AFM280 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Telling Stories, Encana, Organizational Culture
17 May 2018
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Chapter 15- organizational culture and change
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
• Organizational culture as the shared social knowledge within an organization regarding the rules,
norms, and values that shape the attitudes and behaviours of its employees
• Culture is social knowledge among members of the organization. Transfer of knowledge
between employees by explicit communication, simple observation, etc.
• Culture is shared knowledge
• Culture tells employees what the rules, norms, and values are within the organization
• Culture shapes and reinforces certain employee attitudes and behaviours by creating a
system of control over employees
• Individual goals and values will grow over time to match those of the organization
WHY DO SOME ORGANIZATIONS HAVE DIFFERENT CULTURES THAN OTHERS?
• Response to when people ask you how is it like at your work place
• E.g. describe the work atmosphere on a regular day
• E.g. hat defies as suess at y opay
• To gie a full feel for the full rage of potetial aser to the hat’s it like there, reie the faets
of culture in more details
CULTURE COMPONENTS
• Three ajor opoets to ay orgaizatio’s ulture
• Observable artifacts
• Espoused values
• Basic underlying assumptions
• View organization as an onion and different layers
• Some components are easily observable and some are remaining a mystery until you peel
back the outside layer to gauge the values and assumptions that lie beneath
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find more resources at oneclass.com
OBSERVABLE ARTIFACTS
• Observable artifacts are the aifestatios of a orgaizatio’s culture that employees can easily
see or talk about. They supply the signals that employees interpret to gauge how they should act
during the workday
• Primary means of trasittig a orgaizatio’s ulture to its orkfore
• Six major types of artifacts
• Symbols
• Physical structures
• Language
• Stories
• Rituals
• Ceremonies
• Symbols can be found throughout an organization, from its corporate logo to the images it places on
its website to the uniforms its employees wear
• E.g. Nike’s soosh represents: speed, movement, velocity
• Physical structures – the orgaizatio’s uildigs ad iteral offie desigs
• What message is conveyed when a large desk divides the office so that you sit across from
your professor when you meet? Compare that to when you sit beside your professor.
• Which of these two desk configurations conveys a collaborative, informal orientation
toward students
• Language reflects the jargon, slang, and slogans used within the walls of an organization
• Stories consist of anecdotes, accounts, legends, and myths that are passed down from cohort to
cohort within an organization
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• Telling stories can be a major mechanism through which leaders and employees describe
what the company values or finds important
• They provide an accepted (and celebrated) account of something the organization values,
such as innovation or entrepreneurial spirit
• Strong power in telling stories
• E.g. talk aout uers, ad people’s eyes glaze oer; talk aout oe hild ho
died unnecessarily, and no one can walk aay fro that
• Rituals are the daily or weekly planned routines that occur in an organization
• E.g. casual Fridays – wear jeans
• This idea above reinforces the idea that work can be relaxed and fun
• E.g. TELUS make employees take and pass a course on ethics
• Ceremonies are formal events, generally performed in front of an audience of organizational
members
• E.g. graduates and their families experience a public celebration of hard work
• Organization use public reward ceremonies to recognize individuals and teams who best
exemplify what the culture values (e.g., safety; high performance; cost saving suggestions)
• Used to convey important cultural changes
• E.g. an 800-page policy that was despised by employees was burned and replaced
by an 80-page policy manual
ESPOUSED VALUES
• Espoused values are the belief, philosophies, and norms that a company explicitly states
• Range from published documents such as a mission statement to verbal statements made to
employees by executives and managers
• E.g. the constitution of Encana states that Encanans value accountability, imagination,
adaptability, leadership, and urgency, and that these values need to be demonstrated daily
• Important to know the distinction between espoused values and enacted values
• Saying vs acting upon the saying to support it
• When a company holds to its espoused values over time and regardless of the situations it operates
in, the values become more believable both to employees and outsiders
• In times of economic downtown, staying true to espoused values is hard
BASIC UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS
• Basic underlying assumptions are taken-for-granted beliefs and philosophies that are so engrained
that employees simply act on them rather than questioning the validity of their behaviour in a given
situation
• May not be consciously apparent
• E.g. in an occupation such as engineering, it would be inconceivable to deliberately design
something that is unsafe; it is a taken-for-granted assumption that things should be safe
• hidden beliefs that are most likely to dictate employee behaviour and affect employee attitudes
• aspects of an organization that are the most long-lasting and difficult to change
GENERAL CULTURE TYPES
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Organizational culture: organizational culture as the shared social knowledge within an organization regarding the rules, norms, and values that shape the attitudes and behaviours of its employees, culture is social knowledge among members of the organization. Individual goals and values will grow over time to match those of the organization. Observable artifacts: observable artifacts are the (cid:373)a(cid:374)ifestatio(cid:374)s of a(cid:374) orga(cid:374)izatio(cid:374)"s culture that employees can easily see or talk about. They supply the signals that employees interpret to gauge how they should act during the workday: primary means of tra(cid:374)s(cid:373)itti(cid:374)g a(cid:374) orga(cid:374)izatio(cid:374)"s (cid:272)ulture to its (cid:449)orkfor(cid:272)e, six major types of artifacts. Language: symbols, physical structures, stories, rituals, ceremonies, symbols can be found throughout an organization, from its corporate logo to the images it places on its website to the uniforms its employees wear, e. g. Compare that to when you sit beside your professor: which of these two desk configurations conveys a collaborative, informal orientation toward students.
