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.

Cultural Alignment in Response to Strategic Organizational Change: New Considerations for a Change Framework

Abstract: Most modern-day managers would quickly agree that the shared values, attitudes, commitments, beliefs, and overall patterns of thinking socially constructed among members of an organization have a tremendous influence on its long-term effectiveness and performance. The impact of an appropriate organizational culture on the well-being of the business organization has been explicitly recognized by many organizational researchers (Dennison, 1984; Camerer and Vespalian, 1988; and Wilkins and Ouchi, 1983). Tunstall (1986) proposes that a company's culture is the amalgam of shared values, behavior patterns, mores, symbols, attitudes, and normative ways of conducting business that, more than its products or services, differentiate it from all other companies. Further, culture may influence what organizational strategies are selected and whether they are successful (Cartwright and Cooper, 1993; Marcoulides and Heck, 1993; Wilkins and Dyer, 1988). Existing cultural orientations may be quite supportive of the mission and success of a firm at a particular point, but not at all appropriate when significant strategic change becomes necessary. This paper addresses the need for cultural evaluation, feedback, and possible change facilitation as needed to successfully align with necessarily imposed strategic change. Culture has traditionally been recognized as a consideration in the strategy implementation process (Bourgeois and Brodwin, 1984; Nutt, 1986; Galbraith and Kazanjian, 1986). Culture is assumed to explain the success of some organizations (Peters and Waterman, 1982), to represent an essential element in effectiveness of organizations if it fits the strategy (Schwartz and Davis, 1981), to act as a determinant of strategy (Ackerman, 1982), or as an influence on the implementation of strategic decisions (Schwartz and Davis, 1981). Such claims contribute to the recognition that culture plays a large role in the overall implementation of strategy. As such, culture must play a critical role when dramatic, significant strategic change is mandated. Figure 1 represents a conceptualization of the relationship between management, culture, and strategy. It is proposed that culture change is an imperative element of management's efforts to: 1) influence the overall orientation and collective workplace themes and attitudes of human resources which, in turn, 2) guide necessary human behaviors, which 3) are part of an implementation effort called for by a particular strategy, which 4) is a response to a significant shift in the demands and restrictions of an ever changing company and strategy. This being the case, organizational culture, as it currently exists, must pose a critical contingency upon both the planning and implementation of future strategies (Schneider and De Meyer, 1991). Mintzberg (1987) convincingly argues that strategy evolves in an incremental fashion, in which case planning and implementation are so interwoven through time that they are virtually inseparable. The argument made here is that cultural aspects of the organization can significantly affect the implementation of strategy and thus must be addressed in the planning of strategy. As part of an evolving process in which feedback and evaluation play a recurring role, the culture of an organization can be better used for competitive advantage by either designing strategy to maximize the current organizational culture, or by gently shaping the culture through intervention when needed strategic change creates a misalignment. As described, this model overlays the entire incremental and iterative process of planning, implementation, and evaluation (Mintzberg, 1987). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Though culture change has been considered broadly as part of an overall implementation effort, little conceptual literature to date has presented an integrative literature review and synthesis of the cultural variables which impact the implementation of sizable strategic change. …

Culture Change and Globalization: The Unresolved Debate between Cross-National and Cross-Cultural Classifications:

Abstract: This study intends to examine the assumptions of culture homogeneity within nations and its stability in the current global context. First, by using a sample of 720 respondents (207 in Canada, 263 ...

Developing a culture of quality within the United Kingdom healthcare system

Abstract: It is established that there are three levels of quality, technical, generic and systemic with systemic being the preferred goal for Salford Royal Hospitals NHS Trust (SRHT). In an effort to achieve their goal SRHT embarked on using the EFQM Excellence Model to provide one overarching framework for all their quality initiatives. The article explains SRHT’s approach to implementation and integration in addition to providing a flavour of the outcomes observed from the journey so far. In essence, many benefits were realised, some aspired to, some unexpected and all worthwhile and welcomed. However, even after seven years the organisation still does not have full deployment, which confirms that efforts to assure excellence need to be relentless if there is to be a sustainable culture change that puts quality at the heart of day‐to‐day decision making.

Human condition, life, and death at an early neolithic settlement: bioarchaeological analyses of the vedrovice cemetery and their biosocial implications for the spread of agriculture in central europe

Abstract: In this final chapter, we discuss the major issues that have informed our research about Vedrovice, place them into the broader context of the LBK origins, and address research questions relating to the emergence of the LBK tradition in terms of both, the population dynamics and population movement on the one hand, and culture change and cultural transmission on the other. We go on to summarize and discuss the results of our collective research relating to the ancestry of the Vedrovice community, the health condition, palaeodemography and nutrition of its inhabitants, their social status and social differentiation, and the transmission of cultural traditions inter-generationally and through contact as the major vehicle of culture change that brought about the development of the LBK culture. We go on to reconstruct life biographies of selected individuals from Vedrovice community in order to illustrate the personal diversity and variability of those who made up the Vedrovice community and to emphasize that we can, through a combination of biological and cultural analyses, within the bioarchaeological approach and through biosocial archaeology, reconstruct life histories of people who died long ago. At a theoretical level, we stress that it is individuals and their life-long history and experience that collectively create communal histories and transform cultural traditions, leading to cultural innovations that the LBK represents. We conclude that Vedrovice was, in all likelihood, a Neolithic "gateway community", both receiving individuals from afar and maintaining long-distance, extra-regional contacts, and also contributing through out-migration to the generation of other LBK communities in Bohemia.

Critical incident story creation and culture formation in a self‐directed work team

Abstract: Storytelling has been identified as an important vehicle for culture transmission. Explores the role of story creation and storytelling in culture change and culture formation. Using an anthropological approach, the research was conducted using qualitative methodology and a holistic definition of culture. Based on research in a company which had recently reorganized knowledge workers into self‐directed work teams, describes the process by which a critical incident becomes a story used to form culture. Addresses the questions: how does culture form in an organization? How can one identify its presence when one cannot assume that every grouping has culture? Can one see culture forming? What part do stories have to play in culture formation and change? Contributes to our understanding of some of the issues involved in managing self‐directed work teams.