Topic 5.4: Culture and Lived Values in the Change Process

Culture is a set of assumptions that help keep lessons learned from dealing with the internal and external environment. Values are derived from those assumptions that prescribe how the organisation should act. These become the foundation of the practices and way of doing business with an organisation’s clients and stakeholders. Finally, various artefacts or visible markers – symbols- help to make tangible to those espoused values.

Corporate culture is what holds groups and organisations together (Weick & Sutton, 2007)^[1]. Culture emerges from the set of expectations that we have of people in a specific context, and from the expectations that matter to those involved. An important point is that people shape culture, and culture shapes people.

Weick & Sutton (2007) note the following:

Figure 5.2 Culture

Furthermore, a mindful culture will have three elements:

Figure 5.3 Mindful Culture

This matters because of the way that organisations, and its members, handle ambiguity. Integrative cultures tend to deny ambiguity; differentiated cultures tend to tacitly accept ambiguity, with caveats. Fragmented cultures openly accept ambiguity. Thus, differentiated and fragmented cultures allow for more variety (remember the requisite variety discussion).

So, depending on the nature and complexity of the tasks at hand, leaders should be mindful of the need to match the level of complexity of the environment with the level of complexity of the system. Wise practices either reduce environmental complexity or increase system complexity (Weick & Sutton, 2007). While you may not be able to directly influence organisational practices, you can work with your teams to understand and operate effectively within those practices, and develop a ‘mindset’ that can ‘deliver’ within the system.

These statements relate to organisational change. Organisational change is complex, rarely works when it is ‘imposed’ – unless a crisis is the precipitating factor! It requires a very clear understanding of the organisation’s environment, so that decision makers have a realistic understanding of the potential consequences of their action. Change also typically impacts on ‘the way we do things’ – behaviours, values and culture.

So, change by its nature will be potentially threatening, and will question time-honoured systems and traditions.

Bolman & Deal (2008)^[2] note the following:

Figure 5.4 Change

There are myriad approaches, theories and possibilities within the change and change management approaches. The take-out here is that there will be challenges, tension and ambiguity.

It is also possible, and almost always necessary.

It is useful in the ebb and flow of public sector management to revisit some classic ‘change’ mindsets. Let’s look at economic and organisational approaches to change (Beer and Nohria, 2000)^[3].

A Theory E approach is change based on Economic value. This is the ‘hard’ approach to change, that typically involves economic incentives, potentially involving redundancies, downsizing and restructuring. The overall goal of course is to maximise ‘value’ through a focus on efficiency.

A Theory O approach is change based on organisational capability. In this so-called ‘soft’ approach to change, the goal is to develop an organisational culture and people capability through individual and organisational learning. This process of change entails iterative feedback, reflection and continual dialogue, with the view that the organisation and its people have commitment-based relationships that are crucial to the organisation’s success.
Beer & Nohria (2000) make two focused claims:

• that a strategic combination of E and O approaches, that includes a careful resolution to the inherent tensions between them, can deliver outstanding change outcomes
• that change and transformations using E, O and combined EO, can be compared along 6 dimensions (Table 5.1), that help guide the approaches to change.

Table 5.1: Comparing Theories of Change (Adapted from Beer, M. & Nohria, N., 2000).

In conclusion, Weick & Sutton (2007:14) propose a concept of ‘acting into change’ as a change model. Their belief is that culture, values and change are closely associated. They propose these as a foundation for how culture develops:

• Basic shared assumptions that are:
  • Invented, discovered, or developed by a given group:
    • As it learns to cope with its problem of external adaptation and internal integration in ways that:
    • Have worked well enough to be considered valid
  • Can be taught to new members:
    • As the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems.

Conclusion

This module has helped you to develop your abilities to monitor and enhance the ways in which your organisation can deliver excellence, in particular in relation to change and innovation.

Change is a ‘messy business’! Take a look back over your observations within this module. What do you notice? What is your overall reaction to the topics? Seek to link the various concepts we have discussed.

In this module, we have argued that culture and change are strongly interrelated, and that organisational symbols and behaviours can be used to enact desirable and necessary changes within organisations.

Please sift carefully through the various pieces and find for yourself the means by which you can navigate through ‘organisational stuff’ to manage people, culture and processes to deliver on desired outcomes. Think back to the conceptual slack discussion. Consider if you should, and indeed could, embed this practice into your daily professional activities, and how could you use this as a tool within your workplace, to achieve outcomes.

To help you achieve this, in the next and final module we guide you in your examination of performance and execution management systems, that have as their primary focus, helping the organisation to remain focused on its overall objective, that of delivering public value. Inherent in such systems of course is the notion of reward and feedback. We briefly explore the nature of such systems.