WORD format onlyAll answered must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12, double-spaced) fontThis essay must be at least 1000-word in lengthUse proper referencing (APA style) to reference, other style will not be accepted.Support your submission with course material concepts, principles, and theories from the textbook and at least two scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles unless the assignment calls for more.Write a three-part essay (i.e., an essay that includes an introduction paragraph, the essay’s body, and a conclusion paragraph) that address the questions using a question and answer format.College of Administrative and Financial Sciences
Assignment 3
Deadline: 11/04/2020 @ 23:59
Course Name: Organizational Behavior
Student’s Name:
Course Code: MGT 301
Student’s ID Number:
Semester: II
CRN:
Academic Year: 1440/1441 H
For Instructor’s Use only
Instructor’s Name: Dr xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Students’ Grade: 00/10
Level of Marks: High/Middle/Low
Instructions – PLEASE READ THEM CAREFULLY
• The Assignment must be submitted on Blackboard (WORD format only) via allocated
folder.
• Assignments submitted through email will not be accepted.
• Students are advised to make their work clear and well presented, marks may be
reduced for poor presentation. This includes filling your information on the cover page.
• Students must mention question number clearly in their answer.
• Late submission will NOT be accepted.
• Avoid plagiarism, the work should be in your own words, copying from students or
other resources without proper referencing will result in ZERO marks. No exceptions.
• All answered must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12, double-spaced) font.
No pictures containing text will be accepted and will be considered plagiarism).
• Submissions without this cover page will NOT be accepted.
Course Learning Outcomes-Covered
1 Apply Organizational behavior knowledge and skills to manage diversified culture in the
organizational settings (Lo 2.2).
2 Recognize the impact of organizational culture on shaping values, attitudes and behavior (Lo
1.9).
Assignment 3
Management Essay:-
(10 Marks)
Write an essay about the differences in Culture and Diversity at the workplace. with
all characteristics of strong culture in the organization. Please refer to textbook
chapter-15. Use APA style, examples, peer-reviewed journals to support your
answer. This essay must be at least 1000-word in length.
Instructions:•
These assignments are an individual assignment.
•
All students are encouraged to use their own words.
•
Be three to five pages in length (800-1000 words), which does not include the title page,
abstract or required reference page, which are never a part of the content minimum
requirements.
Use proper referencing (APA style) to reference, other style will not be accepted.
Support your submission with course material concepts, principles, and theories from
the textbook and at least two scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles unless the
assignment calls for more.
It is strongly encouraged that you submit all assignments into the safe assignment
Originality Check prior to submitting it to your instructor for grading.
•
•
•
•
Write a three-part essay (i.e., an essay that includes an introduction paragraph, the essay’s
body, and a conclusion paragraph) that address the questions using a question and answer
format.
Answer:
1.
2.
3.
.
living and working together
15 Organizational Culture
and Innovation
the key point
Since people spend much of their adult lives in and around organizations, they are often absorbed
into the organization culture. While the organizational culture provides meaning and stability, most
organizations also contain a number of subcultures and countercultures. To operate as an effective
manager you will need to understand the various layers of culture and the important role of stories,
rites, and rituals. While culture provides stability, organizations also need innovation to survive.
Balancing the need for innovation and stability can be a managerial challenge of the first order as
illustrated in the case of Wall Street firms and social media.
chapter at a glance
What Is Organizational Culture?
How Do You Understand an Organizational Culture?
What Is Innovation and Why Is It Important?
How Can We Manage Organizational Culture and Innovation?
ETHICS IN OB
AGE BECOMES AN ISSUE IN JOB LAYOFFS
FINDING THE LEADER IN YOU
CHRISTINE SPECHT PUTS A NEW FACE ON COUSINS SUBS
OB IN POPULAR CULTURE
what’s inside?
CORPORATE CULTURE AND THE FIRM
RESEARCH INSIGHT
TEAM FACTORS AND INNOVATION
347
348 15 Organizational Culture and Innovation
Can you imagine eliminating all of your Facebook friends or passing up the opportunity to Twitter the most recent news? It is also like getting disconnected from the
world. Although Wall Street executives want to control the use of social media,
they also clearly recognize that being interconnected is a part of the larger U.S.
culture and rapidly becoming a global standard. This is just one of the newer
issues executives are confronting as they attempt to manage organizational culture.
Organizational Culture
LEARNING ROADMAP Functions of Organizational Culture / Subcultures and
Countercultures / National Culture and Corporate Culture
• Organizational or
corporate culture is the
system of shared actions,
values, and beliefs that
develops within an
organization and guides the
behavior of its members.
Organizational or corporate culture is the system of shared actions, values,
and beliefs that develops within an organization and guides the behavior of its
members.1 In the business setting, this system is often referred to as the corporate
culture. Each organization has its own unique culture. Just as no two individual
personalities are the same, no two organizational cultures are identical. Yet, there
are some common cultural elements that yield stability and meaning for organizations. Management scholars and consultants believe that some cultural elements
can have a major impact on the performance of organizations and the quality of
work life experienced by their members.2 In this chapter we will examine the
functions of organizational culture and various levels of cultural analysis to understand the powerful force of organizational culture.
Functions of Organizational Culture
Through their collective experience, members of an organization can solve two
extremely important survival issues.3 The first issue is one of external adaptation:
What precisely needs to be accomplished, and how can it be done? The second
is known as internal integration: How do members resolve the daily problems
associated with living and working together?
• External adaptation
deals with reaching goals,
the tasks to be
accomplished, the methods
used to achieve the goals,
and the methods of coping
with success and failure.
External Adaptation Issues of external adaptation deal with ways of reaching goals, tasks to be accomplished, methods used to achieve the goals, and
methods of coping with success and failure. Through their shared experiences,
members may develop common views that help guide their day-to-day activities.
Organizational members need to know the real mission of the organization, not
just the pronouncements to key constituencies, such as stockholders. By talking
to one another, members will naturally develop an understanding of how they
contribute to the mission. This view may emphasize the importance of human
resources. On the other hand, employees may see themselves as cogs in a
machine, or a cost to be reduced.
Each group of individuals in an organization tends to (1) separate more
important from less important external forces, (2) develop ways to measure their
accomplishments, and (3) create explanations for why goals are not always met.
At Dell, the retailer of computers and consumer electronics, managers, for example, have moved away from judging their progress against specific targets to estimating the degree to which they are moving a development process forward.
They work on improving participation and commitment. They don’t blame a poor
Organizational Culture 349
Winning Culture at Sherwin-Williams
Christopher Connor, chairman and CEO of Sherwin-Williams, describes
his firm’s “winning culture” in terms of providing “a place where
individuals get promoted based on performance to build wealth—real
wealth.” Sherwin-Williams managers believe in providing training and
developmental experiences for all its employees.
economy or upper-level managers for the firm’s failure to reach a profit target. In
difficult times they stress the progress all have made in their collective effort.4
The final issues in external adaptation deal with two important, but often
neglected, aspects of coping with external reality. First, individuals need to
develop acceptable ways of telling outsiders just how good they really are. At 3M,
for example, employees talk about the quality of their products and the many
new, useful products they have brought to the market. Second, individuals must
collectively know when and how to admit defeat. At 3M, the answer is easy for
new projects: At the beginning of the development process, members establish
“drop” points at which to quit the development effort and redirect it. When they
quit, project managers are careful not to suggest that the group has failed but
stress that what they have learned increases the chances that the next project will
succeed to market.5
In sum, external adaptation involves answering important instrumental or
goal-related questions concerning coping with reality: What is the real mission?
How do we contribute? What are our goals? How do we reach our goals? What
external forces are important? How do we measure results? What do we do if we
do not meet specific targets? How do we tell others how good we are? When do
we quit? Chris Connor of Sherwin-Williams expressed his firm’s approach to
external adaptation in terms of winning.6
The process of internal integration often begins with the establishment of
a unique identity. Through dialogue and interaction, members begin to characterize their world. They may see it as malleable or fixed, filled with opportunities or
threats. Real progress toward innovation can only begin when group members
believe that they can change important parts of the world around them and that
what appears to be a threat is actually an opportunity for change.
Three important aspects of working together are (1) deciding who is a member of the group and who is not, (2) developing an informal understanding of
acceptable and unacceptable behavior, and (3) separating friends from enemies.
These are important issues for managers as well. A key to effective total quality
management, for instance, is that subgroups in the organization need to view
their immediate supervisors as members of the group. The immediate supervisor
is expected to represent the group to friendly higher managers. Of course, should
management not be seen as friendly, the process of improving quality could
quickly break down.7 For example, Aetna, one of the nation’s leading diversified
health care benefits companies, describes its corporate culture as one where
employees “work together openly, share information freely and build on each
other’s ideas to continually create the next better way. Nothing is impossible to
our Aetna team. We are eager, ambitious learners and continuous innovators. And
we are succeeding. Every day.”8
• Internal Integration
deals with the creation of a
collective identify and with
ways of working and living
together.
350 15 Organizational Culture and Innovation
To work together effectively, individuals need to decide collectively how to
allocate power, status, and authority. They need to establish a shared understanding of who will get rewards and sanctions for specific types of actions. Too often,
managers fail to recognize these important aspects of internal integration. A manager may fail to explain the basis for a promotion and to show why this reward,
the status associated with it, and the power given to the newly promoted individual are consistent with commonly shared beliefs.
Collections of individuals also need to work out acceptable ways to communicate and develop guidelines for friendships. Although these aspects of internal
integration may appear esoteric, they are vital. For example, to function effectively as a team, all must recognize that some members will be closer than others;
friendships are inevitable.9
Resolving the issues of internal integration helps individuals develop a shared
identity and a collective commitment. It may well lead to longer-term stability and
provide a lens for members to make sense of their part of the world. In sum, internal integration involves answers to important questions associated with living
together. What is our unique identity? How do we view the world? Who is a member? How do we allocate power, status, and authority? How do we communicate?
What is the basis for friendship? Answering these questions is important to organizational members because the organization is more than just a place to work.
Subcultures and Countercultures
Whereas smaller firms often have a single dominant culture with a universal set
of shared actions, values, and beliefs, most larger organizations contain several
subcultures as well as one or more countercultures.10
• Subcultures are groups
who exhibit unique
patterns of values and
philosophies not consistent
with the dominant culture
of the larger organization
or system.
Subcultures Subcultures are groups of individuals who exhibit a unique pattern of values and a philosophy that is consistent with the organization’s dominant
values and philosophy.11 While subcultures are unique, their members’ values do
not clash with those of the larger organization. Interestingly, strong subcultures are
often found in task forces, teams, and special project groups in organizations. The
subculture emerges to bind individuals working intensely together to accomplish
a specific task. For example, there are strong subcultures of stress engineers and
liaison engineers in the Boeing Renton plant. These highly specialized groups
must solve knotty technical issues to ensure that Boeing planes are safe. Though
distinct, these groups of engineers also share in the dominant values of Boeing.
• Countercultures are
groups where the patterns
of values and philosophies
outwardly reject those of
the organization or social
system.
Countercultures In contrast, countercultures are groups whose patterns of
values and philosophies outwardly reject those of the larger organization or social
system.12 When Stephen Jobs reentered Apple Computer as its CEO, he quickly
formed a counterculture within Apple. Over the next 18 months, numerous clashes
occurred as the followers of the former CEO Gil Amelio fought to maintain their
place and the old culture. Jobs won and so did Apple. His counterculture became
dominant and the company thrived.13
Every large organization imports potentially important subcultural groupings
when it hires employees from the larger society. In North America, for instance,
subcultures and countercultures may naturally form based on ethnic, racial, gender, generational, or locational similarities. In Japanese organizations, subcultures
often form based on the date of graduation from a university, gender, or geographic
Organizational Culture 351
location. In European firms, ethnicity and language play an important part in
developing subcultures, as does gender. In many less developed nations, language, education, religion, or family social status are often grounds for forming
popular subcultures and countercultures.
Within an organization, mergers and acquisitions may produce adjustment
problems. Employers and managers of an acquired firm may hold values and
assumptions that are inconsistent with those of the acquiring firm. This is known
as the “clash of corporate cultures.”14 One example is the difficulty Bank of America faced when it gave huge bonuses to traders after acquiring Merrill Lynch.15
National Culture and Corporate Culture
Most organizations originate in one national culture and incorporate many features from this host national culture even when they expand internationally. The
difference between Sony’s corporate emphasis on group achievements and
Zenith’s emphasis on individual engineering excellence, for example, can be
traced to the Japanese emphasis on collective action versus the U.S. emphasis on
individualism. National cultural values may also become embedded in the expectations of important organizational constituencies and in generally accepted solutions to problems.
When moving across national cultures, managers need to be sensitive to
national cultural differences so that their actions do not violate common assumptions in the underlying national culture. To improve morale at General Electric’s
French subsidiary, Chi. Generale de Radiologie, American managers invited all
of the European managers to a “get-acquainted” meeting near Paris. The Americans gave out colorful t-shirts with the GE slogan, “Go for One,” a typical maneuver in many American training programs. The French resented the t-shirts. One
outspoken individual said, “It was like Hitler was back, forcing us to wear uniforms. It was humiliating.” Firms often face problems in developing strong ethical standards, particularly when they import societal subgroups.
Importing Societal Subgroups Beyond becoming culturally sensitive, difficulties often arise with importing groupings from the larger society. Some of these
groupings are relevant to the organization whereas others may be quite destructive. At the one extreme, senior managers can merely accept societal divisions
and work within the confines of the larger culture. This approach presents three
primary difficulties. First, subordinated groups, such as members of a specific
religion or ethnic group, are likely to form into a counterculture and to work
more diligently to change their status than to better the firm. Second, the firm may
find it extremely difficult to cope with broader cultural changes. For instance, in
the United States the expected treatment of women, ethnic minorities, and the
disabled has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. Firms that merely accept
old customs and prejudices have experienced a greater loss of key personnel and
increased communication difficulties, as well as greater interpersonal conflict,
than have their more progressive counterparts. Third, firms that accept and build
on natural divisions from the larger culture may find it extremely difficult to
develop sound international operations. For example, many Japanese firms have
experienced substantial difficulties adjusting to the equal treatment of women in
their U.S. operations.16
352 15 Organizational Culture and Innovation
ETHICS IN OB
AGE BECOMES AN ISSUE IN JOB LAYOFFS
Job cuts need to be made in a bad economy. Who gets laid off?
Sarah is young, single, and years out of college; she is hard
working, topped the performance ratings this year, and always
steps forward when volunteers are needed for evening work or
travel. Mary is in her mid-40s, has two children, and her husband is
a pediatrician; her performance is good, always at or above
average during performance reviews, but she has limited time
available for evening work and out-of-town travel.
Who gets picked for the layoff, Sarah or Mary? Chances are it’s
going to be Sarah. The Wall Street Journal reports that younger
workers are at greater risk of layoffs because many employers use
a “last in/first out” rule when cutting back staff. This is true even
though the younger workers tend to earn less than their older
counterparts and may even be outperforming them. One reason is
conflict avoidance; who wants to face an age discrimination
lawsuit? Another is the emotional toll that making layoff decisions places on managers; it
just seems easier to let go the younger person who probably has fewer complicating
personal and family situations.
David Schauer, a school superintendent in Phoenix, says he sent layoff notices to 68
teachers all in their first year of employment. He says, “My worst fear is that really good
people will leave teaching.” Nicole Ryan, a teacher in New York, received just such a notice.
She says: “I knew it …
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