiently important and reinforce the behav-
iour (either positive or negative), it is more likely that the behaviour will recur. If you
constrain people to behave in a particular way for long enough and they see that the
consequences of this are favourable, they will eventually assimilate the styles and values
associated with the behaviours into the culture. This is the concept that underpins behav-
ioural modification theories and informs much of the thinking on how to promote
behavioural safety within organisations (e.g. Fleming and Lardner, 2002).

These change options are not mutually exclusive. Some combinations of them could be
applied effectively.

6.3 Support for asset management cultures

Even if your desired culture is embedded in the company climate, there is no guarantee
that you will get the behaviour and performance you want. People often act irrationally.
They don’t always behave in accordance with the attitudes they express and the beliefs
that they hold. Some of this is due to personal psychology. For example, people are
perfectly capable of simultaneously holding two contradictory or opposing attitudes and
behaving sometimes in accordance with one attitude and sometimes with the other
(Ajzen, 2005). The reason they may behave more often in one way than the other is that
one is easier and has more obvious or more immediate benefits. Therefore, managers

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need to do everything they can to make sure that desired behaviours are the easiest way
of doing things or, failing that, that their benefits are obvious. From an Asset
Management perspective, you need to make sure that

g the procedures and processes you follow (e.g. for updating asset databases or risk
registers) are self-evidently fit-for-purpose
g the techniques and methods applied (e.g. whole-life costing, demand analysis) give
credible results
g staff are well trained in the processes, procedures and techniques they are expected
to apply
g the company is structured, and work is organised, in a way that makes it easy for
people in Asset Management roles to do their work effectively and efficiently.

If support systems like these are not in place, staff will quickly become demotivated and
systems and practices become inconsistent. Examples of these problems can be found in
the Fujitsu organisation prior to 2002, as described by Locke and McCarthy (2002).

g Numerous business applications needed data.

g Each application obtained data from different sources, often by manual input.
g Each application needed significant administration effort to manage the data, or
the work was not done, so the data were completely unreliable.
g There was no confidence that the data in one application were accurate or
matched the data in other applications, but applications were integrated,
so synchronisation of data was essential to the integrity of outputs.

Their solution, incidentally, was to create an enterprise reference service, which com-
prised a common central store of information with clear data ownership.

6.4 Dealing with pressures and barriers to asset management culture

Conflicts do not only arise within individuals. Pressure can be put on staff by their peers,
managers, friends and family to behave in unacceptable ways. Peer pressure is a particu-
larly powerful influence for good or bad. Goal conflicts are also all too common – for
example, the goal of doubling an asset’s life expectancy without spending any money
on it or compromising safety.

A strong culture is one where staff have a strong sense of belonging to the company and a
powerful sense of allegiance to their colleagues whom they trust to do things the right
way. Problems arise when you have the latter but not the former or when staff feel
allegiance to the people they work with day-to-day but not to anyone else in the organ-
isation. Perceived unfair discontinuities in the way staff at different levels are treated is
another sure-fire way of diluting the company culture.

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The symptoms of a weak culture are similar to those of a failing culture. A number of
typical counterproductive behaviours will be observed. How serious things have got can
be gauged from the seriousness of counterproductive behaviours. Furnham and Taylor
(2004) suggest that disenchanted staff go through three increasingly serious stages –
disillusionment, resentment and revenge.

g Disillusionment is marked by such behaviours as reduced efficiency, loss of

enthusiasm, constant complaining, poor timekeeping and increased absenteeism.
g Resentment is marked by such behaviours as constantly disparaging colleagues,
rule-breaking and duplicity.
g Revenge is marked by such behaviours as deliberate sabotage and the release of
confidential information.

If you are concerned that your organisation may have a failing culture, look out for these
behaviours and try to stop them before they escalate. Improved allegiance and positive
peer pressure can be generated by encouraging meaningful multidisciplinary working
and regular sharing of ideas and paying attention to team composition. Obviously,
removing goal conflicts and demonstrating that you really care for the welfare of your
staff will also make a difference.

6.5 Managing sub-cultures

One way that weak and failing cultures arise is from conflicting sub-cultures. It helps to
consider the clashes that might arise between different types of culture.

g Handy (1985) identifies four culture types: power cultures, role cultures, task
cultures and person cultures.
g Deal and Kennedy (1982) also identify four culture types: the ‘tough guy, macho’
culture, the ‘work hard/play hard’ culture, the ‘bet-your-company culture’ and the
‘process’ culture.
g If one part of your company has a power culture but another a person culture, or
if one part has a ‘you are your company’ culture and another part has a process
culture, they are unlikely to be able to work together effectively unless they fully
understand each other and appreciate why their culture works for them.

However, such typologies have been criticised as being too simplistic (e.g. Parker, 2000).
Organisations rarely, if ever, fit neatly into one culture type. Furthermore, large organ-
isations often have complex cultures with several, sometimes competing, sometimes
complementary, sub-cultures.

A number of authors have suggested both that different organisations may require differ-
ent cultures to achieve best performance and that different parts of the same organisation

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can be better served by different cultures. For example, Maloney (2003) notes that,
within the construction industry, organisations will vary on a number of cultural dimen-
sions, such as locus of authority and decision making, dependent on such factors as the
stability of the workforce, time and cost pressures and variability of demand. Cooper
(2000) suggests that ‘although an organisation may possess a dominating ‘‘cultural
theme’’, there are likely to be a number of variations in the way in which the theme is
expressed throughout the organisation’. Schein (1996) has claimed that many organis-
ations have three distinct cultures – operator, engineer and executive – and that the dis-
tinct sub-cultures may be necessary for a successful organisation. Even counter-cultures
are thought to sometimes serve useful functions, such as ‘providing a safe haven for
innovative ideas’ (Martin and Siehl, 1983).

The way in which asset management issues are dealt with at a local level can often be
traced back to historical and cultural influences. Where these influences are different, the
approach to Asset Management (or managing assets) is also likely to be different but
may be equally effective if it best suits the local organisation.

7. Cultural maturity
So far, only the indications of a failing culture have been discussed. Companies will also
want to know if their cultural development is progressing appropriately. In conclusion,
therefore, it is worth considering cultural maturity and how to locate your company on a
cultural maturity scale.

There are many types of maturity scale. Many of these derive from models of manage-
ment maturity, as is the case with the models of infrastructure management maturity
discussed by Richard Edwards and Martin Pilling in Chapters 1 and 2. Many of
these models are based on the concept of process maturity but such models are only
relevant to one aspect of culture and are, therefore, inadequate for describing cultural
maturity.

There are, however, a number of safety culture maturity models, which provide a better
basis for assessing levels of asset management cultural maturity. The scale given in
Table 4.2 is based on the work of Fleming (1999) and is adapted from a scale produced
by Gordon and Kirwan (2004) for interpreting the results of the Eurocontrol
Experimental Centre safety culture survey.

It can be seen from Table 4.2 that Level 1 is only concerned with technical support
systems. Level 2 shows a higher level of management commitment but only in some areas
and pays no attention to how staff are incentivised. In Level 3, the organisation has
started to deal with incentives by involving and engaging staff in the asset management
process and to deal with the pressures these staff may face. It also has a more effective

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Table 4.2 Asset management cultural maturity scale

Level Stage Description

1 Emerging Asset Management is defined as a set of technical and procedural

solutions plus compliance with regulations. Asset Management is
not seen as a key business risk. Asset failures are seen as
unavoidable.

2 Managing Asset Management is seen as a business risk but is solely defined

in terms of adherence to techniques, rules and procedures. Asset
failures are seen as preventable, but asset performance is
inadequately monitored.

3 Involving Asset failure rates are relatively low. Management think that front
line employees are critical to Asset Management. Asset
performance is actively monitored.

4 Proactive Managers and staff recognise that a wide range of factors cause
asset failures and affect asset performance. The organisation puts
effort into proactive measures to prevent asset failures and
enhance asset performance.

5 Continually improving There has been a sustained period of low asset failure rates,
but there is no feeling of complacency at any level. All staff are
constantly striving to find better ways of improving asset
performance.

range of system support mechanisms in place. In Level 4, the organisation is demonstrat-

ing a high level of management commitment, including learning from experience, and
has a competent workforce fully alert to asset management issues. Level 5 is, of course,
the holy grail, where not only are all staff motivated, competent and supported but they
also have a strong sense of allegiance to the company and each other and are providing
mutual support in asset management activities.

8. In conclusion – the seven revelations

If nothing else, the preceding discussion has identified that assessing and changing
culture can be a complex business. Before beginning such activities, you need to confirm
whether a poor or inappropriate culture is a problem within your organisation. To this
end, Johnson and Lloyd (2014) have identified a small set of indicators of organisational
barriers and pressures that get in the way of establishing an effective asset management
culture. They summarise these as the ‘seven revelations on the road to asset management
excellence’ (see Table 4.3) and discuss how these can indicate other sorts of cultural
problems.

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Table 4.3 The seven revelations of Asset Management-friendly cultures

Revelation 1 Asset Management is a strategic approach, not a formula.

Revelation 2 The Asset Management System is the end of the beginning, not the beginning
of the end.
Revelation 3 A collective shift in beliefs and attitudes is needed.
Revelation 4 Asset Management imposes a responsibility on individuals and groups to learn
from each other.
Revelation 5 Asset Management is driven by collective learning underpinned by collectively
shared knowledge.
Revelation 6 Asset Management requires personal commitment as well as professional
development.
Revelation 7 Asset Management demands openness about past performance.

Essentially, the extent to which an organisation realises these revelations indicates how
likely it is to create an effective asset management culture.

Where organisations fail to realise or act on these revelations, the task of creating an
effective asset management culture becomes much harder. As noted, there are many
influences on the development of organisational culture. The attitudes, beliefs and values
of an organisation’s leaders are only one part of this, but they are of central importance
and unless leaders understand the significance of these revelations, very little is likely to
change.

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