WEEK 11 11.1 This week's focus This week's topic is Culture and change. Welcome to Week 11 of ORG20003 Organisational Behaviour: Introduction to Organisational Behaviour (OB). This week's objectives By the end of this week you should be able to: . describe the elements of organisational culture and discuss the importance of organisational subcultures · explain the four categories of artefacts through which corporate culture is deciphered . outline the importance of organisational culture and the conditions under which organisational culture strength improves organisational performance . compare and contrast four strategies for merging organisational cultures · identify four strategies for changing or strengthening an organisation's culture, including the application of attraction-selection-attrition theory · describe the organisational socialisation process and identify strategies to improve that process. · articulate the elements of Lewin's force field analysis model · outline the reasons why people resist organisational change and how change agents should view this resistance · outline six strategies for minimising resistance to change and debate ways to effectively create an urgency to change · explain how leadership, coalitions, social networks, and pilot projects influence organisational change · describe and compare action research, appreciative inquiry, large group interventions, and parallel learning structures as formal approaches to organisational change . explain two cross-cultural and three ethical issues in organisational change 11.2 How do you define organisational culture? You may have used Facebook and Google, but would you recognise their distinctive organisational cultures? Let's identify the elements of organisational culture with a discussion on the relationship between organisation, culture and performance. Also, this week, we'll look at the challenges of change and some approaches to
organisational change with particular attention to cross-cultural and ethical considerations. Organisational culture was defined in 1966 by Mckinsey & Company managing director, Marvin Bower referred to as 'the way we do things around here' (corporateculture 2009). A more academic definition by Edgar Schein, former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, argues that culture is 'a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that 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' (corporateculture 2009). Or, if you prefer, Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede defines culture as the 'collective programming of the human mind'. What are the elements of organisational culture? When we think of organisational culture we are actually trying to describe the symbols, language, ceremony, spaces and physical setting of an organisation. Watch the embedded videos above to learn about the symbols and ceremonies of Australian companies Swinburne Online and SEEK. The third video in the carousel, 'TEDxLincoln - Jay Wilkinson - Company Culture' (2011), features lifelong entrepreneur Jay Wilkinson, President of Firespring, named to Inc. Magazine's inaugural 50 Best Workplaces list in 2016. Wilkinson begins with the question, "Is a Company's Culture Determined by Design or Default?" He then articulates