ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND LEADERSHIP: LESSONS FROM STARBUCKS AND VIETTEL

全文

(1)國立臺灣師範大學管理學院國際企業管理雙碩士學位學程碩士論文 Double Degree Program for International Master of Business Administration College of Management National Taiwan Normal University Master Thesis. ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND LEADERSHIP: LESSONS FROM STARBUCKS AND VIETTEL. Tran Thi Binh. 指導教授：許書瑋博士 Advisor：Ryan Shuwei Hsu Ph.D.. 中華民國 106 年 8 月 August 2017.

(2) Organizational Culture and Leadership: Lessons from Starbucks and Viettel By Tran Thi Binh A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Approved by: ____________________________ Dr. Ryan Shuwei Hsu Thesis Advisor ____________________________ Dr. James Stanworth Committee Member ____________________________ Dr. Kuan-Chou Ko Committee Member ____________________________ Dr. Frank Y-H Ying Dean of the College of Management. Double Degree Program for International Master of Business Administration National Taiwan Normal University Taipei, Taiwan 25 August, 2017.

(3) ACKNOWLEDGEMENT After spending 14 years working on communication and marketing field, I had a pause and spent some years in Taiwan and attending this DIMBA program. It likes riding on the fast horse and then jumping down to walk. It has been amazing time for me to walk slowly to look back on things in the past and at the present more clearly and learn more. In the hindsight of my previous work for the bank, I realized that I had done some parts of the culture carrier and advisor for new top leaders after they acquired the bank. It stimulated my curiosity to investigate more about organizational culture and eventually it was great opportunity for me to learn and write this thesis on this inspiring subject. My warmest thanks go to Dr. Ryan Shuwei Hsu, my thesis advisor, for his inspiring guidance and encouragement throughout my research and learning for this work. His prompt guidance and support really help me to complete the enormous amount of reading, reflection and writing this thesis. I want to thank Dr. James Stanworth and Kuan-Chou Ko for reading of manuscript and being defense committee and other support. Thank you all of my classmates for being with me and together we have finished this very intensive program, Jia You. Special thanks for the kind and diligent support from the DIMBA office including Dr. Frank Y-H Ying, Dr. David D. Chou and Cheng-Yi Wu. Special thanks to my friend, Ms. Nguyen Kim Dieu has supported me to read this manuscript and revise my writing. Finally, I would like to extend my heart-felt thanks to my family. My parent, husband’ support and blessing and, especially, my lovely angel daughter, you are the source of my energy for me to be able to stand here today..

(4) ABSTRACT I have been seen and read that the high performance’s and lasting companies are usually associated to their different, unique and strong culture. So I wondered if can we consciously create and maintain a culture that help company high performing and who can mainly do this job. Obviously the one who create and manage the company is the one creating and maintaining culture of it, so called leaders. So the purpose of this thesis is to understand the narrowed subject of organizational culture, its history, its major contributors, its definition, structure, what leaders’ role can do about organizational culture, how to decipher and change the culture. Over my research, I find that almost successful organization has three common building blocks of its culture: learning culture, own unique culture and ambidextrous capacity. So I would like to propose this framework to any organization to build these cultures as the foundation for its success. My knowledge is greatly influenced by Edgar Schein and his book “Organizational culture and leadership” and the book is the frequent source of reference of my first part of the thesis. Second part will be the case studies demonstrating the effectiveness and leader’s awareness of company’s culture, how the three building blocks of a thriving organizational culture are present in those organizations.. Keywords: organizational culture, leadership, learning organization, ambidextrous organization.

(5) TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT............................................................................................ I TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................ II LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................. IV LIST OF FIGURES ..............................................................................................V CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION............................................................. 1 Background, Assumption and Purpose of the Study..........................................1 The Method of the Study ...................................................................................2. CHAPTER II ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE’S PERSPECTIVE AND STRUCTURE ......................................................................... 3 The Brief History of Organizational Culture .....................................................3 Definition of Organizational Culture .................................................................6 The Structure of Organizational Culture............................................................10 The Metaphor of Organizational Culture and Personal Culture ........................14 What’s More About Organizational Culture? ....................................................18. CHAPTER III DECIPHERING, CHANGING AND LEADERSHIP ROLE ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ................................. 20 How Leaders Embed and Transmit Culture .......................................................20 Deciphering The Organizational Culture ...........................................................26 Changing Organizational Culture ......................................................................32. CHAPTER IV BUILDING BLOCKS OF AN THRIVING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ................................................... 39 What is Own Unique Culture.............................................................................39 What is Learning Culture ...................................................................................40 What is Culture of Ambidextrous Organization ................................................48 Putting Three Building Blocks of Culture Together ..........................................50. CHAPTER V CASE STUDIES OF DECIPHERING AND BUILDING THE THRIVING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ............................. 51 Deciphering the Organizational Culture of Viettel ............................................51 The Presence of Three Building Blocks of a Thriving Culture from Starbucks’s Success ..................................................................................58.

(6) CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION .............................................................. 64 REFERENCES ....................................................................................... 65 APPENDIX A: FOUR LEVELS OF RELATIONSHIP IN SOCIETY .............................................................. ...67 APPENDIX B: GENERIC SUBCULTURE’s ASSUMPTION ........... ...68.

(7) LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1. The three levels of organizational culture ..................................................10 Table 3.1. How Leaders Embed their Beliefs, Values, and Assumptions ...................21 Table 3.2. The Relevance of Kotter’s 8-steps and Lewin’s model of change .............33 Table 3.3. Different assumptions between Lewin and East Asian’s mode of change……………………………………………………….35,36.

(8) LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1. The Lily Pond as a Metaphor for Levels of Culture .................................15 Figure 3.1. Lewin’s Model of Change ........................................................................32 Figure 3.2. Yin-Yang Cyclical Change .......................................................................34 Figure 3.3. Five Agent Cyclical Change .....................................................................34 Figure 4.1. Three building blocks of thriving organizational culture .........................39 Figure 4.2. Identify underlying structure of the problem............................................41 Figure 4.3. Realize your creativity tension .................................................................43 Figure 4.4. Different mental model on the same situation ..........................................45 Figure 4.5. Three building blocks of culture in Starbucks ..........................................50 Figure 4.6. Three building blocks of culture in Viettel ...............................................50 Figure 5.1. Viettel’s business quick facts and presences. ...........................................52 Figure 5.2. Starbucks’s number of stores worldwide. ................................................59.

(9) CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Background, Assumption and Purpose of the Study There has been many researches and books about the direct effect from organizational culture to performance of an organization in both qualitative and quantitative method. Most of them proved that the organizational culture is an important factor for the success of organization and has been articulated continuously from first half of the 1980s up to now. The recognition of this phenomenon is best example by the success of Peters and Waterman’s book “In search of excellence” (Peters and Waterman, 1982/2006). It is harder to have a quantitative method on the relation between organizational culture and performance since culture itself is not measured and defined as the number. However, there have been many quantitative research projects working on empirical evidence with supported hypothesis about appropriate organizational culture result higher performance for specific context. For example, Gordon and Di Tomaso had found the significant support on hypothesis: “Companies in dynamic industries perform best when their culture fosters adaptability rather than stability” (Gordon and Di Tomaso, 1992). The organizational culture recently has been mentioned excessively in knowledge-based industry, but indeed, the recognition of culture was in labor-based industry such as steel industry as well. For example: Nuccor Corporation, largest steel producer in the United States of America, one Nuccor’s executive summed up in the interview of what had made his company from a small and underdog steel producer become and sustain its extraordinary success (the interview was conducted on 1996, and up to now (2017), Nuccor is still maintaining its position), “Twenty percent of our success is the new technology we embrace…[but] eighty percent of our success is in the culture of our company.” (Collins, 2001, p.156). More interestingly, organizational culture is something intangible despite of its important contribution, and somehow it is the word we created to perceive things not been seen. There are continuous exchange and influence each other between macro culture (national, ethnic… culture) and organizational culture, but in the scope of this thesis, I particularly focus on organizational culture only and bypass this interaction. In many discussions about growing interest in organizational culture, the concept of leadership has been mentioned as crucially important. In one of the first 1.

(10) books on organizational culture, Schein (1985, 1992, 2010, 2016) emphasized the interrelatedness of the two concepts, Schein (Schein, 1992, p.1) wrote: When one brings culture to the level of the organization and even down to groups within the organization, one can see more clearly how it is created, embedded, developed, and ultimately manipulated, managed, and changed. These dynamic processes of culture creation and management are the essence of leadership and make one realize that leadership and culture are two sides of the coin.. In this thesis, I examined the structure of the organizational culture that the insider or leaders of organization can identify and decipher his/her company culture in more intuitive way, how different it is with its articulated espoused culture. Also over my finding, I suggest few general directions that leaders can evolve their organizational culture toward, then combine their unique organizational culture with suggested culture that can endure their organization over time. The case study will be the illustration of how leaders created, used and recovered their organizational culture in daily practice of their company.. The Method of the Study In this thesis, I mainly summarize and recapitulate the existing ideas and knowledge to support to the purpose of this study. There is no hypothesis to be studied and answered. And based on my finding and reading, I propose one model of culture that organization could build to attain its vision. It is inevitable that I would need to read and reflect more about this subject even after thesis is finished, as thousands of researchers, teachers and practitioners out there are revising and inventing new understanding about this broad and complicated topic. In the case studies, I try to refer to the most reliable source as possible. For example: in Starbucks’s case, I mainly got information from the book written by its founder, Howard Schultz; or in case of Viettel, I had some years studying and interrogating from my close friends working there about the company’s culture, and combined these with some of its cultural handbook documents. I hope in this way, my interpretation from the case study will arrive closely to the reality. In my constraint of time and knowledge, I hope that this thesis can build the foundation for me to extend further understanding of this interesting field.. 2.

(11) CHAPTER II ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE’S PERSPECTIVE AND STRUCTURE The Brief History of Organizational Culture There are many definitions of and model to decipher organizational culture. In this section I address here some of most notable and influential definition and model and I would pick up one of them to use throughout my thesis.. The Way We Do Things Around Here In 1966, Marvin Bower (Managing Director of McKinsey and Company, 19501967) published the book “The Will to Manage” (Bower, 1966) which told us some of first building blocks for understanding organizational culture. From the frequent speaking of top management executives in the most successful companies, they often referred to “our philosophy” and assumed that everyone in the company knew what they are talking about. Bower defined this philosophy as “the way we do things around here” or the basic beliefs that people in the business are expected to hold and be guided by as they perform and conduct themselves. There is another way to express the same meaning “the way we are expected to do things around here”. Bower identified five basic beliefs which he found recurring frequently and noted that once the company philosophy crystallizes, it becomes a powerful force. These five beliefs are (O’Donovan, 2006, p.33-34): 1. High ethical standards 2. Fact-founded decision-making 3. Responsiveness to internal and external environmental forces 4. Judging people on performance not personality 5. A sense of competitive urgency. Rites, Rituals and Ceremonies In the book first published in 1982, “Corporate Culture: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life” (Deal and Kennedy, 1982), Dr Terrence Deal of Harvard and consultant Allan A. Kennedy explored the force (the organizational culture) further and 3.

(12) tagged it as “corporate culture”. They suggested that the basis of corporate culture is an interlocking set of six cultural elements (or called the model of corporate culture which people can identify by listing observed or tacit facts based on these six elements) (summarized by Mind Tools Editorial Team): 1. History – A shared narrative of the past lays the foundation for corporate culture. The traditions of the past keep people anchored to the core values that the organization was built on. 2. Values and Beliefs – Cultural identity is formed around the shared beliefs of what is really important, and the values that determine what the organization stands for. 3. Rituals and Ceremonies – Ceremonies are the things that employees do every day that bring them together. Examples include Friday afternoon get-togethers or simply saying goodbye to everyone before you leave for the day. 4. Stories – Corporate stories typically exemplify company values, and capture dramatically the exploits of employees who personify these values in action. Stories allow employees to learn about what is expected of them and better understand what the business stands for. 5. Heroic Figures – Related to stories are the employees and managers whose status is elevated because they embody organizational values. These heroes serve as role models and their words and actions signal the ideal to aspire to. 6. The Cultural Network – The informal network within an organization is often where the most important information is learned. Informal players include: . Storytellers, who interpret what they see happening and create stories that can be passed on to initiate people to the culture.. . Gossipers, who put their own spin on current events and feed people a steady diet of interesting information. Employees know not to take the information at face value; however, they enjoy the entertainment value of a gossip's story.. . Whisperers, who have the ear of the powerful people in the organization. They can be used by anyone with a message they want taken to the top but who doesn't want to use formal communication channels.. . Spies, who provide valuable information to top management, and let them know what really happens on a daily basis. 4.

(13) . Priests and priestesses, who are the guardians of cultural values. They know the history of the company inside out, and can be relied on to interpret a current situation using the beliefs, values and past practices of the company.. From above informant players in cultural network, the “Priests and priestesses” is closely to the role of recently emerging position in many large organizations such as Facebook, Google… as CCO (Chief Culture Officer). In the book “Chief Culture Officer” published in 2009, Canadian author and anthropologist Grant McCrancken described this position “A person who knows culture, both its fads and fashions, and its deep, enduring structures” (McCracken, 2009). Actually, the very early adopted CCO is Google which announced this new official position in 2007, then in turn started the new trend of organizational culture’s awareness, management and dedicated resource to take care of among companies around the world in recent ten years and is still continuous.. A Three Layers of Organizational Culture In 1985, Edgar Schein (senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management) shared with us his perspective on the essence of organizational culture. According to Schein in the fifth edition of his book, a dynamic definition of culture is (Schein, 2016): The culture of a group can be defined as the accumulated shared learning of that group as it solves its problems of external adaptation and internal integration; which has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, feel, and behave in relation to those problems. This accumulated learning is a pattern or system of beliefs, values, and behavioral norms that come to be taken for granted as basic assumptions and eventually drop out of awareness.. In above text, Schein defined the culture of a group which is quite general, but it is especially true about organization since organization is simply a group of people at various sizes. Schein layered the structure of organizational culture as following:  Artefacts: visible organization structures and process, including rites, rituals, etc.  Espoused values: strategies, goals and philosophies  Assumptions: unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts and feelings. 5.

(14) As I have listed 3 different, historically sequential and influential definitions and models of organizational culture. In my opinion, the limitation of the first two models is that they only give us the look at the surface of the organizational culture, things that we can observe, hear and touch, but they don’t give us the answer why there are such these kinds of surface. Using these first two model only help us to identify and differentiate the organizational culture of different organizations, it does not help us to recognize the cause or what make of these surfaces, what stand behind the scenes, as such, it is impossible for leaders or insiders to deeply understand their culture and role of leaders, then analyze and foster the change of culture. As it is contemporary and helps us the deeper understanding and possibly deciphering organizational culture (next chapters explain the definition, model and the methodology to decipher the culture more detail), I adopt Schein’s definition and model throughout my thesis.. Definition of Organizational Culture Defining Organizational Culture The newest definition of organizational culture from Schein has been written in the previous section, here I want to focus on some addressed terminologies that are important to understand about what called organizational culture. In the fourth edition of the book in 2010 (Schein, 2010), there was no “accumulated shared learning”: The culture of a group can now be defined as a pattern of shared basic assumptions learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, which has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.. “Accumulated shared learning” was added as the result of Edmondson’s work in his book (Edmondson, 2012), there he defined culture is a shared product of shared learning. These added words were very essential element of culture’s definition, because it creates new perspective on how we decipher the culture. This new definition forces us not only to look at the present, but also look back to the past, to track along historical development of organization to see how its members learned, and especially, un-learned and learned new shared assumption. For the mature organization which had several leadership and employees’ generations, the un-learned and learned are apparent as the new members, particularly, leaders will impose or challenge the old assumption, 6.

(15) and hence the un-learning and learning might have happened at this given time if the new assumption was at winning side. It also explains well the evolution of culture over time that people in the organization interact and influence each other (learn from each other), as the result they learn new way to work together gradually. “Solutions that have worked well enough to be considered valid”, when the group works out a solution for either internal or external facing issue, if the solution works well enough in view of the group. This solution is eventually carried for the next similar facing issue that the members of group will use the same solution without discussing any alternative. Over time the solution becomes taken-for-granted by all members when they meet the new challenge. If the solution does not work well, next time, group’s members will find another solution and drop previous failed solution. This process forms a continuous cycle and only working solution can become the requisite material for forming organizational culture.. What Is the Role of Leadership in Group’s Learning? As the group’s learning become the cultural DNA, Schein said “leadership is the key to learning” (Schein, 2016, p.14). If the group is formed without pre-assigning who is leader, then the group will go through the stage of implicitly or explicitly battling to find who influences the group. By default, with pre-assigned leader, he/she will have enough power to suppress member’ solution and set his/her own solution based on his/her assumption and perception, or in another case, the leader is the one finalize the idea by selecting one closely to his/her own solution. From organization’s inception to throughout its life, the founder is the first leader to engender the first group of people, then founder’s influence will become the cultural DNA to pass to newly joining members. In turn, those newly joining members will reinforce their learning cultural DNA to the new forming group of which they become leader later on when company expand further in terms of resources and business. We can see it is the one-way street of cultural reinforcement in the organization, but it is noted that in the early stage of the new organization, one-way street is doable and understandable as no strong cultural DNA existed. When organization moves to stable and mature stage, the cultural DNA is reinforced long and strongly enough to create powerful force. At this stage, there will be the situation that existing cultural DNA becomes a powerful resistant force to any existing leaders or new leaders who 7.

(16) want to change the culture, or even it becomes the criteria to select new leader (who must align to existing cultural DNA to be nominated) for the organization. So the interaction and influence each other between force of change or new leaders’ assumption and existing cultural DNA are complex and dynamic that any culturechange leader need to consider seriously.. A Model of How Culture Forms in New Groups In this section, we examine how and the process that the new group form its own culture. First, let’s look at most famous and prevailing model by today of group development which was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965 (Tuckman, 1965), the model can be listed in four sequential stages and explained briefly as following: forming (setting the stage) – storming (resolving conflict and tension) – norming (resolved disagreements and personality clashes result in greater intimacy, and a spirit of co-operation emerges) – performing (with group norms and roles established, group members focus on achieving common goals). Based on Tuckman’s group development model, Schein developed the similar stages corresponding with underlying process to form group’s own culture. These stages are: Stage 1, Forming: Finding One’s Identity and Role In the organization, the group is brought together to perform some tasks, or is brought together to “learning” in cultural term. Schein said (Schein, 2016, p.128): The new members automatically face the questions of identity and role (Who am I to be in this group?); authority and influence (Who will control whom in this group, and will I have my own influence needs met?); and intimacy (How will I relate to the other members of this group and at what level?).. For the organization with existing positional and power hierarchy, the new members have the first two questions, but the third question about “intimacy”, it will be the cultural DNA that they need to discover through stages of group’s cultural “learning”. For the new forming group (across functional departments) with same positional level members, they need to find the answer by going to next stage. Stage 2, Storming: Resolving Who Will Have Authority and Influence Members of the group will figure out the questions in the stage 1 at this stage, according to Schein (Schein, 2016, p.128): To sort out their identity, role, influence, and peer relationships, group members begin by explicitly or implicitly confronting and testing each. 8.

(17) other. That testing inevitably starts around the issue of authority and influence and will show up in confronting the convener and any emergent leader. The convener can “bury” the issue by being a strong chair or relying compulsively on Robert’s Rules of Order, but the issue will then surface around disagreements and challenges on the task work itself. It is for this reason that it is not wise to give a brand-new group a task; the members will work out their own identity issues around the task without paying enough attention to the task itself.. Again, the founder or leader will exert his/her influence and power at this stage as he can freeze or open up the group to any level of order or relationship. For new leader in established organization, he/she will need to resolve the conflict of his/her own perceived identity, role and peer relationship with existing cultural DNA which already set them out implicitly among rest of group’s members. There will be 3 possible results of the learning in this situation: new leader aligns with the cultural DNA and “learn”; new leader reinforces his assumption over the existing cultural DNA successfully and force the rest “learn” (this result is most unlikely since new leader will face the fierce resistance from group’s members); new leader and rest of members find the point of balance where they accept an amount of new assumption from new leader combining with an amount of concession from existing cultural DNA, resulting both sides “learn”. Stage 3, Norming: Resolving at Which Level of Relationship We Want to Operate According to Schein (Schein, 2016, p.101), there are 3 levels of relationship that can be settled in the group at this stage, including: level 1 (Acknowledgement, Civility, Transactional Role Relations), level 2 (Recognition as a Unique Person; Working Relationships), level 3 (Strong Emotions—Close Friendships, Love and Intimacy). Please refer to Appendix A for more detail of each level. It is obvious that the higher level of relationship the group stays, the better result of the group’s work will be. But there are some factors influencing the level of relationship such as: macro culture (the West tend to maintain level 1 at workplace while working closely together, but the East seldom work closely at level 1, they tend to climb up level 2 to smoothly perform the task instead), leadership style of leaders or founders (some leaders stay distant with subordinate at level 1, some try to reach level 3 with their inner cycle of few immediatesubordinate and level 2 with extended number of employees, etc.) 9.

(18) Stage 4, Performing: The Problem of Task Accomplishment Once the group settles down throughout previous 3 stages, it starts to function and perform specific task. Leader’s role then is to orchestrate and reach the consensus on how the group tackle the facing issue in terms of problem-solving method, the decision process and the assessment method to help the group track its progress.. The Structure of Organizational Culture According to Schein, the organizational culture can be structured to 3 layers or levels, from surface to the core, here is the list of each level in sequence and more detail of each level in subsequent sections:. Table 2.1. The three levels of organizational culture. Adapted from “Organizational culture and leadership” by E.H. Schein, 2016, p.18. Copyright 2016 by E.H. Schein.. Artifacts – Level 1 Schein wrote (Schein, 2016, p.17): We think of artifacts as the phenomena that you would see, hear, and feel when you encounter a new group with an unfamiliar culture. Artifacts include the visible products of the group, such as the architecture of its physical environment; its language; its technology and products; its artistic creations; its style, as embodied in clothing, manners of address, and emotional displays; its myths and stories told about the organization; its published lists of values; and its observable rituals and ceremonies. Among these artifacts is the “climate” of the group. Some culture analysts see climate as the equivalent to culture, but it is better thought of as the product of some of. 10.

(19) the underlying assumptions and is, therefore, a manifestation of the culture. Observed behavior routines and rituals are also artifacts, as are the organizational processes by which such behavior is made routine. Structural elements such as charters, formal descriptions of how the organization works, and organization charts also belong to the artifact level.. At this level, even the outsider can recognize pretty quickly by visiting and observing the space and interaction of employee to employee and employee to customers. And the outsiders and new comers might be the one consciously notice this artifact level, insiders over time will be used to it and won’t be aware of it unless they consciously seek to explore their organizational culture. This level gives us the way to differentiate among organizational cultures, but if we use only this level to extrapolate or infer the underlying assumption and causal, we might get the wrong or biased answer toward our own culture background (we used to infer thing by using our own view of the world, or called through our own glass).. Espoused Beliefs and Values – Level 2 Nowadays, almost every company has articulated its core values publicly (it is a part of three usual companies’ published material including: vision, mission and core values). According to Schein (Schein, 2016): All group learning ultimately reflects someone’s original beliefs and values his or her sense of what ought to be, as distinct from what is. When a group is first created or when it faces a new task, issue, or problem, the first solution proposed to deal with it reflects some individual’s own assumptions about what is right or wrong, what will work or will not work. Those individuals who prevail, who can influence the group to adopt a certain approach to the problem, will later be identified as leaders or founders, but the group does not yet have any shared knowledge as a group because it has not yet taken a common action in reference to whatever it is supposed to do. Whatever is proposed will be perceived only as what the leader wants. Until the group has taken some joint action and together observed the outcome of that action, there is not as yet a shared basis for determining whether what the leader wants will turn out to be valid.. Beliefs and values will be tested by the market and success of the company, if those beliefs and values have helped company sustain and grow, later they will be written down as the espoused beliefs and values. There are some cases where leaders recognize that to keep pace with the change of market, company needs to pursue one or set of new values and beliefs which added to existing ones. Then the articulated beliefs 11.

(20) and values will be the set of practiced and pursuing ones, not just what have been done successfully. This set of beliefs and values also serve as the guiding principle for members of the organization to deal with any facing issues or difficult events which then can be taught to new comers. Such beliefs and values often become embodied in a “organization philosophy”. It is important to note that from these embodied beliefs and values, there will be a situation which the group’s articulated are not congruent with in-used beliefs and values, then creating the behavior called observed behavior instead of desired behavior (Argyris & Schon, 1978, 1996). It is the clue for cultural analyst to analyze further the difference in practice and theory of these principles inside the organization so that the organization being informed and aware of its current reality.. Taken-for-Granted Assumption – The Cultural DNA – Level 3. This level is the shared learning when the group perform the tasks. When members first time bring their own unconscious basic assumption, beliefs and values into the table, then going through the stages of group’s learning, the solution is found and applied. If the solution to a problem works repeatedly, it become taken-for-granted. It’s like firstly it is the hypothesis, then is proved over and over many times in reality and then people believe in it and bring it deep down that bypassing their awareness. This is also called the cultural DNA, Schein said (Schein, 2016): Cultural DNA: the beliefs, values, and desired behaviors that launched the group and made it successful. This early level of beliefs, values, and desired behavior becomes nonnegotiable and turns into taken-for-granted basic assumptions that subsequently drop out of awareness” (p.7). Culture as a set of basic assumptions defines for us what to pay attention to, what things mean, how to react emotionally to what is going on, and what actions to take in various kinds of situations. After we have developed and integrated a set of such assumptions, we will have created a “thought world” or “mental map.” We will then be most comfortable with others who share the same set of assumptions and very uncomfortable and vulnerable in situations where different assumptions operate because either we will not understand what is going on, or, worse, we will misperceive and misinterpret the actions of others (Douglas, 1986; Bushe, 2009). Culture at this level provides its members with a basic sense of identity and defines the values that provide self-esteem (Hatch & Schultz, 2004). Cultures tell their members who they are, how to behave toward each other, and how to feel good about. 12.

(21) themselves. Recognizing these critical functions makes us aware why “changing” culture is so anxiety provoking. (p.22-23).. Since it is out of our consciousness, it becomes our filter glass to view the world, and sometimes distort the data or bias to our own inference. For example, if our past experiences or critical events make us assume that people will take advantage of us when they have opportunity, we tend to seriously interpret people’s effort to make friend with us as the technique to make advantage of us and we tend to defend ourselves against. Particularly in the organization, leader’s basic assumption could lead to very specific organizational structure, climate and processes. If the founder and leader assume that people are naturally lazy, when they see employee are going out having coffee, they will infer that employee is buying time and avoids of working. Vice versa, if leaders assume people are creative and motivated to work, when they see the same scene, they might see it as normal that employees need to have a break or spare time to refill energy or spark a creative idea. The importance and impact of this layer can be exemplified by Netflix (company providing streaming media and video-on-demand online) founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in 1997. The founders had one of basic assumptions that people are mature and being trusted (McCord, 2014). Base on this basic assumption, company has no policy on how many days that employees can take leave and no policy on office hours. Employees can plan for themselves day off and working times as long as no impact on deadline and result of their task. Also there is no policy on business trip, employees can take any transportation as long as it’s at the best company’s interest. There is no limit on raising salary, Netflix will pay higher than any company out there offering to its employees, etc. We can see that only from one basic assumption about human nature, the set of processes and structure are setup to hinge upon it. Sometimes, different basic assumptions among people make situation worse and damage their trust toward each other even they are at the same company as following story. U.S manager was assigned to go and manage a team in China. As US’s pragmatic tradition takes it for granted that solving the problem has highest priority, but Asian people have the ingrained assumption that good relationship and saving the boss’s face are more important than solving the problem. So when US manager told his subordinates about his given solution, the subordinate nodded his head without confronting his manager in front of other employees though he knows that solution won’t work. If the US manager does not have called “Culture Intelligence” to 13.

(22) understand what would mean, he will definitely believe this solution is right and tragic result is inevitable. Conversely, if US manager understand his subordinate’s expected behavior in given culture context, he might find another suitable one-to-one private context that his subordinate can confront him to find better solution. The implicit and unconscious assumption often deal with fundamental aspect of life, Schein listed some of basic assumption that people have: (Schein, 2016, p.25) “the nature of time and space; human nature and human activities; the nature of truth and how we discover it; the correct way for the individual and the group to relate to each other; the relative importance of work, family, and self-development; the proper role of men and women; and the nature of the family”. From my perspective, the basic assumption level of organizational culture might not only include above types. It also includes the beliefs, values, thinking and methodology that the organization has been used and applied successfully in business life because gradually through proven practice, these will be out of awareness and taken for granted by organizational members. In other words, beside very basic assumptions listed above, the basic assumption level includes any belief, value, approach, thinking system, etc. which have been used by organizational members and have not been articulated publicly. At first, I often confused in differentiating the beliefs and values level with basic assumption level because company usually articulate its values and beliefs that resemble basic assumption rather, so should these values and beliefs be categorized at level two or level three. Using my perspective not only help me to identify easily what belong to level two or deepest level, but also illustrate the important aspect of organizational culture that it is always in motion, that there is continuous and subtle growth, evolution and movement of cultural atoms from its outer level to its ingrained cultural DNA and vice versa.. The Metaphor of Organizational Culture and Personal Culture To make it easier to imagine about the structured levels of organizational culture, I adapt the metaphor from Schein as below figure 2.1. This metaphor can show us concept of organizational culture’s levels and role of leadership in this scene.. 14.

(23) Figure 2.1. The lily pond as a Metaphor for levels of Culture. Adapted from “Organizational culture and leadership” by E.H. Schein, 2016, p.26. Copyright 2016 by E.H. Schein. The farmer is the founders, or in other case is the top leaders of the organization who are taking care of organization. The leaves and blossoms on the surface of the pond are “artifacts” that we can see and assess. The espoused beliefs and values are the method of planting and growing that farmer announces to pursue or has done to have expected lily’s leaves and blossoms (artifacts), such as: in what month or season he wants to have the blossom, what period and amount of fertilizer he puts, how he monitors lily to prevent any worm or disease that will harm the blossoms, etc. These espoused beliefs and values are followed by farmer’s experience, prevailing and rational perception. But the leaves and blossoms are not only produced by just the methods of planning and growing from farmer, but also affected by how their root, the 15.

(24) underlying land beneath the water, water’s quality and quality of the seeds. These factors are usually out of awareness of the farmer or it is hard and takes more conscious efforts to be identified and assessed by the farmer in normal situation because they are all covered and hidden under the water. These factors are basic assumptions. There are some situations that take the notice of the farmer if he recognizes that his lily could not produce the blossoms as he expected although he used all the modern method and diligently takes care of lily because of these hidden factors. As the same circumstance in organization, if the beliefs and values are not congruent with basic assumptions, soon or later the surfaces or artifacts of culture will be different with what we expected from espoused beliefs and values. This lily pond implies a very important principle of changing the organizational culture. On the occasion that the color of lily’s flower is not as expected, like the behaviors of employee or business’s results are not as expected from espoused values and beliefs. What usually farmer or leader will do is that they focus on temporary solution to put the stimulus to force lily to grow and give the expected color or even more sadly that the farmer will paint the flower; like the leaders in the organization will do that they force the change in the surface level such as: new behavior, new organizational structure, deploying new technique to mask or disguise the business’s result, etc. These actions might fix the issue in short-term, but the issue will eventually become worse in long-term. What is the long-term and permanent solution for the lily’s blossom’s color? Might be it is good to check that if the method to plant and grow are rational, then the lowest and unseen factors need to be examined such as the seed, underlying soil, water’s quality… to make sure they are congruent with the planting method. If they are not congruent, perhaps changing the lowest level (find the appropriate seed, refine water and underlying soil…) will produce the best chance of success. The same in organization, that culture change should be first examined down to deepest level, and the long-term and sustainable change are from this level rather.. Personal Culture. Perhaps when we look back the first definition of organizational culture “the way we do thing around here”, how about if we change the word “we” to “he/she” or “I”, then “the way I do thing around here” infers to personal characteristics. It is relevant to say it is the personal culture. In the last words of the book, Schein said “So I am 16.

(25) joining the millions of philosophers who have said “know thyself.” My twist on that is “know the cultures that are inside you.”” (Schein, 2016, p.354). Looking this way, our personal culture also can be divided to three levels as with organizational culture. “Artifacts” is the way we talk, our appearance, gesture, skin, smile, climate surrounding us that people can feel, our achievement, history, etc. Espoused beliefs and values are the same what is our belief that our mind applies when we think and solve every matter of our lives. Our basic assumption is something deeper and taken for granted, that our response suddenly comes out without a pause for rational thinking. There was tragic story, but it is an example of basic assumption of person can really drive his action. In the night of February 3, 1999, Diallo from Guinea, 22 years old, living in the poorest neighborhood in New York, went down stair and stood in front of the door. When the group of police officers was patrolling and catching Diallo standing at the street side. Two of them got out of the car and approached to Diallo, then Diallo who was terrified by armed men and his inability to speak fluent English ran back to the door and was chased by those police men. At the door, Diallo put his hand to his jean’s pocket and pull out a black object. Police men fired into him as they thought black object is the gun, indeed it was the wallet (Gladwell, 2012, p.91). I wonder if Diallo had been living at the better place where the criminal records were set lower, would this tragedy had happened. Though US police system proclaimed the values that they don’t discriminate against people in any places and react to any situation radically and thoughtfully. But I think the basic assumption of those police officers who had experienced many bad cases against peoples living there was ingrained that the more sensitivity must be given to those people comparing with less criminal records’ places. So in this case, the deeper assumption activated the quick reaction without going through the radical beliefs and values system, or in other words, the basic assumption of police officer is not congruent with espoused belief and values, resulting to the tragic gun’s fire. So how about changing the personal culture, in my point of view, it should be the same as we want to change the organizational culture. That to make the lasting change, the unconsciously taken for granted assumption of ourselves need to be changed. And as such, knowing the culture inside us (three levels) is the first step to make any change for the better.. 17.

(26) What’s More About Organizational Culture? The research and application of organizational culture has been developed almost 50 years since 1970s, the knowledge about this field is enormously broader than I can list here in the thesis. So my thesis presents a particular perspective from Schein to understand and enable us a tool to analyze organizational culture. The following mention some more seem tied subjects with organizational culture, but in the scope of this thesis, I suggest these subjects and their potential influence to organizational culture can be explored in further research. Other than only one culture in organization, there are some more sub-cultures and macro-culture that actually have the impact on organizational culture. Actually, the organizational culture is nested within our macro-culture such as: nation, ethnic or even region… The founder, leader and employees always bring their pre-dominant culture which is ingrained from their living environment from the time they were born until current time. Even almost basic assumption, beliefs and values are constructed before that, so we usually see the congruence between organizational culture and its macroculture. For example, the individualistic culture of US is prevailed as the basic assumption in almost US’s organization, the same collectivistic culture founded in most of Asian’s companies. But it is somehow common that some organizational cultures are actually different with their macro-culture, and because of its past success and reputation, organizational culture can reversely influence back to macro-culture, creating a wave of macro-culture changing. In fact, there is continuous and subtle colliding and cross-influencing between macro-culture and its nested organizational culture in every institution, thus driving them evolved in somehow the same direction. In this thesis, I skip this fact and only focus on the leadership’s role on creating and evolving the organizational culture, indeed, the change leader need to beware of the macro-culture whether it supports or hinder his/her intention. The more complex game is that lot of global companies are operating across countries and continents, as they have been facing the intense force of culture fragmentation, how to balance the consistence of culture over geographic offices and the harmony of dynamic and diverse macro-culture in every places they are doing business is the big challenge. Another macro-culture that is worth to mention is occupational culture, as the world has been moving toward specialization, occupational culture had been created and hold strongly for every field. We have received particular education and orientation 18.

(27) for the expertise we pursued, we have been influenced and followed the prevailing credo of our particular occupation, for example: marketing has its own credo and culture that identify it with other occupations, same for IT (information technology), PR (public relation), science, research, doctor, etc. An organization typically composes of many departments or divisions with their own occupation. As these partially different set of culture interact within the influential force of overall organization’s culture, the result is more unpredictable and varied. It poses the challenge for leaders to harmonize and align these differences. In the running organization, Schein suggested there are three generic subcultures (Schein, 2016, p.221-229) that need to be aligned to orchestrate the whole business’s operations. They are subculture of operator function (subculture of group running front-line business such as: sales, marketing, customer and technical support…); subculture of the engineering and design function (group running product design, engineering, production…); executive subculture (board of manager). Each of these groups works in different settings and challenges, hence they might have different assumptions and beliefs, so the need to align these subcultures should be noticed and aware of by change leaders. Please refer to Appendix B for the list of these subculture’s assumption.. 19.

(28) CHAPTER III DECIPHERING, CHANGING AND LEADERSHIP. ROLE. ON. ORGANIZATIONAL. CULTURE. How Leaders Embed and Transmit Culture As the organizational culture is the shared learning by the group and eventually it will be dropped out of awareness after learning the same things over and over. Founders and leaders are the linchpin of the learning process as they have credit to impose their own view, have power to make decision, etc. We have seen many organizations in big or small size are the reflection of what are their founders’ assumptions and beliefs. Apple is the apparent case that all of its products have reflected what Steve Jobs beliefs: product oriented, perfectionism, minimalism and superior of design over engineering, etc. (Isaacson, 2011). Apple’s products come out with sexy look, minimal interfaces and buttons (Macbook laptop has onle 2 USB-C ports while other brand laptop has as many ports as possible, USB, VGA, Ethernet…). Apple has always been pioneer to cease the unnecessary accessories for the product such as the first to dropped out Floppy Disk and CD-ROM. We even don’t feel any redundant accessories from Apple’s product. The IPhone 4’s incidence about the loss of telecom signal when the user holds the phone in particular manner showed us evidence of Apple’s culture of triumph of design over engineering. Ive, Chief of Design, suggested the design of IPhone 4 with the glass’s surface. And to make it as “unibody” and elegant look, he suggested to remove the sizable slot filled with plastic that hidden antenna can receive telecom signal. The engineer resisted this idea and warned that the signal of the phone will not be stable. But obsessed with the sleek design, Jobs decided to implement Ive’s idea, and result was the crisis that Apple offered the cover or accepted any product return from its customers. History and presence of Apple show us that the culture that being embedded by the founder is actually prevailed over time and even is the resistance force to new leader with different view. Evidence by John Sculley who replaced Jobs in 1983 with the beliefs in marketing and profit more than great product was ousted by 20.

(29) failure in managing company go on right track, and then Jobs came back to revive Apple back to its original culture, and until now, over 6 years from Jobs’ last breath, Apple has been still pursuing literally same culture at Jobs’ time. (Isaacson, 2011). To understand the organizational culture, it is crucial to understand how (or through what means or tools) the founder or leader reinforce, embed and transmit the culture to organization. Schein organized them into primary and secondary mechanism listed below:. Table 3.1. How Leaders Embed their beliefs, Values, and Assumptions. Adapted from “Organizational culture and leadership” by E.H. Schein, 2016, p.183. Copyright 2016 by E.H. Schein.. Primary Embedding Mechanism Schein wrote (Schein, 2016, p.184): The most powerful mechanisms that founders, leaders, managers, and parents have available for communicating what they believe in or care about is what they systematically pay attention to. This can mean anything from what they notice and comment on to what they measure, control, reward, and in other ways deal with systematically. Even casual remarks and questions that are consistently geared to a certain area can be as potent as formal control mechanisms and measurements.. In managerial accounting, there is famous quote about the effectiveness of managerial accounting that “we get what we measure”, meaning that people tend to concentrate to improve what numbers on accounting report rather than other numbers 21.

(30) not being measured. So for the culture “Culture we have is what leader pay attention, control and measure”. If the leaders are aware of this powerful mechanism, they can consciously impose what they really want the culture looks like over daily operation, more importantly in consistent way. In case these things are not done consistently over time, it will cause great trouble and time consuming for their subordinates whom are confused and spend time to guess the real message from their leaders. At his famous quote, Warren Buffett said “Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”. It’s true here that the integrity (consistency) of leader is eventually the integrity of the organization. The moment that reinforces the perception and behavior of subordinates greatly is the emotional outburst of leaders. As human nature, people don’t want and carefully avoid to face such painful situation from intense emotions, and the memory of such panic will last longer than in normal situation. Next time, subordinate had learned and know what condition their leaders would be critical and would act accordingly to avoid it happen again. Ironic case had been recorded in Apple from some first years after inception, that Jobs was very emotional in the meeting, his well-known ability of “reality distortion field” (his unblinking staring look and charisma could distort the reality and persuade people to do what he wants them to do although they know it is impossible). Jobs could praise any one for brilliant idea by that time then some hours later call it crap, or berate an engineer for the bad idea then praise him after an hour. To survive over, Jobs’s subordinates developed the ability to filter out or reduce the fluctuation or the rhythm of Jobs’s emotion, then creating a climate that it is not much intense whereas outsiders (never met Jobs before) feel a horrible meeting with Jobs’s behavior. (Isaacson, 2011). So how about what leaders do not pay attention to, subordinates would infer either it is not the thing they should focus or they can do it in their own choices. This is the area that kind of subculture will be developed because each of leader’s subordinate will have different assumption and will impose their own assumption over their underneath hierarchy. The culture of organization or the assumption of leader will be challenged the most in the case of crisis. The crisis is the chance of people see how strong the assumption of that leader is. Because in normal situation, leaders might consciously act 22.

(31) on rational thinking, as his espoused beliefs and values, only in critical crisis that leader would use what is really essential to them to react. So crises are especially significant in culture creation and transmission through reacting to and solving crises from leaders. More successfully leader solved the crisis, stronger impact of culture creating and embedding is, as people more likely believe the reaction of heightened emotion in crisis rather than in normal circumstances. For the role of modeling, recruiting, promoting, excommunicating, … from leaders. I would like to illustrate it by using Chinese traditional wisdoms. Once said in the book of “Great Learning” or “Daxue”, one of four favorite books of Confucianism (Lee, “The Great Learning” translation, 8.1): “8.1 所謂平天下在治其國者：上老老而民興孝，上長長而民興弟，上恤孤而民不倍，是以君子有絜矩之道也。所惡於上，毋以使下；所惡於下，毋以事上；所惡於前，毋以先後；所惡於後，毋以從前；所惡於右，毋以交於左；所惡於左，毋以交於右。此之謂絜矩之道。《詩》云：「樂只君子，民之父母。」民之所好好之，民之所惡惡之，此之謂民之父母。《詩》云：「節彼南山，維石巖巖。赫赫師尹，民具爾瞻。」有國者不可以不慎，辟則為天下戮矣。”. “It was said that “To promote good virtue throughout the world must first govern their nations effectively”, if the leader is filial to his own parents and grandparents, his people naturally would become filial to their parents; if the leader respect his elders, his people naturally would respect their elders; if the leader shows compassion towards the deprived, his people would naturally not act contrary to humanity. Thus the leader set the example and standards for Code of Self‐conducts. What I dislikes those above me do, I would not do so to those below me; what I dislikes those below me do, I would not do so to those above me; what I dislikes those before me do, I would not do so to those after me; what I dislikes those after me do, I would not do so to those before me; what I dislikes those on my right do, I would not do so to those on my left; what I dislikes those on my left do, I would not do so to those on my right; this is so call The Code of Self‐conducts…”. This timeless wisdom is not exceptional by today, even is proved to be more true, because whatever vocal message the leader wants to communicate, his modeling is the most forceful, persuasive and overriding message. Another ancient story about how the leader was aware of his role model before communicating a message: once upon the time, a mother approached Mahatma Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 23.

(32) 1948) respectfully and asked if he could advise her boy to stop eating so much sugar. Gandhi paused a moment and told her son go home and come back in two weeks. Two weeks later they came back, Gandhi looked at the son and said “Boy, you should stop eating sugar. It is not good for your health”. In her surprise, the mother asked Gandhi why he did not tell the boy two weeks ago. Gandhi replied “Mother, two weeks ago I was still eating sugar myself”. In the Analects of Confucius, chapter Wei zheng 爲政 (Muller, 2017 updated, 2:19): “The Duke of Ai asked: “How can I make the people follow me?” Confucius replied: “Advance the upright and set aside the crooked, and the people will follow you. Advance the crooked and set aside the upright, and the people will not follow you.””. By promoting and excommunicating his subordinates, leader sends a covert important message to the people about how he would appreciate and dis-appreciate his followers. By doing this, leader eventually create a fast and smooth learning because people followed the leader should have relevant assumption to be promoted, then a climate of the organization would align with his assumptions. They way leader punish and reward his subordinates also have the same effect as promotion and excommunication. Besides replicating their assumptions, leaders also promote outsiders to bring new culture into organization, because it is not easy to change the deep assumption of people, and there won’t be an example to learn from, the more powerful and faster way is to promote an outsider who is ingrained with the culture and skills needed by the leader.. Secondary Reinforcement and Stabilizing Mechanisms In the organization, those design, structure, architecture, rituals, stories, and formal statements are greatly instilled by founders and leaders at the early stage and even at the mature stage of the development of organization, just like the house we build, the important and essential first design and structure are realized by our conceptions. Then after the house is built and we move in, like after organization succeed and stabilize, these space, design, shape become the constraint to be changed and the change tends to be small and incremental though. Like our house, when the organization become stable, these secondary mechanisms have already been setup, leaders will face the constraint in changing any of it. In some situation, the culture associated with these setup mechanisms literally define whose assumption aligns with 24.

(33) its culture could become the leader. Schein wrote (Schein, 2016, p.198): All these secondary mechanisms can be thought of as cultural artifacts that are highly visible but may be difficult to interpret without insider knowledge obtained from observing leaders’ actual behaviors. When an organization is in its developmental phase, the driving and controlling assumptions will always be manifested first and most clearly in what the leaders demonstrate through their own behavior, not in what is written down or inferred from visible designs, procedures, rituals, stories, and published philosophies”.. For the integrity of the culture, the second mechanisms should be congruent with the primary mechanisms for the best result of culture embedding and transmitting. But in case the secondary mechanisms are different from primary mechanisms, the implication of leaders would take more effect, as we usually witness in our job that sometimes staffs would say it is the procedure to do this, then their leader can supersede the procedure by commanding to ignore the procedure and “do it my way”. Later “do it my way” becomes the new procedure. As we can see any “way of doing, thinking…” initiated from the founder or leader, it will eventually become an atom of the culture which then is embedded and transmitted within organization. No matter how explicitly intended or not, leaders or founders are actually creating and managing their organizational culture. Someone may ask so then in any way, culture is there, why do leaders bother to beware of and manage organizational culture? To answer, I would like to cite the Chinese ancient story about one of great thinkers of the East, Mencius (孟子 or 孟轲). The story was called “Mencius's mother, three moves” (孟母三遷). (Visiontimes, 2017): Mencius's father died when he was very young. His mother Zhǎng (仉) raised her son alone. They were very poor. At first they lived by a cemetery, where the mother found her son imitating the paid mourners in funeral processions. Therefore, the mother decided to move. The next house was near a market in the town. There the boy began to imitate the cries of merchants (merchants were despised in early China). So the mother moved to a house next to a school. Inspired by the scholars and students, Mencius began to study. His mother decided to remain, and Mencius became a scholar.. Leaders of an organization are like the mother and organization is like her boy in this story. The intention of the mother to have her son to become scholar is like the vision of the organization. The third place the mother moved to is the right culture of 25.

(34) the organization to reach its ultimate vision. If Mencius’s mother was not aware of the environment and deliberately moved Mencius to the proper environment, probably we would not have an influential thinker and the author of one of Four Books (四書). The same lesson rings true for us today, if leaders don’t beware, understand and deliberately cultivate the organizational culture, will organizational vision be attained? To maintain proper organizational culture, leaders need to understand their current culture first, then filing the perceived gap by the proactive change. Following sections will deal with how to deciphering and changing the culture.. Deciphering The Organizational Culture The organizational culture is complex and includes many aspects of the organization, so to deciphering an organizational culture is not an easy job, especially it is almost impossible to have a complete picture of it. In my opinion, deciphering a culture is to try to capture as complete as possible the aspects of the culture. From the prevailing practice of researchers, we have two methods to decipher the organizational culture, qualitative and quantitative methods, and each of method has its own pros and cons. Let’s look at the field of anthropology to know how anthropologist explore the new culture (this field is also the foundation of “organizational culture” term to be born, in fact the “Artifacts” word was originated from this field). Geert, anthropologist, in order to pursue new ways of obtaining insight of the native mind and understanding the world, in his paper (Geert, 1983) introduces two concepts “experience near” and “experience far”. The first concept refers to the native’s thoughts, feelings, views and beliefs, the latter refers to the terms and formal description of the phenomena. Or we can call first concept as “walking around” and the latter as “bird’s-eye view”. These two concepts are relevant to qualitative and quantitative methods as we usually see by today. To discover all of aspects and deeper structure of organizational culture, the bird’s eye view or quantitative method could give us the aspects and type of organizational, and “walking around” or qualitative method could help us to delve into a deeper layers of the culture such as basic assumption and in-used and espoused belief and values. So the combination of two methods give us deeper and more complete picture of organizational culture than using one method alone. Following sections, I will describe both methods in general. 26.

(35) Quantitative Method or Bird’s eye view Usually this method involves the employee’s survey with specific given questions. To know what kind of questions we need to ask, we need to have in advance some particular typologies of the organizational culture, then answers will be calculated by pre-defined formula and guidance to output the result as the profile (what typology our organizational culture is similar to). There are several models (or kind of profiles) are popular as following (Schein, 2016, p.285-293): -. Denison (1990)’s model identifies a number of dimensions of culture that are presumed to be relevant to a given organizational outcome such as performance, growth, innovation, or learning. The survey questions are then focused on just the dimensions considered relevant, and if those dimensions cannot conveniently be measured with a survey, the researcher or consultant can supplement with interviews and observations. Here is example of 12 dimensions under four general categories: Mission (strategic direction and intent, goals and objectives, vision), Consistency (core values, agreement, coordination and integration),. Involvement. (empowerment,. team. orientation,. capability. development), Adaptability (creating change, customer focus, organizational learning). Scores on each of the 12 dimensions are shown in a circular profile of the group and can be compared to norms based on a large sample of organizations that have been rated as more or less effective. Notice that the categories are quite abstract, so we have to go back to the actual items to discover just what was meant by each dimension. -. Human Synergistics International (HSI) offers a similar approach with its “organizational culture inventory” (Cooke & Szumal, 1993). HSI’s 12 dimensions, also shown as a “circumplex” profile, are organized around three basic organizational styles: constructive styles (achievement, self-actualizing, humanistic-encouraging, affiliative), aggressive-defensive styles (oppositional, power, competitive, perfectionistic), passive-defensive styles (avoidance, dependent, conventional, approval).. -. The O’Reilly, Chatman, and Caldwell (1991) “organizational culture profile” (OCP) offers another alternative. The OCP distinguishes attributes associated with “preferred work environments.” How culture is expressed in preferred 27.

(36) work environments can be useful for anticipating new-hire fit and crafting overall company branding. The OCP focuses on seven key dimensions: innovation, stability, people orientation, outcome orientation, easy going, detail orientation, and team orientation. To assess where one fits into these dimensions, 54 value statements are sorted by respondents according to their relative importance. -. There are growing number of Automated Culture Analysis with Software-as-aService (SaaS) companies which have been formed and richly funded to provide surveys and analytics for customers wanting to get quickly a better understanding of their climate, culture, and employee engagement. These companies offer the web based survey for employees, collecting some more critical data, then based on big data analytic technique to process and produce the result. They are: TinyPulse, Glint, CultureIQ, RoundPegg, CultureAmp… Actually, it is not easy for insiders to conduct this method, hiring professional. consultant is the better choice as they can provide advices, experienced approach and insight of analysis. SaaS service mentioned above is prevailed as the new faster, easier and more cost effective method. Another worthy aspect of these quantitative method is that it helps change leaders to know the difference of before and after cultural change program which is valuable for them to convince and prove the effectiveness of cultural change’s initiative (as the norms of business practice, any program or initiative needs some seeable numbers to prove its rational effectiveness).. Qualitative Method or Walking Around The quantitative method is useful to categorize the organizational culture, however, there are some issues with this method such as: the questions might not cover completely the aspects we need to know; employees may not be motivated to be honest; employee’s interpretation of question may not be the same with the question’s intent; etc. But the most crucial goal of the deciphering organizational culture is to know the deeper structure of the culture, the quantitative method is hardly to give us what the basic assumptions, actual beliefs and values are. The qualitative method could help us to answer this question. Though it takes enormous time and effort to conduct this method, the art of this approach is that the interviewers can ask directly question with interviewees in face-to-face context where interviewer can sense of what really mean 28.