Influencing Organizational Culture: A Very Brief Introduction: 07 (Management Compact)

In the management discourse few words are thrown about more carelessly than organizational culture. While the term is usually defined too broadly--including such phenomena as assumptions values traditions articles of faith myths and artifacts--this book applies a far more narrow concept. Organizational culture or the informal structure of an organization is a term used to describe the behavioral expectations in an organization that have not been decided on in a formal way but that evolved by means of repetition and imitation. This book shows how this narrow definition makes it possible to more precisely observe and understand an organizations culture and its changes. Managements only way for influencing organizational culture--and this may sound paradoxical at first--is to change the organizations formal structure as for example its incentive schemes goal-setting processes strategic directions or hierarchy.