Introduction

As an administrator, have you ever wondered what makes your organization tick? Have you ever tried to implement a change that seemed to be logical and in the best interest of everyone, only to be met with total resistance? The answers may lie in organizational culture theory. In this article, I will briefly describe the concept of organizational culture and why it should matter to program administrators. I also suggest possible methods for determining an organization’s culture and, finally, explain what organizations can do with this knowledge once they have it.

What Is Organizational Culture?

According to Schein (2010), organizational culture is defined as

…a pattern of shared basic assumptions learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, which has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems. (p. 18)

If we assume this definition to be true, there are many different threads that must be examined to completely understand it. First, there is “a pattern of shared basic assumptions” to consider. Schein (1990) tells us that these assumptions are actually underlying assumptions that are most often so well ingrained that organizational members are not even aware of their existence. The assumptions manifest themselves in the behaviors of the group and covertly guide the group’s approach to problem solving, leading us to the second part of the definition. All organizations must learn to adapt to outside pressures and changes, as well as learn how to integrate new members, and these patterns of assumptions guide these processes. However, in order for an assumption to become permanently integrated, there must have been positive outcomes related to this behavior at some point. Finally, culture is disseminated by passing these underlying assumptions on to new group members through training or other group interaction, thereby completing the organizational culture process.

The Effect of Organizational Culture

Organizational culture is arguably responsible for an organization’s hierarchy and system of management, the atmosphere of a workplace, daily routines, and an organization’s reaction/response to change, including the success or failure of change initiatives. It is important for organizational leaders to have at least a minimal understanding of organizational culture, because, according to Schein, “culture is ultimately created, embedded, evolved, and ultimately manipulated by leaders” (2010, p. 3), and though leaders do have some control over culture, they can also be bound by it, so knowledge of the culture can help to “specify what kind of leadership will be acceptable” (p. 3) and ultimately most effective.

Organizational cultures are highly varied and some cultures are more stabilized than others depending on their longevity and perhaps the field in which they fall. Despite this variability, most organizational cultures are similar in that they provide a sense of comfort to their members. According to Schein, “once a group has learned to hold common assumptions…the anxiety that results from the inability to understand or predict events happening around the group is reduced by the shared learning” (1990, p. 111). In other words, organizational culture provides an unconscious guidebook of patterned responses for its members that allows them to better respond to new and potentially unsettling internal or external phenomena. If a leader tries to implement something that conflicts with the accepted patterns of behavior, he or she may very likely be met with resistance.

How to Define an Organization’s Culture

Defining an organization’s culture can be a difficult process and one that must be undertaken very carefully. In attempting to define a culture, leaders run the risk of oversimplifying something that is highly complex and made up of many intricate and often elusive pieces. However, having an idea of at least some of the defining characteristics of the organization’s culture can provide useful information on how best to lead it.

There are many ways to study organizational culture. If your goal is major change, the best way may be to perform a comprehensive ethnography. This often involves hiring an outside consultant to observe the day-to-day operations of the organization as well as conduct interviews with employees. From these observations and interviews, the ethnographer can then draw conclusions about the culture of the organization. The problem with ethnographies is that they can be very expensive to conduct and that they can have a big, sometimes unintentional impact; when someone from the outside comes in and spends a considerable amount of time at an organization, employees will expect and maybe even fear the results.

A more cost-effective and potentially less invasive approach is to conduct a culture survey. Culture surveys or questionnaires are typically distributed to all employees of an organization. Based on the results of these surveys, an organization can be placed within a typology. Typologies have advantages and disadvantages. Typologies are useful in that “they attempt to order a great variety of different phenomena” (Schein, 2010, p. 158), but putting boundaries on an abstract concept like organizational culture can be limiting and risky. By narrowing the concept of culture, important considerations may be missed.

However, if approached the right way, culture surveys can be very useful to leaders because they are based on employees’ perceptions of the culture. Understanding these perceptions is helpful when developing change programs. For example, if most employees think positively about an aspect of the organization where changes are being planned, administrators will need to approach this change cautiously. Additionally, culture surveys can be helpful when two different types of organizations are merging their operations, such as when a university brings in an outside corporation to run a pathways program. Knowing how each unit thinks and operates (corporate versus academic) may help when attempting to combine operations into a new shared culture.

One example of a culture survey is the Organizational Description Questionnaire (ODQ)® developed by Bass and Avolio (1992). This survey measures whether an organization is more transactional or transformational in nature. Transactional organizations place a strong emphasis on formal agreements and procedures, have a heavy focus on management versus leadership, and allow for little decision-making on the part of the employee. Conversely, transformational organizations emphasize vision, values, and fulfillment; place a stronger focus on leadership than management; and encourage employee decision-making. Most organizations have both transactional and transformational tendencies, and determining the extent to which an organization is more transactional or transformational can be very useful for administrators. When using the ODQ®, it is given to all members of the organization and, from the results, organizations can be placed into one of nine typologies. For example, an IEP I recently studied fell into what the ODQ® terms the Moderated 4I’s category, which means that this organization is mostly transformational while at the same time moderately transactional. In other words, they focus on vision, values, and fulfillment, but often move toward more formalization of agreements and procedures.

Using the Information From a Cultural Analysis

As I mentioned earlier, a cultural analysis can be a very useful tool for a leader. However, leaders should not study culture just for the sake of it. According to Schein, “Assessment makes sense when there is some problem to be illuminated or some specific purpose for which we need information” (2010, p. 177). A better understanding of the culture may help leaders identify areas of discontent that need to be shored up, or to understand the best way to proceed with a change project.

To provide a more concrete example, I will refer back to the transformational versus transactional typology. When implementing a change initiative in a transformational organization, success is more likely if everyone in the organization is given the opportunity to provide comment or input at the beginning and at various other points in the process. Additionally, explaining the overarching purpose and vision behind the change process would be helpful. In transactional organizations, providing a very clear outline of steps and procedures for implementing the change process would likely make the change initiative more successful, and it might not be necessary to seek employee input.

Conclusion

In this article, I provided a brief overview of the complex topic of organizational culture. While a culture analysis of an organization will not provide a panacea for all its problems and should only be done with a specific purpose in mind, it can be very useful when considering a change initiative or for learning employees’ perceptions of the organization.

References

Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1992). Organizational Description Questionnaire: Manual, instrument, scoring guide. Menlo Park, CA: Mind Garden.

Schein, E. H. (1990). Organizational culture. American Psychologist, 40(2), 109–119.

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership (4th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Dr. Elizabeth Gould is an assistant language specialist at the University of Kansas Applied English Center, where she has been on faculty since 2011. Her duties encompass a mix of teaching, research, and administration, including facilitating CEA accreditation efforts.