Showing papers on "Culture change published in 2000"

Modernization, cultural change, and the persistence of traditional values.

Abstract: Modernization theorists from Karl Marx to Daniel Bell have argued that economic development brings pervasive cultural changes. But others, from Max Weber to Samuel Huntington, have claimed that cultural values are an enduring and autonomous influence on society. We test the thesis that economic development is linked with systematic changes in basic values. Using data from the three waves of the World Values Surveys, which include 65 societies and 75 percent of the world's population, we find evidence of both massive cultural change and the persistence of distinctive cultural traditions. Economic development is associated with shifts away from absolute norms and values toward values that are increasingly rational, tolerant, trusting, and participatory. Cultural change, however, is path dependent. The broad cultural heritage of a society - Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Confucian, or Communist - leaves an imprint on values that endures despite modernization. Moreover, the differences between the values held by members of different religions within given societies are much smaller than are cross-national differences. Once established, such cross-cultural differences become part of a national culture transmitted by educational institutions and mass media. We conclude with some proposed revisions of modernization theory

Organisational culture and quality of health care

Abstract: “ A student of management and organisation theory could only be stunned by how little the efforts to improve quality [in health care] have learnt from current thinking in management and from the experience of other industries .” Christian Koeck BMJ 1998; 317: 1267–8. Health policy in much of the developed world is concerned with assessing and improving the quality of health care. The USA, in particular, has identified specific concerns over quality issues12 and a recent report from the Institute of Medicine pointed to the considerable toll of medical errors.3 In the UK a series of scandals has propelled quality issues to centre stage45 and made quality improvement a key policy area.6 But how are quality improvements to be wrought in such a complex system as health care? A recent issue of Quality in Health Care was devoted to considerations of organisational change in health care, calling it “the key to quality improvement”.7 In discussing how such change can be managed, the authors of one of the articles asserted that cultural change needs to be wrought alongside structural reorganisation and systems reform to bring about “a culture in which excellence can flourish”.8 A review of policy changes in the UK over the past two decades shows that these appeals for cultural change are not new but have appeared in various guises (box 1). However, talk of “culture” and “culture change” beg some difficult questions about the nature of the underlying substrate to which change programmes are applied. What is “organisational culture” anyway? It is to this issue that this paper is addressed.Many previous policy reforms in the National Health Service (NHS) have invoked the notion of cultural change. In the early 1980s the reforms inspired by Sir Roy Griffiths led …

Good to Talk?: Living and Working in a Communication Culture

Abstract: Introduction Good to Talk? Codifying 'Communication' Knowledge, Authority and Standards Talk as Enterprise Communication and Culture Change at Work Communication Factories Inside the Call Centre Schooling Spoken Discourse Communication and the Pursuit of Happiness

Population, Culture History, and the Dynamics of Culture Change

Abstract: If archaeology is to succeed in explaining culture change, it must view the archaeological record from the perspective of cultural “descent with modification,” in so doing returning to many of the issues addressed by the culture‐history agenda rejected 30–40 years ago. This involves a consideration of the processes affecting cultural transmission. Many of these are strongly affected by the history of the biological populations in which cultural transmission occurs. It can be shown that prehistoric populations fluctuated much more than used to be thought and that these fluctuations can be hard to detect archaeologically. They can often be associated with cultural changes, and, in fact, the size of populations affects the nature of cultural processes in a variety of ways. These general points are illustrated with reference to a case study from the circum‐Alpine Neolithic, where dendrochronology provides high‐resolution dating.

Women in the Construction Professions: Achieving Critical Mass

Abstract: This article addresses the question of whether an increased number of women entering the construction professions is resulting in the build-up of critical mass, with associated changes in the culture of the construction industry, and thus in its organization and conditions of employment It was found, from recent research, that little such change has occurred so far Indeed the construction industry seemed to be so self-contained and separate from wider social changes, that it was helpful to visualize it as constituting ‘Planet Construction’ upon which live a series of male-dominated professional tribes, each with its own culture and world view This article discusses the factors and forces limiting change, and then identifies likely change agents These comprise top-down agents such as governmental regulatory bodies, and bottom-up agents such as minority groups and community organizations The most effective bottom-up groups are likely to be those that have a foothold within the professional bodies such as the women-led Equal Opportunities in Construction Taskforce, which has produced and is promoting guidelines for equal opportunities in the industry But there is still a long way to go before major changes are likely to occur in the employment status, pay and conditions, as women in construction have hardly reached ‘first base’ in terms of being accepted within the industry This is reflected in high job turnover among women in construction, occupational isolation, and limited promotion prospects, all factors which work against the build-up of critical mass and culture change

Handbook of organizational culture & climate

Abstract: PART ONE: CULTURE AND CLIMATE The Climate for Sevice - Benjamin Schneider, David E Bowen, Mark G Ehrhart and Karen M Holcombe Evolution of a Construct Values Lost - Richard W Stackman, Craig C Pinder, and Patrick E Conner Redirecting Research on Values in the Workplace Rules, Sensemaking, Formative Contexts, and Discourse in the Gendering of Organizational Culture - Jean C H Hatfield and Albert J Mills Symbols in Organizational Culture - Anat Rafaeli and Monica Worline Hunting and Gathering in the Early Silicon Age - Marc W D Tyrrell Cyberspace, Jobs, and the Reformulation of Organizational Culture Sources of Meaning, Organization, and Culture - Mark F Peterson and Peter B Smith Making Sense of Organizational Events Time and Organizational Culture - Allen C Bluedorn PART TWO: MEASUREMENT AND OUTCOMES OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND CLIMATE Questionnaire Measures of Organizational Culture - Neal M Ashkanasy, Lyndelle E Broadfoot and Sarah Falkus Using the Organizational Culture Inventory to Understand the Operating Cultures of Organizations - Robert A Cooke and Janet L Szumal Climate and Culture - Roy L Payne How Close Can They Get? The High Performance Organizational Climate - Jack Wiley and Scott Brookes How Workers Desribe Top Performing Units Organizational Culture as a Predictor of Organizational Performance - Celeste Wilderom, Ursula Glunk, and Ralf Maslowski Organizational Culture from a Network Perspectives - Martin Kilduff and Kevin G Corley PART THREE: THE DYNAMICS OF CULTURE AND CLIMATE CHANGE Organizational Culture and Climate in Transformations for Quality and Innovation - John L Michela and W Warner Burke The Cultural Dynamics of Organizing and Change - Mary Jo Hatch Managerial Ideologies, Organization Culture and the Outcomes of Innovation - Raymond F Zammuto, Blair Gifford, and Eric A Goodman A Competing Values Perspective Toward a New Conceptualization of Culture Change - Vijay Sathe and E Jane Davidson Twelve Testable Assertions About Cultural Dynamics and the Reproduction of Organizational Culture - Keith A Markus Measuring Cultural Fit In Mergers and Acquisitions - Yaakov Weber PART FOUR: CULTURE, CLIMATE, COMMITMENT AND CAREERS Ties That Bind - Janice M Beyer, David R Hannah and Laurie P Milton Culture and Attachments in Organizations Commitment and the Study of Organizational Climate and Culture - Turo Viratanen Effective Newcomer Socialization into High Performance Organizational Cultures - Debra A Major Organizational Cultures and Careers - Hugh Gunz PART FIVE: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON CULTURE Images of Japanese Management and the Development of Organizational Culture Theory - Mary Yoko Brannen and Jill Kleinberg Culture - Geert Hofstede and Mark F Peterson National Values and Organizational Practices A New Look at National Culture - Lilach Sagiv and Shalom H Schwartz Illustrative Applications to Role Stress and Managerial Behaviour Role Relaxation and Organizational Culture - George M Rose, Lynne R Kahle and Aviv Shoham A Social Values Perspective Definition and Interpretation in Cross-Cultural Organizational Culture Research - Marcus W Dickson, Ram N Aditya and Jagdeep S Chhokar Some Pointers From the GLOBE Research Program Culture in Uniformed Organizations - Joseph Soeters Changing Organizational Cultures in Chinese Firms - Cherilyn Skromme Granrose, Qiang Huang and Elena Reigadas

The responses of front‐line employees to market‐oriented culture change

Abstract: A theme emerging from research into the determinants, content and consequences of market orientation is that developing a market-oriented culture exerts a profound influence on the organizational culture of a company. Explores and describes the manner and forms of front-line employees’ responses to market-oriented culture change initiatives. The paper begins with a brief overview of existing literature discussing the definition and components of a market orientation. Thereafter, extant research into the consequences of developing a market-oriented culture is reviewed critically. After detailing the research design and methodology adopted in this study, the summary findings of two in-depth case studies are presented. The findings indicate that front-line employees respond differentially to market-oriented culture change programmes. Concludes with a series of implications for both marketing and culture theorists and practitioners.

Narrative Styles of Managers and Workers A Tale of Star-Crossed Lovers

Abstract: The findings reported in this article relate to the experiences of managers and workers in three organizations that are implementing culture change as part of a strategy to improve organizational performance through people management. The focus is on an analysis of the stories the managers and workers tell, which reveal underlying narrative styles. It is argued that these narrative styles form cognitive frameworks within which the actors make sense of their own actions and those of others. This creates cycles of interaction, interpretation, and evidence-gathering to reinforce the framework. In other words, the narrative styles form part of the culture and subcultures of the organization. Using a grounded theory approach, six factor descriptors of four narrative styles were derived. The findings are used to question some basic assumptions in the literature concerning the possibilities of affecting organizational performance through people management and culture change strategies.

Green teams and the management of environmental change in a UK county council

Abstract: Explores the evolution of a participative, interdepartmental staff “green team” approach to the solving of environmental problems and a move towards a culture change within one of the largest UK local authorities Reveals how Kent County Council (KCC), over a period of several years, used the largely voluntary effort of a group of dedicated individuals to help with a corporate move towards sustainability Explores the management of these people in the process of cultural change and acknowledges that grass‐roots participative environmental change can be slow to break through organisational inertia and can be susceptible to collapse Shows how efforts can be undermined both by a lack of a clear corporate direction and by events beyond their own control Also focuses on the role of external trainers, as change agents, and their contribution to the environmental management programme, in supporting the emergence, motivation and maturation of these green teams Finally, in an attempt to measure the success of green teams, some of the major team outputs are mentioned, and concludes with comments on the future of the teams The use of green teams is an approach now adopted by a number of organisations but “the connection between environmental teams and the management of change is often overlooked”

Going against the national cultural grain: A longitudinal case study of organizational culture change in Turkish higher education

Abstract: This paper presents results of a longitudinal case study inquiry into the measurement of organizational culture change through the implementation of total quality management (TQM) concepts in a higher education context. The inquiry deals with the relationship between national culture and the company corporate culture, the consequences of manager style change for TQM implementation and how culture change can be measured adequately. The results are achieved by the utilization of external (quantitative) and internal (qualitative) measurement devices. Limitations consequent upon the number of participants and the dual role of the researcher indicate the potential value of further investigations into the topic using these devices. The main conclusion is that the maintenance of TQM systems without continued senior managerial commitment may not suffice to secure change and prevent a reversion to earlier cultural patterns. Certainly, since the findings of this inquiry are limited to one case study, it would be un...

TQM – a holistic view

Abstract: Notes that while total quality management has elements in behavioural and culture change which look to empowerment, the reality has been a selective, if not cynical, use of tools and language. Points out that successful TQM initiatives abound and that often they involve a method of redistributing power within organisations which facilitates a change of perception of roles and values. Argues that auditing the process relies on clear objective measurement that will keep organisations “honest” and that this also helps keep the direction of efforts visible and on target.

Using the Competing Values Framework to identify the ideal culture profile for TQM: a UK perspective

Abstract: There is growing concern about why some organisations fail in their attempts to implement TQM and so few gain the benefits of such implementation. The literature often points to the constraining effects of an organisation's culture as a major barrier. Few studies, however, link organisational culture and TQM implementation. In short, understanding the relationship between an organisation's culture and TQM philosophy can provide a greater insight into the TQM implementation process. A well known framework for an organisational model, the Competing Values Framework (CVF), was used to identify the ideal cultural profile for TQM implementation. A questionnaire using the CVF, was sent to "Quality Experts" in the UK to help identify the ideal cultural characteristics that they believed would support the TQM philosophy and facilitate its implementation. The findings indicated that the ideal cultural characteristics in the context of TQM can be classified as a group and developmental culture. Its characteristics tend to be flexible and customer oriented which emphasises participation, innovation, concern for human resource development and an attempt to decentralise decision making. This paper shows that the CVF can be a useful tool in helping organisations study the change needed to reach a desired quality culture.

The Corporate Culture Survival Guide: Sense and Nonsense About Culture Change

Abstract: The articles reviews the book “The Corporate Culture Survival Guide: Sense and Nonsense About Culture Change,” by Edgar H. Schein.

The Effect of Organizational Culture on the Implementation of Knowledge Management

Abstract: The focus of the majority of knowledge management (KM) research to date has been on advanced technology and techniques used to facilitate knowledge sharing (Davenport and Prusak, 1998) A knowledge organization has been defined as “an entity that realizes the importance of its knowledge, internal and external, to the organization, and applies techniques to maximize the use of this knowledge to its employees, shareholders and customers” (Liebowitz and Beckman, 1998) However, any firm interested in making the transition to becoming a knowledge organization has to ensure that its culture is aligned with the requirements for KM success Not to do so risks KM being underutilized, ignored, or abandoned by the firm’s employees As attractive as KM is for enhancing an organization’s operations, many commonly agree that there is an important precondition Davenport (1997) says that twothirds of a firm’s KM efforts should focus upon organizational and cultural issues Rifkin (1996) quotes Bob Buckman as saying “What’s happened here [successful use of KM at Buckman Laboratories] is 90% culture change You have to change the way you relate to one another If you can’t do that, you won’t succeed” Mizumori (1998) reports “The greatest challenge to implementing effective Knowledge Management is to transition Knowledge Hoarders into Knowledge Sharers” Thus, one needs to understand what the culture of the firm is, and one needs to understand whether or not this culture will enable KM or hinder KM Schein (1992) defines corporate culture as “A pattern of shared basic beliefs that the group learned as it solves its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and

Cultural Change: An Attempt to Teach Ethics to Police Leaders and Managers Within a Traditional Institution and Changing Social Milieu.

Abstract: This inquiry describes an attempt to teach ethics to police leaders and managers within the unique institutional context of 'Bramshill' - the site of the Police Staff College within the National Police Training organisation. It shows how the subject 'ethics' was re-introduced to the curriculum of the middle-manager programmes of study and sets this re-introduction in the context of the wider strategic priorities and culture change aspirations of the police service in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The study identifies a sequence of'action research' stages each reflecting a search to secure a positive evaluation for the emerging educational designs. This part of the account will illustrate how difficult it was to secure, consistently, a positive evaluation of and response to the learning designs from the client group. Finally, though, after a number of set-backs and disappointments it became possible to claim some degree of success for the educational project. The thesis presented here is a post-modern text in three senses; first, its construction is an example of a 'transitext' built up over time; second, it is postmodern in its content including materials from eclectic and diverse sources; third, it is 'local', contextually specific and highly personal. In this latter respect it recognises that a different author would create a different style of account and a different theoretical structure in the course of making sense of the inquiry and the facts of the inquiry. The first part of the thesis establishes the background to the project and foundations for the study. The second part charts the unfolding stages of the inquiry from the re-introduction of 'ethics' until its removal from the middle-management programme. The third part of the thesis develops a number of theoretical interpretations and concludes with the presentation of information concerning the 'moral world' of police leaders and managers. The concluding chapter re-affirms the significance of 'ethics' in police strategic discourse, summarises the main findings of the study and concludes optimistically by noting how 'ethics' has, at last, come to be positively valued by a consistent majority of the client group at the dawn of the new millennium.

Management development in the public sector – what roles can universities play?

Abstract: The 1990s have seen wide‐ranging culture changes throughout the public sector, introducing a business focus and a customer‐led approach, resulting in the recognition that organisations must invest training and development in their greatest asset – their staff. In this context, there is a growing trend to use universities as external providers of training and development, reflecting the need for continuous professional development, for flexibility and for continuous adaptability to change. Explores a spectrum of partnership arrangements between universities and public sector organisations, and discusses the mutually beneficial outcomes which can result, including the development of continuous learning, culture change, organisational development initiatives and appropriate restructuring. Presents three case studies to illustrate these developmental partnerships and concludes by offering significant learning points to those public sector organisations planning similar partnerships to facilitate management development.

Cultural change and economic performance: an interactionistic perspective

Abstract: This paper presents an interactionistic perspective that proposes three hypotheses: (1) Cultures have a life of their own: they change due to interactions in the cultural ecology; (2) Different modalities of a culture change at different paces and to different extents; (3) There appears to be an isomorphism between economic performance and cultural change. Should a cultural explanation of the Asian “growth” and “fall” be sought, it would be more meaningful to link economic performance to changes in Confucianism than to the static perception of that tradition. Managers should give more attention to the processes and impacts of cultural change in organizational behaviors in, especially, emerging markets.

Organizational culture and the achievement of ERP strategic advantages and BPR performance improvements

Abstract: This study looks at the relationship that organizational culture has with the achievement of strategic advantages from implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, and the achievement of performance improvements from performing Business Process Reengineering (BPR). A sample of 22 organizations that implemented ERP and 31 organizations that performed BPR were used to test a number of hypotheses. A competing values approach to measuring organizational culture was used to quantitatively measure an organizations culture profile, and a modified version of the measurement instrument was used to measure the change in that profile due to ERP and/or BPR. Partial least squares (PLS) method of structural equation modeling was then used to determine the relationship that the organization's culture and culture change has with ERP and BPR success. The results show that the organization's culture and the change in that culture is significantly related to the achievement of strategic advantages from implementing ERP and the performance improvements from performing BPR.

Bio‐factor analysis of library productivity

Abstract: The question of low productivity in Botswana is a cause of concern and a study has been carried out into perceptions about productivity in a sample of academic and public librarians. The main barriers to productivity were a lack of: job satisfaction, technological facilities and employee empowerment, together with poor management, working environment, relationship among staff, and inefficient use of human and material resources. The authors suggest that a serious culture change is required which would involve modifying both management and employees attitudes towards work, behaviour and commitment.

Writing culture reliably : The analysis of high-concordance codes

Abstract: Although ethnography has traditionally been regarded as high in validity, the assessment of reliability in anthropological field research is very difficult. Fortunately, forms of systematic data collection exist that !end themselves both to reliability testing and replication. The analysis of culture in terms of the high-concordance codes that compose systemic culture patterns is a way to generate reliable data and replicable studies. (High-concordance codes, systemic culture patterns, cultural consensus analysis, culture theory, reliability) The viability of cross-cultural and intracultural comparative research rests on the degree to which the units of analysis are actually comparable. In turn, the comparability of units of analysis substantially depends on the degree to which measurements of them are reliable and valid. While ethnography is generally regarded as high in validity, the assessment of reliability in anthropological field research has typically been difficult. Moreover, in recent years the worth of reliability itself has been questioned. For interpretive or postmodern anthropologists who subscribe to the notion that ethnography is "a genre of storytelling" (Bruner 1986:139) where the task of the anthropologist is to "critique ethnographic stories" (Lett 1997:10), the techniques of literary criticism are more appropriate than those of science. But if the attention of interpretive anthropologists is directed at "the way social reality is to be presented" (Marcus and Fischer 1986:165) rather than at social reality itself, one can reasonably question the value of the entire enterprise (Lett 1997). Even the dean of interpretive anthropology, Clifford Geertz, has recognized that problems exist with the approach. In The Interpretation of Cultures, he (Geertz 1973) indicated that "the besetting sin of interpretive approaches ... is that they tend to resist, or to be permitted to resist, conceptual articulation and thus to escape systematic modes of assessment." Further, he claimed that "there is no reason why the conceptual structure of a cultural interpretation should be any less.., susceptible to explicit canons of appraisal" (Geertz 1973:24, quoted in Lett 1997:8). Reliability of measurement is one of the "explicit canons" of scientific appraisal, and the essence of reliability is consistency. The methods used to obtain information should provide the same results when administered under the same conditions. The problem is that the assessment of reliability in ethnography is far from simple. Participant-observation and interview studies simply do not lend themselves easily to reliability testing in the way that surveys do. The internal consistency of surveys can be assessed and they can be administered to the same informants a second time. They can be administered to other informants at other times and in other places. It is difficult or impossible to do any of these with participant-observation studies. In addition, ethnographic "targets" move; cultures change and thereby render efforts to test reliability moot. However, systematic ethnographic techniques exist that permit reliability testing, replication, and the assessment of culture change (see, e.g., Weller and Romney 1988). Moreover, some ways of conceptualizing culture, and cultural units of analysis, are more amenable to the use of such systematic techniques than others. Analysis of culture in terms of the high-concordance codes that compose systemic culture patterns lends itself both to reliability testing and replication. If, as Romney and Moore (1999) claim, systemic culture patterns are fundamental units for the evolution and transmission of culture, then they may also be ideal units of analysis for comparative research. SYSTEMIC CULTURE PATTERNS In his classic text, Anthropology, Alfred L. Kroeber (1948:311) described four kinds of culture patterns. These include "the universal, the systemic, the societal or whole-culture, and the style type of patterns. …

Using Stories to Shift Attitudes: The Case of Bullying, 4(4)

Abstract: This article provides a brief report of the application of a stories-based approach to culture change in a small urban elementary school. In the article we concentrate on recounting the process implemented in an attempt to shift the values and beliefs held by staff about bullying. In the first section we review some of the literature on stories and outline a four-stage model for using stories to shift school culture. We then illustrate each of the four stages as they applied to the problem of bullying. The illustration shows how stories can be used to influence values, norms and beliefs in the school.

Innovation and Culture Change Within a Medium-Sized Construction Company: Success Through the Process of Action Learning

Abstract: This paper examines the role of Action Learning in promoting innovation and culture change within one medium-sized construction company. Its adoption by that company – George and Harding – was an exemplary part of a larger study involving a total of 28 construction professionals. This larger study, stimulated by the CIOB’s Innovation and Research Committee, was prompted by the desire to encourage the construction industry, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, to engage in life-long learning and implement good practice, without falling into the trap of an unthinking adoption of the latest management fashion. Action Learning has been shown to drive significant and sustainable cultural change in other engineering disciplines, along the lines proposed by both Latham (1994) and Egan (1998). It has also been used with the construction industry in Brazil (Hirota and Formoso, 2000). Our detailed case study focuses on middle managers from different divisions of the same company who wanted to become more innovative on the one hand and 'leaner' on the other. It shows that Action Learning is able to generate a motivated, committed and innovative workforce, as well as better site management and leadership. Continuous Staff Development (CSD), an in-house training course developed by the company’s Action Learning SET, produced over 100 ideas for improving company performance, which are being implemented by many different groups of staff. The Chairman of George and Harding estimates that CSD has given his company a 12-month lead over its competitors. Action Learning gave middle managers “time to think” about strategic issues and empowered them to collaborate with the Chairman in overcoming personal and political barriers to change. Furthermore, as a result of discussions during SET meetings and contact with a consultant from the University of Salford specialising in transparency on construction sites, the managers were prepared to actually implement some of the concepts of 'lean production'. Thus, Action Learning is shown to have helped middle managers overcome any resistance to change, as well as drive innovation and real cultural change within a construction SME.

The cultural tripwire: an impediment to changing the bureaucracy

Abstract: New approaches to public management evident across Europe have caused many public sector organisations to engage in the formulation of ambitious plans for strategic change, outlining the future direction of usually leaner, meaner and fitter organisations. A number of organisations have experienced some difficulty with the implementation of these plans and a root cause of this seems to lie in a rigid adherence to an outmoded set of cultural values, a bureaucratic structure and old reward systems. This paper explores the process, challenges and rewards experienced by one public sector organisation based in the UK which has attempted to transform its operations in response to the changes which have occurred within its operating environment. The organisation sought to use its involvement in a European transnational human resource development project as a means of facilitating larger scale organisation change. The findings reveal that the openness of the organisation to culture change, together with the attitude and commitment of top management to change are critical factors in the achievement of organisational metamorphosis.

Corporate Culture: Benchmarking Cultural Transition

Abstract: Many operating managers view culture and culture change as something “soft” or “squishy” and remote from day‐to‐day concerns They're worried about “making their numbers” and say they haven't got time to think about organizational culture

Defying Conventional Wisdom: Innovation and Culture Change from Down Under

Abstract: SUMMARY During the last few years, the Technical Services Section of Griffith University Library has undergone widespread and radical change. An ambitious goal of a 50% productivity improvement was a major driving force. The approaches taken to achieve this were threefold: developing innovative technological solutions to reduce repetitive components of technical services work without sacrificing quality; entering into a mutually beneficial partnership agreement with a preferred vendor; and, instituting a culture change that included high performance, and self managed teams. This paper describes the processes undertaken, and outcomes achieved.

Executive Agency Chief Executives: Their Leadership Values

Abstract: A great deal has been written about the potential impact of New Public Management (NPM) on the values and mores of the public sector. A century ago, proponents of the ‘science of administration’ believed that a well-structured hierarchy would ensure efficiency (Wilson, 1887). In contrast, the essence of the NPM reforms of the 1980s and 1990s has been that increased efficiency and control in a public bureaucracy can be achieved with similar methods to those adopted by the private sector. (Ironically, over the same period, research in the private sector has placed greater emphasis on cooperation and teamwork as sources of effective organizational cultures.) Culture change programmes in UK government organizations have tried to encourage more emphasis on productivity, measurable outputs, individual responsibility and rewards for performance.

Culture change and the consumption of basic foods : the case of Lebanese-Canadians

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the relationship between culture change and the consumption of basic foods. The literature dealing with acculturation, ethnic identification, and consumption is reviewed and focused on an ethnic group neglected in the consumer research literature: the Lebapese-Canadians. Hypotheses regarding the relative power of acculturation and ethnic identity as two separate yet correlated constructs that predict a variation in the consumption frequencies of various basic food items are drawn and a multidimensional culture change model is built. A survey using a convenience sample of Lebanese-Canadians residing in the Montreal Metropolitan Area is analysed. The results reveal that acculturation and ethnic identification are multidimensional constructs which have some impact on ethnic majority and ethnic minority basic foods, respectively. In addition, evidence is found that Lebanese-Canadian respondents reside in at least a two-culture world. Several consumer lifestyle factors also emerge from the data analysis with differing relationships with culture change. Finally, implications for marketers are discussed along with limitations and directions for future research.