دانلود رایگان مقاله مدیریت تغییرات فرهنگی طولانی مدت

Organizational and strategic changes often require employees to modify their behavior in ways that conflict with traditional ‘‘ways of doing things around here’’ — or, in other words, with the culture of the organization. Edgar Schein describes organizational culture as a set of assumptions and beliefs that shape how people habitually relate to one another, their tasks, and the broader environment. These assumptions are mostly tacit and taken for granted. They are usually reflected in more consciously held values, defining desirable or undesirable behavior deserving punishment or reward. These values are often formalized in organizational statements, but, together with the underlying assumptions, are also embodied in a web of visible and tangible expressions, through corporate jargon, symbols, stories, practices, myths, physical settings and others, collectively referred to as organizational artifacts. Schein’s framework is useful to describe an organizational culture at a given point of time. It draws attention to how the various elements of a culture are tied together in a relatively coherent whole and, also because of this coherence, how difficult to change culture is. People, according to this view, are reluctant to modify traditional habits. Altering more superficial practices, structures and systems may conflict with the deeper assumptions they embody and symbolize. Changing the way people relate to one another, or perform their tasks may generate uncomfortable dissonance with what they have always believed to be the appropriate way, reflecting these fundamental assumptions. Because of their taken-for-granted nature, however, these assumptions are not usually open to debate. How is it possible, then, for senior managers to promote and manage cultural changes? While there is general agreement that cultures tend to change naturally and incrementally because of demographic changes and changes in the broader cultural environment, scholars are divided about whether profound cultural changes can be introduced quickly and purposefully. Some authors celebrate the capacity of charismatic and visionary leaders to carry out rapid transformations in organizational norms and values, and to induce radical changes in people’s behavior. Successful cultural change depends on the capacity of organizational leaders to create a sense of urgency, articulate an alternative vision for the future, and encourage changes through a combination of substantial and symbolic moves that signal the rest of the organization that it has to revise its values and priorities.

SUMMARY

Our longitudinal study of the implementation of Six Sigma at 3M suggests that organizational cultures may be simultaneously more and less receptive to long-lasting changes that currently believed. Organizational cultures — our study indicates — may be more malleable in their outer and middle layers, yet more resistant and enduring in their core, than traditional theories of organizational change suggest. When asked to behave in ways that conflict with the usual ‘‘way we do things around here’’ employees may accept to revise their beliefs and habits if they experience changes as offering superior solutions to their problems. They will do so, however, only to the extent that changes are not perceived as threatening deeply-held, emotionally-laden ‘‘core’’ values, that they perceive as foundational, enduring and distinctive for the organization. Introducing long-lasting changesin organizational culture, then, is not impossible. The practice-based approach McNerney followed illustrates a possible way to accomplish this change. It is important, however, to assess whether the envisioned changes will simply enrich the cultural repertoire of the organization or will require modifications in the widely-accepted, but not deeply-held beliefs and norms of behavior, or may challenge the core values that define the very identity of the organization and its members. More profound changes that affect these deeply held values require organizational leaders to address directly people’s beliefs and understandings ofthe organizational identity. The vision they articulate should help people make sense of how the proposed changes will reinforce these understandings, or suggest alternative, attractive, energizing conceptualizations that would justify cultural changes. McNerney’s vision for 3M — a leaner, more efficient organization designed to liberate resources for growth through acquisitions — seems to have failed on both accounts.