Theme 1:  Can cultures be managed within organisations?

Blog 1 background context

Organisational culture is often defined as a set of beliefs, behaviours, systems, symbols and values that an organisation holds about itself. It affects the way that people in an organisation interact with each other and with others external to the organisation, including clients and stakeholders. The tone for corporate culture is set by organisational leadership who design and implement the processes and systems within which the organisation operates and which enable employees to comply with the organisational values.

An organisational culture will take several years to establish before employees are influenced and enabled to adhere to the company’s values and standards. A goal of an organisation should be to enable every employee to abide by and live the organisation’s culture to enable it to achieve and deliver its clients’ expectations. During the lifecycle of an organisation there may be times when an entrenched culture needs to change to enable it to grow and sustain its business. This is one of the hardest tasks that organisational leadership may face.

In your response for this blog focus on what you think about how you would encourage organisations to embrace organisational culture supported by contemporary research to inform your argument. Do not rely on quotes from published authors – your blog must present your ideas and recommendations for effecting cultural change, supported by relevant citations.

Blog instructions (word count: 750)

Your task in this blog is to conduct independent research that will enable you to:

1. Select a real UK-based business [in an industry of your choice] that is currently facing a need to adjust its organisational culture in response to a business need such as competitive innovation, ethical challenges, economic pressures or societal expectation.

2. Explain the principal challenges that an organisation faces when seeking to adjust and accommodate changes in its cultural practice, based on your understanding of corporate culture and its implementation.

3. Propose implementation strategies that will enable your chosen organisation to transition its organisational culture to address the challenges that you have identified, and

4. Develop a charter statement that outlines what an organisation’s leadership should do to embrace new cultural practices including cognitive drivers, resource reallocation, employee motivation and embedding cultural practice.

Understanding the key words

In this blog, you are asked to think and write in specific ways as a MBA student.  Below are some short explanations about these key words:

Select – introduce a UK based business currently experiencing the need to adjust its organisational culture. Provide reasons for choosing this organisation and how the learning can impact on your leadership style.

Explain – using evidence from previous research and case studies, explain the principal challenges the chosen UK business faces with reference to contemporary theory on organisational culture. What are the implications of using this theory or model?

Propose – using your research skills, analyse the approaches previous leaders have taken to change their organisations’ culture and what lessons can current leaders learn from them and make recommendations to manage cultural change.

Develop – using your writing skills, publish a charter statement that outlines what you think organisational leadership needs to do to enable cultural change.

 

Reviewing your work

After you have written your blog, read it all the way to the end to check that you have:

1. Used a real UK-based organisation to showcase the impact of cultural change on organisational efficiency and to make recommendations for implementing changes to cultural practice. Used an appropriate contemporary theory on organisational culture or model studied in this module

2. Specified recommendations to demonstrate what you have learned about enabling cultural adherence and how you would facilitate new cultural practices.

3. Considered how your chosen organisation might publish its charter statement to demonstrate explicitly what organisational leadership might do to embrace and institutionalise new cultural practices.

4. Used in-text citations throughout your blog to show where your knowledge of organisational culture theory and practice comes from.

References

Alvesson, M. and Sveningsson, S. (2008). Changing Organizational Culture: Cultural change work in progress. London: Routledge.

DiDonato, T. and Gill, N. (2015). Changing an Organization’s Culture, Without Resistance or Blame, Harvard Business Review, Jul-Aug 2015.

McCalman, J. and Potter, D. (2015). Leading Cultural Change: the theory and practice of successful organizational transformation. London: Kogan Page.

Schein, E. (2017). Organisational Culture and Leadership (5th Ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons Inc.

Willcoxson, L. and Millett, B. (2000). The Management of Organisational Culture. Australian Journal of Management & Organisational Behaviour, 3(2) 91-99.

Format:         Public Word Press Blog (converted to a word doc for submission) with a cover sheet including link to your word press blog*

Word Count:  (approx. 750 words per blog)