Defining “Culture” And “Organizational Culture”: From .

Defining “Culture” and “Organizational Culture”:From Anthropology to the Officeby: Bruce M. Tharp

Defining “Culture” and “Organizational Culture”: From Anthropology to the Office / 04.09The topic of organizational culture isincreasingly understood as a companyasset that can be used to increasebusiness performance. While important,organizational culture is a slippery conceptto concretely define. This paper deals withthe historical development and foundationalunderstandings of both the term culture,from anthropology, and its appropriationby industrial organization researchers toorganizational culture. A foundationaldefinition by Edgar Schein of MIT’s SloanSchool of Management is arrived at as wellas the notion that culture can be observedat three levels of the organization: artifacts,espoused values, and basic assumptions.Contents: Anthropological Origins of “Culture” Understanding Culture Origins of “Organizational Culture” Understanding Organizational CultureFor some, culture is considered the “glue” that holdsan organization together and for others, the “compass”that provides directions.The culture of an organization eminently influences itsmyriad decisions and actions. A company’s prevailingideas, values, attitudes, and beliefs guide the way inwhich its employees think, feel, and act—quite oftenunconsciously. Therefore, understanding culture isfundamental to the description and analysis oforganizational phenomena. For some, culture isconsidered the “glue” that holds an organizationtogether and for others, the “compass” that providesdirection. These are but two of many such metaphors(e.g., magnet, lighthouse, exchange-regulator,affect-regulator, need satisfier, sacred cow), illustratingthat organizational culture is indeed very important,but whose definition is slippery and often contested.Usually the domain of top executives and uppermanagement, for most within an organization itsculture remains implicit — often with only its effectsand implications discussed. Despite this, as decades ofresearch suggest, an explicit, integrated, accepted, andconsistent organizational culture seems important inachieving long-term health and other performancesuccesses. Yet, as in most arenas of social sciencewhere the intricate webs of various and varying humaninfluences exist, distinct and conclusive causal links aredifficult to establish. Keeping this in mind, it is still verylikely that the richness and dynamism of organizationalactivity—the life of an organization—may be seen, andtherefore shaped and improved, through the lens ofculture.Anthropological Origins of “Culture”What exactly is culture? Unfortunately a fixed, universalunderstanding does not exist; there is little consensuswithin, let alone, across disciplines. Often “culture” isapplied so broadly, merely as “social pattern,” that itmeans very little. Highly specific, idiosyncratic definitionsalso abound where the term is used in various contextsin support of any agenda.When “culture” first appeared in the Oxford EnglishDictionary around 1430 it meant “cultivation” or “tendingthe soil,” based on the Latin culture. Into the 19thcentury “culture” was associated with the phrase “highculture,” meaning the cultivation or “refinement of mind,taste, and manners.” This generally held to the mid-20thcentury when its meaning shifted toward its presentAmerican Heritage English Dictionary definition: “Thetotality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts,beliefs, institutions, and all other products of humanwork and thought.”Aspects of CultureINVISIBLEVALUE . ATTITUDE . ASSUMPTIONS . BELIEFSVISIBLEBEHAVIORS:ARTIFACTS:FINANCIAL REPORTINGEMPLOYEE DRESSHIRING /FIRING PRACTICESPRODUCT LINEEMPLOYEE TRAININGSIGNAGERECYCLING PROGRAMSPUBLICATIONSINTERIORARCHITECTUREFURNITURE2

Defining “Culture” and “Organizational Culture”: From Anthropology to the Office / 04.09While the dictionary definition helps toclose in on its meaning in generalparlance, the term is also used by manydisciplines in unique ways. To movetoward a more specific and appliedunderstanding of “culture,” anthropologycan be helpful. It is this social scientificdiscipline that has contributed the mostto its practical application within thefield of organizational research.Originally the notion of culturedescribed the rituals, myths, languages,values, beliefs, and practices of distantpeoples often in exotic places—theobjects of traditional anthropologicalinquiry. Even within the field however,numerous approaches to cultureabound as evident in one seminal 1952study that identified 164 differentdefinitions.British anthropologist Edward Tyler iswidely credited with the first (1871)“modern” definition of culture: “thatcomplex whole which includesknowledge, belief, arts, morals, law,custom, and any other capabilities andhabits acquired by man as a member ofsociety.” Undoubtedly this definitioninfluenced the shift toward currentdictionary definitions.For some, culture is consideredthe “glue” that holds anorganization together andfor others, the “compass” thatprovides directions.Subsequent to this new interpretationand vision of a “complex whole,”academics attempted to build uponthis by creating universal lists of allof the elements of culture, the mostexhaustive of which (first published in1938) lists 79 major divisions and 637subdivisions. While comprehensive andstill useful for social science researcherstoday, it is ineffectual for most generalapplications as well as corporations andother organizations.3Understanding CultureWhile the complexities of the cultureconcept were being debated in themid-20th century, surveys of itsdifferent definitions yielded a fewcommon threads that are helpful inorganizational research. Most simply,culture involves three basic humanactivities: what people think, whatpeople do, and what people make.Further, several common propertiesarise: culture is shared, learned,transmitted crossgenerationally,symbolic, adaptive, and integrated.To speak of culture as being sharednarrows the field of relevant activity tothat which is common and social. Aparticular action is not cultural if it isunique to one or relatively insignificantnumber of individuals. Also, culture islearned (actively or passively) and istransmitted cross-generationallythrough formal or informal socialinteraction—we are not born with theunderstanding that stealing is wrong orthat “diamonds show you care.”One of the primary characteristics ofhuman life, over animal life, is that weassign symbolic meaning to ideas,behavior, and objects, as well as havelanguage and speech. We say thathumans have culture while animals donot. This is largely due to their inabilityto ascribe arbitrary symbolic meaningto their world—a chimpanzee couldnot designate his banana to signifyhonesty, for example. Culture is alsoadaptive in that it can and does changein response to various influences andconditions. No culture is truly static—many aspects of American culture areradically different in the wake of theInternet, the dot-com bubble, andglobal terrorism. And finally, culture isintegrated in the sense that itpermeates society and becomespart of the social machinery. Cultureis the ever-present, ethereal mediumin which members live and throughwhich they act.In 1973 anthropologist Clifford Geertzpublished, The Interpretation ofCultures, in which he writes: “Cultureis the fabric of meaning in terms ofwhich human beings interpret theirexperience and guide their action” andthat culture is “an ordered system ofmeaning and of symbols in terms ofwhich social interaction takes place.”This semiotic (symbolic or languagebased) notion of culture gained greatpopularity in the postmodernmovement of the 1980’s, when therelatively mature discipline oforganizational behavior first beganto talk broadly about “organizationalculture.” Geertz’s anthropologicaldefinition was the most cited in theliterature at that time and still has greatpurchase in contemporary research.Origins of “Organizational Culture”The field of organizational behavior andthe related discipline of managementscience began investigatingorganizations in terms of culture asearly as the 1930s. The final phase ofthe famous Hawthorne studies at theWestern Electric Company marked thefirst systematic attempt to use aconcept of culture to understand thework environment. While an importantstep forward in qualitative research, theinvestigation was rather blunt and theunderstanding of organizational cultureremained fairly primitive during thefollowing decades. Most mid-centuryattempts at understanding wereconducted by scholars steeped inquantitative psychology and sociology,though by the 1970s researchers moreexplicitly and emphatically appropriatedthe theories and methods ofanthropology. The late-century upsurgeof interest in organizational culture iscredited largely to the economicconditions of the 1970s wheninternational competition hadheightened and more foreigncompanies were operating factoriesin the United States. Specifically, thesuccess of the Japanese in manyindustries sparked curiosity about

Defining “Culture” and “Organizational Culture”: From Anthropology to the Office / 04.09whether their differing corporate values,attitudes, and behaviors were responsiblefor their often superior performance. Pascale and Athos, 1982, The Art ofJapanese Management: Applications forAmerican ExecutivesThe 1982 publication of Peters &Wasserman’s In Search of Excellence stirredboth popular and professional interestthrough its suggestion that organizationswith strong cultures were more effective. Deal and Kennedy, 1982, CorporateCultures: The Rites and Rituals ofCorporate LifeCorporate culture was offered as an assetthat could be managed to improvebusiness performance. While definitelythe most popular book on the subject(outselling all other non-fiction books forthe year), three others were seminal tothe development of the field: Ouchi, 1981, Theory Z: How AmericanBusiness Can Meet the Japanese ChallengeSince the early 1980s, academic andapplied exploration of organizationalculture has steadily increased andeven now there is little indicationof abatement as changes in datamanagement, work organization, values,lifestyles, demographics, knowledgeintensive work, outsourcing, and ahost of other social, economic, andtechnological factors continue to impactthe relationship between organizations,workers, and the workplace.CULTURE IS FOUND IN:OBSERVABLE ARTIFACTS:ESPOUSED VALUES:Architecture & Physical SurroundingsThose values championedProductsby a company’s leadership.TechnologiesStyle (clothing - art - publications)Published Values / Mission StatementsMyths / Stories / RitualsBASIC ASSUMPTIONS:Underlying (often unconscious)determinants of an organization’s attitudes,thought processes and actions.4