Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Behavior, 8e
Schermerhorn, Hunt, and
Osborn
Prepared by
Michael K. McCuddy
Valparaiso University
Organizational culture.
– The system of shared actions, values, and
beliefs that develops within an organization
and guides the behavior of its members.
– Called corporate culture in the business
setting.
– No two organizational cultures are identical.
External adaptation.
– Involves reaching goals and dealing with outsiders.
– Issues to be considered:
• Tasks to be accomplished.
• Methods to be used to achieve goals.
• Methods of coping with success and failure.
• Developing acceptable ways of telling outsiders how good
they really are.
• Knowing when to admit defeat.
Internal integration.
– Involves the creation of a collective identity
and with finding ways of matching methods of
working and living together.
– Issues to be considered:
• Deciding who is a member and who is not.
• Developing an understanding of acceptable and
unacceptable behavior.
• Separating friends from enemies.
Importing subcultures.
– Large organizations import potentially important
subcultures when hiring people.
– Globalization and expansion through mergers and
acquisitions produce challenges with importing
subcultures and dealing with culture clash.
– The relevance of subcultures to the entire organization
can affect operations and the ability to change.
– Roles.
• Where individual members stand in the social
system.
Management philosophy.
– Reflects the management subculture.
– Links key goal-related strategic issues with
key collaboration issues and comes up with a
series of general ways by which the firm will
manage its affairs.
– Group level.
• Belief that groups can be good for both people and
organizations.
– Organizational level.
• Respect for the complexity of an organization as a system of
interdependent parts.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 31
How can the process of
organization development enhance
organizational culture?
Organization development goals.
– Outcome goals.
• Mainly deal with issues of external adaptation.
• Achieving improvements in task performance by
improving external adaptation capabilities.
– Process goals.
• Mainly deal with issues of internal integration.
• Achieving improvements in communication,
interaction, and decision making among
organization’s members.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 13 32
How can the process of
organization development enhance
organizational culture?
In pursuing outcome and process goals, OD helps
by:
– Creating an open problem solving climate.
– Supplementing formal authority with knowledge and
competence.
– Moving decision making where relevant information
is available.
– Building trust and maximizing collaboration.
– Increasing the sense of organizational ownership.
– Allowing people to exercise self-direction and self-
control.