Culture appears for many managers as a quite simple deal: it corresponds to what the company stands for, its "identity", being widespread in the organization, easy to manipulate and to embed, a tool for making all the stakeholders going in the same direction. It's labeled the "Managerially-led Unitary and Unique Culture - MUUC" by Alvesson (2002:171). As a consequence, culture is often linked to the missions' statement, management slogans or motto. This vision, however, is quite distorted. Culture differs from this mindset in a lot of ways and is much more subtle and invisible in the way people work (Alvesson, 2007, LU lecture). Before talking about management of culture, we need to rethink the organization and think culturally in order to have a fresh look on how organizations work and to understand culture as being "a system of meanings and symbols shared by members of a collective" (Alvesson, 2007, LU lecture). Culture is thus a paradigm which can be used to see how organizations work.
[...] study underscored how people understandings and meanings exist and work within an organization, and how it can be an impediment for a reorganization attempt. What is very interesting in this study is how the researcher went beyond the artifacts and studied the symbols, assumptions and values of people inside the company. In this company, managers and programmers had dual positions: the project was for top management to set a more controlled management system, especially concerning the projects the programmers were working on. [...]
[...] When this process is achieved, we can talk about a relationship between corporate culture and autonomy. The employee will be autonomous in his work, more physically distant with the company due to the nature of his job, but will be strongly committed to his organization and its corporate culture, in his behavior, his choices, and his everyday professional life. The dark side of this process is that the autonomy of the individual is always going to be limited, because he is going to be subordinated to the cultural boundaries he is working within. [...]
[...] (2007) : Unraveling HRM : Identity, Ceremony, and Control in a Management Consulting Firm Organization Science, Volume 18, Issue Pages : 711-723 Derven, M. (2007): The Remote Connection HRMagazine. Alexandria: Vol Issue 3 Gagliardi, P. (1986): The creation and change of organizational cultures: A conceptual framework. Organization Studies 117-134 Hatch, M.J. (1993): The Dynamics of Organizational Cultures: Diagnosis and Understanding. Berlin: de Gruyter, page 75-89. Katz, D., & Kahn, [...]
[...] Because workers are becoming more and more physically distant with the organization in the way they accomplish their job, and thus more autonomous, organizations must ensure they are psychologically close to the corporate culture. Control is the main issue here, but different from the three basic forms of control: behavior, output and mind. It is neither a question of normative control (internalized values) or performance control, but a fusion between the self (with particular projects, dreams and goals), and a prescribed identity projects, forming not a rigid point in the future, but a trajectory (Alvesson, LU lecture, 2007). [...]
[...] To conclude, if we consider culture metaphorically, it is not one of several subsystems making up the organization, but instead it permeates throughout the entire organization (Alvesson, 2002:26). Thus, there's a cultural dimension everywhere, and the management of the culture is appearing at all levels in the organization, affecting all employees. It is not a matter of knowing if culture can be managed and changed, but rather a matter of how to adapt with the culture itself Relationship between identity and culture Culture can first refer to the core identity of the organization and what the company stands for. [...]
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