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2 Culture and Leadership

This document discusses the impact of culture on leadership and organizations. It explores definitions of organizational culture and how culture can be understood as both an independent and dependent variable. Frameworks for analyzing national and corporate culture like Hofstede's dimensions and Schein's levels are presented. The document questions whether culture can be actively managed or is passively created and sustained. It advocates applying anthropological lenses to better understand the underlying values and norms expressed through organizational rituals, stories, and symbols.

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Saathish Babu
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58 views17 pages

2 Culture and Leadership

This document discusses the impact of culture on leadership and organizations. It explores definitions of organizational culture and how culture can be understood as both an independent and dependent variable. Frameworks for analyzing national and corporate culture like Hofstede's dimensions and Schein's levels are presented. The document questions whether culture can be actively managed or is passively created and sustained. It advocates applying anthropological lenses to better understand the underlying values and norms expressed through organizational rituals, stories, and symbols.

Uploaded by

Saathish Babu
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The impact of culture on

leadership
Lecture plan
 
The significance of culture for organisations

Internal / corporate culture

External culture: culture in a global context


 
Some useful questions
The significance of culture for
organisations
• Roots in anthropology
• Shifts ‘attention’ away from scientific approaches
(Taylorism) to focusing on ‘non-rational’ aspects
of organising.
• Peters and Waterman’s influential book In Search
of Excellence (1982) argued that the most
successful companies had ‘strong’ cultures.
What do we mean by ‘culture’?

‘Culture is usually defined as social or normative


glue that holds an organisation together. It
expresses the values or social ideals and the
beliefs that organisation members come to share.
These values or patterns of belief are manifested
by symbolic devices such as myths, rituals, stories,
legends and specialised language.’ (Smircich,
1983: 344)
Alternative ways of thinking
about organisational culture
Distinction between saying that organisations have
culture and that organisations are cultures
(Smircich 1983)

Culture as an independent variable


-‘corporate’ culture (internal )
-national culture (external)
Culture as a way of thinking about organisations:
organisations as cultures
Alternative ways of thinking
about managing culture
  
Can we manipulate culture?

Are we powerless to affect culture?

Do we participate (actively or passively) in


creating and sustaining culture?
Schein’s iceburg
Artefacts

Visible behaviour

Underlying assumption
(often unconscious)
Applied to organisations….

Practices

Policies

Assumptions
about
organisational life
Culture in a global context
• The field of cross-cultural management is
dominated by Hofstede’s research,
• In which he surveyed employee attitudes in
66 divisions of IBM between 1966-1973,
• Often criticized as being simplistic and
based on poor research,
• But very influential all the same.
Hofstede’s dimensions
• Power distance
• Uncertainty avoidance
• Masculinity v. Femininity
• Individualism v. Communalism
• And later on a 5th dimension he called
‘Confucianism’ on long term versus short
term orientation.
Trompenaars and Hampden-
Turner’s dimensions
Universalism vs. particularism (What is more important, rules or
relationships?)
Individualism vs. collectivism (communitarianism) (Do we function in a
group or as individuals?)
Neutral vs. emotional (Do we display our emotions?)
Specific vs. diffuse (How separate we keep our private and working lives)
Achievement vs. ascription (Do we have to prove ourselves to receive
status or is it given to us?
Sequential vs. synchronic (Do we do things one at a time or several things
at once?)
Internal vs. external control (Do we control our environment or are we
controlled by it?)
Usefulness of the ‘dimensions’
approach
• Puts cultural differences ‘on the agenda’.
• Demonstrates the importance of taking culture into
account and not just assuming that all people think
alike or that there is ‘one best way’ of managing,
• Has been extremely influential (HSBC ads for
example),
• Provides an initial schema for beginning to think
more deeply about these differences
But…….
• Criticized for being over-simplistic: ignores the
many differences within cultures,
• Regards cultures as ‘fixed’ and unchanging rather
than always in flux,
• Primarily focused on national or regional cultures
rather than professional cultures, religious
cultures, ethnic cultures etc which may have very
different boundaries.
What do you think?
http://www.geert-hofstede.com/
Applying these ideas to studying
organisations….
• Involves using anthropological methods such as
attention to rituals, stories, ways of talking,
clothing, pictures etc.,
• And asking what underlying ideas and values are
being expressed by them,
• And, how they continue to create cultural
meanings within organisations…
Some useful questions
• What are the cultural norms that are
sustained in my organisation?
• How are they sustained?
• What underlying ideas and values do they
express?
• How do they change over time?
References
• Hofstede, G. (1991) Cultures and Organizations McGraw Hill
• Morgan, G. (1991) Images of Organization Sage
• Peters, T.J. and Waterman, R.H. (1982) In Search of Excellence
Harper Row
• Schein, E. (1992) Organizational Culture and Leadership San
Francisco: Jossey Bass
• Smircich, L. (1983) Concepts of Culture in Organizational Analysis,
in Administrative Science Quarterly 28: 339-358
• Trompenaars, F. and Hampden-Turner, C. (1997) Riding the Waves of
Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business Nicholas
Brealey

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