Organizational Culture Theory and Critical Theory

1
Organizational Culture Theory and Critical Theory

• Move from systemic and structural issues to . . .
  
• Culture Theory
• Understanding organizations through a cultural
  lens with a focus on values, attitudes and
  beliefs of members
• Critical Theory
• Revealing how social and technological structures
  within organizations serve to oppress workers.

2
Organizational Culture FOCUS

• Changes in Global Marketplace
• Intense Competition
• Reconsider Traditional Management Practices
• Shift from traditional, highly rationale theories
  to more fluid and irrational
• Societal consciousness-raising regarding
  oppressive atmosphere in organizations for
  workers, women, and minorities
• Inequities and Oppressive Circumstances

3
Organizational Culture Theory

• State University vs. Southern University Case
  Study
• Attempts to explain behavior within organizations
• Attempts to account for differences among
  organizations
• Description of how members of a group live and
  make sense of their world together
• Culture provides a lens through which its members
  interpret, interact with, and make sense of
  reality
• Culture helps to explain patterns of behavior and
  thought that characterize individuals and the
  groups with which they are associated
• Focus on VALUES, ATTITUDES, and BELIEFS of members

4
Organizational Culture Theory

• Organizational culture provides meanings for
  routine organizational events, thereby reducing
  the amount of cognitive processing and energy
  members need to expend throughout the day.

5
Misunderstandings and Organizational Culture

• Cultural variations are often the cause of major
  and minor misunderstandings as groups come into
  contact with one another
• Value of cultural perspective is in illustrating
  the misunderstandings that occur within an
  organization
• Culture may hinder organizations from progress in
  the future
• Organizations consist of subcultures
• Mergers and International Mergers are also a
  source of misunderstandings

6
Two Competing Perspectives on Organizational
Culture

• Culture as Variable
• Something an organization has
• By-product of organizational activities
• Stories, rites, rituals, and heroes
• Culture is changeable by management
• Organizational tool for enhancing
  organizational effectiveness
• In Search of Excellence (Peters and Waterman)
• Corporate Cultures The Rites and Rituals of
  Corporate Life (Deal Kennedy)
• Strong cultures have four key components
• Values - basic beliefs and concepts (concrete
  guidelines for success)
• Heroes - personify cultural values
• Rites and rituals - public performances that
  display and enact values
• Cultural network - primary carrier of cultural
  information (stories, myths, legends, jokes, and
  gossip)
• Criticisms shortsighted, more than strategy,
  not just a skill culture is a complex,
  communicative phenomenon rooted in the history of
  the organizations events.

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Two Competing Perspectives on Organizational
Culture

• Culture as Root Metaphor
• Something an organization is as opposed to
  something it has
• Organizations as expressive forms, manifestations
  of human consciousness
• Culture is the process of sense-making created
  and sustained through communication and
  interactions
• Rituals and stories are generative processes
  the yield and shape meanings
• Provides deep understanding of the way members of
  a particular organization make sense of the world
  around them
• The essence of an organization is culture
• Three Primary Elements
• Complex (multi-level construction of values,
  beliefs and attitudes)
• Communicative Construction (constructed and
  reconstructed through interaction)
• Subcultures and Countercultures
• Differential interaction
• Shared experiences
• Similar personal characteristics
• Comparisons on page 90.

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Comparison of Two Competing Perspectives on
Organizational Culture

• VARIABLE
• Something the organization has a tool, skill,
  or lever
• Inform workplace of values
• Change occurs through management directive and
  intervention

• ROOT METAPHOR
• Something the organization is expressive form
• Create sustain and influence culture
• Change occurs through natural evolution all
  members influence culture

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Definitions of Organizational Culture

• Three common characteristics
• Culture is SHARED
• Frameworks of understanding and interpreting
  organizational phenomena
• Culture is INTANGIBLE
• Consists of values, assumptions, norms, and
  frameworks
• Culture AFFECTS HUMAN BEHAVIOR
• Construction of human interaction that affects
  and is affected by the behavior of all members of
  the organization
• Other characteristics
• Communicative creations
• Cultures are created, sustained and and
  influenced by and through human interaction
• Historical
• Cultures emerge and develop over time

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Organizational Culture Defined

• Organizational culture is a communicatively
  constructed, historically based system of
  assumptions, values, and interpretive frameworks
  that guide and constrain organizational members
  as they perform their organizational roles and
  confront the challenges of their environment.

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Multi-level Perspective on Culture

• Scheins Model of Organizational Culture
• Three Interrelated Levels of Culture
• Artifacts and Creations
• tangible, physical, or hearable things in the
  environment of the organization
• Important to connect artifacts to values
• Values
• Sense of what ought to be, as distinct from
  what is
• Common basis for operating together
• Cognitive constructions
• Basic Assumptions - represent the essence of
  culture
• FIVE BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
• Humanitys relationship to nature
• The nature of reality and truth - is truth real
  or discovered?
• The nature of human nature
• The nature of human activity
• The nature of human relationships

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Critical Perspectives on Culture

• Critical Perspectives . . .
• Reject the notion that organizations are
  value-free sites
• Organizations are sites of struggle between
  management and workers resulting in domination
  and oppression of the powerless by the powerful.
• Critical Theory
• Karl Marx
• Roots in the Institute for Social Research in
  Frankfurt (Frankfurt School)
• Knowledge is not objective tainted by personal
  interests and the power structure
• Involvement in the inner workings of society to
  reveal contradictions associated with the
  imbalance of power
• Provide critique that allows for the reversal of
  oppressive conditions in the future
• Research goal reveal how social and
  technological structures within the organization
  serve to oppress workers
• Researchers must engage in consciousness-raising
  among organizational members

13
Critical Theory

• Organization as a Site of Domination
• Power, Hegemony, and Concertive Control
• Power - the possibility of imposing ones will
  upon the behavior of other persons
• Hegemony - the predominant influence over others
• Concertive Control - based on adherence to
  socially constructed norms and values developed
  by organizational members as they attempt to
  structure the environment
• Communication and Critical Theory
• Habermas - goal to develop a theory of society
  that aims at the self-emancipation of people from
  domination (the ideal speech situation)
• The utterances are truthful
• There is a legitimate relationship established
  between the participants
• The utterances are sincere
• The utterances are comprehensible

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Goal of Critical Theorists

• Attempt to uncover the communication
  practices, whether they be interpersonal,
  team-based, or organization-wide, that serve to
  promote an unhealthy imbalance in organizations.

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Critical Theory Issues and Challenges

• Creating a more human(e) workplace
• Oppressive reality of organizational life does
  not have to continue
• Oppression is not an inherent part of
  organizational life
• Workplace democracy
• Encourage SELF-REFLECTION
• Encourage COLLECTIVE DEVELOPMENT
• Encourage INDIVIDUAL OPPORTUNITY
• Critical theory offers a means of identifying
  elements of constraint and oppression and
  prescriptions for improving the situation
• The plight of women Feminist organizational
  communication
• Examine the oppressive circumstances experienced
  by women in the workplace
• Raise our collective consciousness regarding
  unequal treatment and oppression
• Attempts to uncover the assumptions upon which
  those circumstances are based
• Offers a variety of means by which the oppression
  can be alleviated

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Critical Theory Feminist Perspectives

• Liberal Feminists - advocate working within the
  existing structure
• Radical Feminists - argue for a separation of men
  and women
• Materialist Feminists - gender differences are
  socially constructed
• Goal Seek to show the centrality of language
  and interaction to the circumstances women face
  in the gendered workplace
• Organizational members are able to understand how
  their communicative actions and interactions
  contribute to either the perpetuation or the
  reversal of the current oppressive situation
  (change behavior, affect the behavior of others,
  help promote a more equitable and equal workplace
  for the sexes)

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Summary

• Similarities of Organizational Theory and
  Critical Theory
• Both theories call into question the theories and
  practices of the past and view organizations as
  more than the sum of management practices and
  task allocation
• Communication is central to both theories
• Most critical approaches to organizations realize
  that it is through communication that oppressive
  structures come into being and, in turn, restrict
  the communication of certain groups
• Communication is the way to freedom from those
  oppressive structures
• Intention of both theories do not serve to
  increase profits -- they excavate the underlying
  values and assumptions that guide organizational
  life and may serve to oppress certain members
• Critical theory is not as popular as
  organizational culture theory
• Most organizations are unwilling to make
  themselves vulnerable to disapproval (think about
  how this applies to your major research project!)