Organizational Culture Theory and Critical Theory - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 17
About This Presentation
Title:

Organizational Culture Theory and Critical Theory

Description:

Shift from traditional, highly rationale theories to more fluid and irrational ... Description of how members of a group live and make sense of their world together ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:1989
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 18
Provided by: derek78
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Organizational Culture Theory and Critical Theory


1
Organizational Culture Theory and Critical Theory
  • Move from systemic and structural issues to . . .
  • Culture Theory
  • Understanding organizations through a cultural
    lens with a focus on values, attitudes and
    beliefs of members
  • Critical Theory
  • Revealing how social and technological structures
    within organizations serve to oppress workers.

2
Organizational Culture FOCUS
  • Changes in Global Marketplace
  • Intense Competition
  • Reconsider Traditional Management Practices
  • Shift from traditional, highly rationale theories
    to more fluid and irrational
  • Societal consciousness-raising regarding
    oppressive atmosphere in organizations for
    workers, women, and minorities
  • Inequities and Oppressive Circumstances

3
Organizational Culture Theory
  • State University vs. Southern University Case
    Study
  • Attempts to explain behavior within organizations
  • Attempts to account for differences among
    organizations
  • Description of how members of a group live and
    make sense of their world together
  • Culture provides a lens through which its members
    interpret, interact with, and make sense of
    reality
  • Culture helps to explain patterns of behavior and
    thought that characterize individuals and the
    groups with which they are associated
  • Focus on VALUES, ATTITUDES, and BELIEFS of members

4
Organizational Culture Theory
  • Organizational culture provides meanings for
    routine organizational events, thereby reducing
    the amount of cognitive processing and energy
    members need to expend throughout the day.

5
Misunderstandings and Organizational Culture
  • Cultural variations are often the cause of major
    and minor misunderstandings as groups come into
    contact with one another
  • Value of cultural perspective is in illustrating
    the misunderstandings that occur within an
    organization
  • Culture may hinder organizations from progress in
    the future
  • Organizations consist of subcultures
  • Mergers and International Mergers are also a
    source of misunderstandings

6
Two Competing Perspectives on Organizational
Culture
  • Culture as Variable
  • Something an organization has
  • By-product of organizational activities
  • Stories, rites, rituals, and heroes
  • Culture is changeable by management
  • Organizational tool for enhancing
    organizational effectiveness
  • In Search of Excellence (Peters and Waterman)
  • Corporate Cultures The Rites and Rituals of
    Corporate Life (Deal Kennedy)
  • Strong cultures have four key components
  • Values - basic beliefs and concepts (concrete
    guidelines for success)
  • Heroes - personify cultural values
  • Rites and rituals - public performances that
    display and enact values
  • Cultural network - primary carrier of cultural
    information (stories, myths, legends, jokes, and
    gossip)
  • Criticisms shortsighted, more than strategy,
    not just a skill culture is a complex,
    communicative phenomenon rooted in the history of
    the organizations events.

7
Two Competing Perspectives on Organizational
Culture
  • Culture as Root Metaphor
  • Something an organization is as opposed to
    something it has
  • Organizations as expressive forms, manifestations
    of human consciousness
  • Culture is the process of sense-making created
    and sustained through communication and
    interactions
  • Rituals and stories are generative processes
    the yield and shape meanings
  • Provides deep understanding of the way members of
    a particular organization make sense of the world
    around them
  • The essence of an organization is culture
  • Three Primary Elements
  • Complex (multi-level construction of values,
    beliefs and attitudes)
  • Communicative Construction (constructed and
    reconstructed through interaction)
  • Subcultures and Countercultures
  • Differential interaction
  • Shared experiences
  • Similar personal characteristics
  • Comparisons on page 90.

8
Comparison of Two Competing Perspectives on
Organizational Culture
  • VARIABLE
  • Something the organization has a tool, skill,
    or lever
  • Inform workplace of values
  • Change occurs through management directive and
    intervention
  • ROOT METAPHOR
  • Something the organization is expressive form
  • Create sustain and influence culture
  • Change occurs through natural evolution all
    members influence culture

9
Definitions of Organizational Culture
  • Three common characteristics
  • Culture is SHARED
  • Frameworks of understanding and interpreting
    organizational phenomena
  • Culture is INTANGIBLE
  • Consists of values, assumptions, norms, and
    frameworks
  • Culture AFFECTS HUMAN BEHAVIOR
  • Construction of human interaction that affects
    and is affected by the behavior of all members of
    the organization
  • Other characteristics
  • Communicative creations
  • Cultures are created, sustained and and
    influenced by and through human interaction
  • Historical
  • Cultures emerge and develop over time

10
Organizational Culture Defined
  • Organizational culture is a communicatively
    constructed, historically based system of
    assumptions, values, and interpretive frameworks
    that guide and constrain organizational members
    as they perform their organizational roles and
    confront the challenges of their environment.

11
Multi-level Perspective on Culture
  • Scheins Model of Organizational Culture
  • Three Interrelated Levels of Culture
  • Artifacts and Creations
  • tangible, physical, or hearable things in the
    environment of the organization
  • Important to connect artifacts to values
  • Values
  • Sense of what ought to be, as distinct from
    what is
  • Common basis for operating together
  • Cognitive constructions
  • Basic Assumptions - represent the essence of
    culture
  • FIVE BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
  • Humanitys relationship to nature
  • The nature of reality and truth - is truth real
    or discovered?
  • The nature of human nature
  • The nature of human activity
  • The nature of human relationships

12
Critical Perspectives on Culture
  • Critical Perspectives . . .
  • Reject the notion that organizations are
    value-free sites
  • Organizations are sites of struggle between
    management and workers resulting in domination
    and oppression of the powerless by the powerful.
  • Critical Theory
  • Karl Marx
  • Roots in the Institute for Social Research in
    Frankfurt (Frankfurt School)
  • Knowledge is not objective tainted by personal
    interests and the power structure
  • Involvement in the inner workings of society to
    reveal contradictions associated with the
    imbalance of power
  • Provide critique that allows for the reversal of
    oppressive conditions in the future
  • Research goal reveal how social and
    technological structures within the organization
    serve to oppress workers
  • Researchers must engage in consciousness-raising
    among organizational members

13
Critical Theory
  • Organization as a Site of Domination
  • Power, Hegemony, and Concertive Control
  • Power - the possibility of imposing ones will
    upon the behavior of other persons
  • Hegemony - the predominant influence over others
  • Concertive Control - based on adherence to
    socially constructed norms and values developed
    by organizational members as they attempt to
    structure the environment
  • Communication and Critical Theory
  • Habermas - goal to develop a theory of society
    that aims at the self-emancipation of people from
    domination (the ideal speech situation)
  • The utterances are truthful
  • There is a legitimate relationship established
    between the participants
  • The utterances are sincere
  • The utterances are comprehensible

14
Goal of Critical Theorists
  • Attempt to uncover the communication
    practices, whether they be interpersonal,
    team-based, or organization-wide, that serve to
    promote an unhealthy imbalance in organizations.

15
Critical Theory Issues and Challenges
  • Creating a more human(e) workplace
  • Oppressive reality of organizational life does
    not have to continue
  • Oppression is not an inherent part of
    organizational life
  • Workplace democracy
  • Encourage SELF-REFLECTION
  • Encourage COLLECTIVE DEVELOPMENT
  • Encourage INDIVIDUAL OPPORTUNITY
  • Critical theory offers a means of identifying
    elements of constraint and oppression and
    prescriptions for improving the situation
  • The plight of women Feminist organizational
    communication
  • Examine the oppressive circumstances experienced
    by women in the workplace
  • Raise our collective consciousness regarding
    unequal treatment and oppression
  • Attempts to uncover the assumptions upon which
    those circumstances are based
  • Offers a variety of means by which the oppression
    can be alleviated

16
Critical Theory Feminist Perspectives
  • Liberal Feminists - advocate working within the
    existing structure
  • Radical Feminists - argue for a separation of men
    and women
  • Materialist Feminists - gender differences are
    socially constructed
  • Goal Seek to show the centrality of language
    and interaction to the circumstances women face
    in the gendered workplace
  • Organizational members are able to understand how
    their communicative actions and interactions
    contribute to either the perpetuation or the
    reversal of the current oppressive situation
    (change behavior, affect the behavior of others,
    help promote a more equitable and equal workplace
    for the sexes)

17
Summary
  • Similarities of Organizational Theory and
    Critical Theory
  • Both theories call into question the theories and
    practices of the past and view organizations as
    more than the sum of management practices and
    task allocation
  • Communication is central to both theories
  • Most critical approaches to organizations realize
    that it is through communication that oppressive
    structures come into being and, in turn, restrict
    the communication of certain groups
  • Communication is the way to freedom from those
    oppressive structures
  • Intention of both theories do not serve to
    increase profits -- they excavate the underlying
    values and assumptions that guide organizational
    life and may serve to oppress certain members
  • Critical theory is not as popular as
    organizational culture theory
  • Most organizations are unwilling to make
    themselves vulnerable to disapproval (think about
    how this applies to your major research project!)
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com