Drawing on Appropriate Theory & Examples (I.E. Published Research, Case Studies and Personal Examples) Discuss the Extent to Which Managers Can Influence the Culture of an Organisation?

Culture is a term that is used in workplaces discussions but it is taken for granted that we understand what it means. In their publication In Search of Excellence, Peters and Waterman (1982) drew a lot of attention to the importance of culture to achieve high levels of organisational effectiveness. They made use of over 100 years of theory and research in cultural anthropology and folklore studies to inspire and legitimise their efforts. This generated many subsequent publications on how to manage organisational culture (e.g. Deal & Kennedy 1982; Ott 1989; Bate 1994).

If organisational culture is to be managed it helps first to be able to define it. However defining culture is not an easy task due to the many different perspectives taken by the diverse numbers of writers on the subject. There is general agreement about the components of culture as a broad construct but there is a considerable disagreement about what constitutes organisational culture, whether the culture of an organisational can be adequately described, whether culture management can ever be truly effective and, if so, which management strategies are most likely to succeed.

Taylor describes culture as ‘the complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.’ Taylor (1871/1958:1). Considering the early days of anthropology, culture was the understanding of what was distinctively human, what separates humans from other animals and hence what defines our similarities. Growing interest within this field brought about an association of culture with particular groups of people. This association caused anthropologists to talk about groups as if they were cultures and shifted the focus of anthropology from the general understanding of human kind as species, to the distinctive characteristics of particular groups, and thus to human differences. A comparison of the definition of Taylor and a definition... [continues]

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