Culture change

About: Culture change is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1531 publications have been published within this topic receiving 41922 citations. The topic is also known as: cultural change & culture changes.

Culture Contact and Social Change

Abstract: nOCIOLOGISTS and social anthropologists now know much >.more than they used to about processes of social and cultural bJchange. They are not so much concerned as an earlier generation was with problems of the diffusion of 'culture traits', nor are they much given to hypothesizing about the possibility of some kind of social evolution, independent of external influence. It is now a little plainer that modifications in a people's social institutions and values through time are not to be understood in terms of any simple, 'blanket' principle, but rather that a multiplicity of processes is involved, often contemporaneously.l This awareness is largely due to the considerable body of data which numerous detailed field studies of technologically less advanced peoples have provided during the past thirty years or so. Even studies not explicitly concerned with change have contributed to ollr understanding, for nowadays (save in exceptiGnal circumstances) not even the most traditionally-minded field worker can suppose himself to be dealing with a static social system, maintained in organismic equilibrium by a set of smoothly interacting social institutions. At least since Malinowski's analysis of culture change (published posthumously in I945) and Gluckman's criticism of it,2 the notion of institutional functionalism has been supplemented by the idea of dysfunction, and the field worker must augment traditional structural analysis by some consideration of the manifold expressions of social conflict and strain. The sheer extent and complexity of available ethnographnic information constitute a major problem for present-day students of social change. For, broadly considered, social change is not just one social field among others; it is all social fields, considered in their temporal, dynamic aspect. It is no more possible to study 'social change' in general than it is to study 'society' in general; what is given us for analysis (if we are sociologists or social anthropologists) are specific social institutions, and what we have to do is to study the modifications of these through time, in the context of their relationships with other co-existing institutions. It is open to some doubt whether such a study will reveal any general laws, or even 'trends', of social change (at least above a very

Creating Changes in Organizational Culture: The Role of Three Types of Teaching and Learning

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis was to describe my experiences as part of a team that assisted the Careville Health System plan and implement an organizational culture change effort This was not considered an empirical research study; it was, rather, a recording of my personal experiences, reflections, and served as a documentation of such This change effort was designed to assist the staff in creating an improved culture of customer service delivery to patients, their primary customers This thesis reviewed two theoretical frameworks used to assist the organization’s change efforts: Schein’s (1992) model of organizational change and Peters and Armstrong’s (1998) typology of teaching and learning I described the training and development plan based on these two frameworks in order to assist the reader in understanding the findings and conclusions of the thesis I found, through this experience, that Type II teaching and learning and Type III teaching and learning were the most helpful techniques to assist a staff in changing a culture I also learned that time was a critical factor in creating both Type II and Type III teaching and learning experiences I found that the elements of creating dialogue within teams and co-constructing new knowledge are catalysts for the movement of culture I also learned how my own habits of thought and action contributed to the traditional separation of leadership and staff in culture change initiatives I concluded with the understanding that staff needed more involvement in articulating the change through dialogue and that their voice was an important part of designing an improved culture of customer service delivery v Table of

Cultural change through the implementation of an enterprise system: a UK university case study

Abstract: Purpose Organisations spend a lot of money, time and resources on enterprise system (ES) implementation and often they do not realise the expected benefits from these complex systems. There is a gap in the literature in providing sufficient insight into the implementation process or how an ES might influence or contribute to a culture change. The purpose of this paper is to address the gap in the ES literature around culture by exploring the implementation that was undertaken within a large UK university. Design/methodology/approach This paper contributes to the higher education (HE) and ES literature through an in-depth study of an ES, Strategic Information Technology Services (SITS) implementation within a university in the UK. The study was undertaken over a three-year period where one of the authors was embedded within the organisation. Findings Using a cultural analysis framework, the extensive rich data were analysed and the outcomes indicate that SITS has had a huge influence on the culture of the university; the technology’s rigid structure has imposed many changes that had not been anticipated. Originality/value ES have recently emerged in the HE sector where they are intended to support the management of student data and provide strategic management information. Although there are many studies which have explored important aspects of the implementation of ES, one area that appears to have been under-researched is how these systems are implicated in culture change within organisations. The results of this study will enable managers as well as IT specialists to gain rich insights into an ES implementation in the HE sector and to use this knowledge for future implementations.

Disentangling Religion and Culture: Americanizing Islam as the Price of Assimilation

Abstract: This essay is an exploration into the social inevitabilities of culture shifts within the American Muslim community’s self-understanding of their faith. Rather than a theological explication of the reasons why and why not Islam may or can or will not assimilate in America, our approach will be strictly sociological thereby side-stepping the intricate dialectic of theological niceties in deference to the social realities of culture change. As a social psychologist, my duty is to acknowledge the inevitabilities of behavioral shifts brought about due to social and cultural pressures resulting from immigration into an alien cultural weltanschauung, i.e., worldview. Therefore in this essay, we will explicate the meaning and nature of de-ethnicization and reenculturation as we endeavor to disentangle religion from culture, recognizing that much of what goes under the flag of religious orthodoxy is really culturally-mandated behavior and worldview. The assimilation process, however, will bear heavily upon the necessity for Muslim clergy in America to become professional by Western standards and we will in the process explore the complexities of religious secularism as a way of becoming an “American” Muslim. Finally, we will suggest liturgical and architectural “adjustments” to Western modes of public worship while indicating linguistic niceties which will prove helpful in the assimilation process which we have chosen here to call the “Islamicization of America”.

Team dynamics: the role it plays in shaping service delivery

Abstract: When staff members work well together in the care home it not only ensures that the work environment is healthy but will also impact on the care provided to residents. Juliette Yardley provides methods that can help managers instigate this culture change