Can Managers Influence Their Organisation's Culture? Essay Example
Can managers influence the culture of their organisations? Discuss with reference to at least one example. It is only since the 1970s that the emphasis has shifted from a management-by-numbers to a more people-focused way of managing, in response to various problems that could not be overcome using the prior method (e.g. limitations to the Theory X way of managing, new production methods etc.). Pop-management theorists have since made direct links between an organisation’s culture and its performance, though this is not the entire story. As Kilmann et al (1985) put it: ‘a culture has a positive impact on an organisation when it points behaviour in the right direction... alternatively, a culture has a negative impact when it points behaviour in the wrong direction’. This essay will serve to explain to what extent management is able to alter, maintain or build the culture of its organisation, whether these effects span throughout the company and whether they will extend past the short-term. Culture is effectively, as Parker (2000) puts it, the anthropology of the organisation. The word itself, in essence, sums up the phrase ‘that’s the way things are done here’ (McNeal, 2007). For this essay, I will assume organisational culture to be the collective values, beliefs and norms of an organisation (Brewis, 2007, p.344), which are demonstrated by such aspects of a business as missions and goals of the organisation, authority and power relations within it, communication/interaction patterns, the psychological contracts that exist and so on. It is said to be to an organisation what personality is to an individual (Kilmann et al, 1985). Though influence over culture can be any of changing, maintaining or building it (Brewis, 2007), in this essay I will focus mainly on the changing of an organisation’s culture. First, I will outline the case that managers can indeed influence their organisation’s culture, i.e. the mainstream perspective. This theory revolves around the