Organization Change vs. Managing People and Organization Culture Research Paper

Introduction

Current global organizational changes threaten to make yesterday’s managers outdated. However, awareness of the changes and how to take advantage of them offers tomorrow’s managers countless opportunities. Even though the nature of managerial function varies across organizations and changes constantly, one general thread pervades nearly all managerial activities. Therefore, the behaviors of people and management processes in firms are closely intertwined (Scheffknecht 76).

This paper relates the wider field of organization change management to the specific area of organizational culture. It argues that a new leader coming into an organization will have difficulty in changing an existing organizational culture. In that respect, the paper explores three important environments that are considered to be important in changing organizational culture. These include social and cultural environment, global environment as well as technological and innovative environment.

Literature review

A manager seeking to change an already existing culture has the responsibility of shifting the changes towards the core business competencies. It is noted that the force of nature exerts much pressure on organizations to the disadvantage of management initiatives (Sims 469).

That is, if globalization is a trend towards winning competitive advantages, managers have no other option but to develop a culture that responds to such changes. Again, if technology adoption is the answer to successful business, then it must be a priority for the management. Unfortunately, very few corporate cultures will support such initiatives. Hence, higher resistance towards such changes will be eminent.

Social and cultural environment

Organizational culture in addition to the general social and cultural environments can be considered as a link because when people enter organizations from surrounding societies bring their cultures and social lives with them (Sims 457). Therefore, the changing social and cultural environment influences corporate culture and poses a big challenge to managers yearning for change.

York, Gumbus and Lilley in their research study found that forces in this environment are those that effect ways of how people live and work (209). Mohanty and Rath think that managers must be responsive to those changes that take place in the surrounding societies as they affect all aspects of corporate culture (66). However, new managers have little knowledge about these changes.

Global environment

The global business environment is changing drastically thus requiring new approaches to business (Brakman 9). Apart from the regulatory changes, diversity and consumer behaviours, the global economic factors have experienced significant economic changes thus influencing organizational cultures greatly.

For many organizations, the main objective boils down to creating a culture that might improve competitive advantages and eventually the profitability of a corporation in a threatening economic environment. Therefore, organizational cultures that are witnessed today have nothing to do with the traditional emphasis on aligning corporate cultures with national cultures. Firms, including small-to-medium enterprises (SME) are internationalizing their operations to seek for business opportunities (Schuler 243).

Technological environment

One element of organizational culture that firms have focused on is innovation. Almost every organization creates a culture that can make the employees more creative. The most significant driver to innovation is information technology (IT) and its integration in business operations. In as much as IT is important to organizational activities, it poses a major challenge to today’s managers (Cronley and Patterson 289).

They have no other alternative but to involve IT when changing the organizational culture. In order to promote organizational learning and create knowledge, they must use IT to define, acquire, arrange, organize, input, manipulate, transmit and store information. Organizational learning can only occur if the employees can manage knowledge and information to attain a better understanding of the need to change (Schuler 245).

Research Methodology and Study Design

Research Procedure

In order to investigate how organizations attempt to manage specific area of organizational culture, this investigative study was both qualitative and quantitative. The requisite research information was gathered across the study population through sampling strategy.

A research technique dubbed as survey method was drawn on while content analysis was applied to help analyze the obtained data. These research methods were successively considered to be the best given that they rarely provide chances of disqualifying any notable alternative explanations and they infer to the event causations.

Besides, to critically illustrate the consequences of the assumed actions as they exist when this study was conducted, the suggested descriptive statistics was accrued from the observations made. The researcher also used the specified research methods by taking into consideration relevant first hand research information and any other related data obtained from the research respondents. This assisted in devising sound and rational study conclusions.

Primary and secondary data sources

In order to present significant research findings and appropriate conclusions, the investigative study on how organizations attempt to manage specific area of organizational culture used primary data sources and secondary data sources.

However, the primary research information and desired data were obtained through administering self-designed survey questionnaires and conducting in-depth interviews to the study targeted population. In fact, the researcher administered the questionnaires to the study participants, organizations managers and employees in person.

Conversely, the secondary investigative information accrued from various organizations’ change management and corporate culture records as well as other authenticated documentations that have been filed by the investigated organizations. Such research information facilitated the ascertainment of whether the organizations in question had any primed cultural management strategies and the consequences of the assumed actions.

Research Findings

How organizations attempt to manage specific area of organizational culture

Social and cultural environment

From the investigation, it appears that new leaders at Enron and Hewlett-Packard Corporations are tasked with the development of corporate ethics and well-being in order to initiate organizational change. Investigation reveals that huge ethical scandals in corporations such as Enron and Hewlett-Packard plagued hundreds of United States firms.

Unethical behaviours in these companies damaged the firms’ reputation and cost them the goodwill of employees and customers. Moreover, the losses led to financial and economic damages. The corporate managers changed such cultures by establishing ethical codes that defined acceptable behaviours and developed frameworks for rewards and punishments in order to implement ethical codes.

According to Sims (459), corporate ethics is perceived as an element of corporate culture that is hard to change, as ethics is defined differently by individual organizations. Thus, by implementing the ethical codes, the damaged corporate reputation and the associated costs of losing the goodwill of employees and customers were restored.

However, for a firm like Citigroup, the interviewed managers revealed that social or ethical responsibility means taking any action that was legal. In such a culture, developing codes of ethics that help the firm to protect their reputation and ensure the goodwill of employees and customers appear to be hard for a newcomer.

Study conducted by Sims showed that the challenge encountered by Citigroup can be overcome by building an organizational culture where members oppose the temptation to act in ethical manners that promote individual interests at the cost of the firm or promote the interest of the firm at the cost of the society (471).

Indeed, most corporations’ executives akin to Citigroup have been unable to take effective measures when faced with ethical scandals. The consequences were that Citigroup suffered dearly from the scandals and the executives could only chose corporate silence strategy action in order to maintain the reputation of the company (York et al. 211).

Workforce diversity is also a big challenge to managers wishing to change an existing organizational culture. In as much as organization such as Enron, Citigroup and Hewlett-Packard are legally and socially committed, they must include employees from different diverse environments.

However, some of the organizations are not sensitive to the diversity issue while others have overemphasized on the issue. As a matter of fact, the number of women and minorities being hired by the firms is increasing. The demographic composition of workers has changed considerably as more female workers and minorities enter the workforce. This means that new managers employed in these corporations must address this factor when changing organizational culture.

Studies have shown that workforce diversity is an important resource to improve performance and that the quality of decision making is richer and broader in terms of diverse employees (Moran et al. 201). While this is an important consideration to managers, some existing organizational cultures discourage such efforts to an extent of justifying that diversification lowers the quality of management. Such beliefs make it difficult for managers to change the culture as they require the commitment of both the manager and employees.

Global environment

Organizations such as Citigroup, Enron and Hewlett-Packard are focusing on creating corporate cultures that might improve competitive advantages and eventually the profitability in threatening economic environments. This makes such corporations internationalize their operations while seeking for business opportunities (Schuler 466).

As a matter of fact, these organizations’ managers are challenged by a myriad of factors stemming from the changing global environment. First, cultural differences witnessed in Citigroup, Enron and Hewlett-Packard influence corporate culture in different countries. Management functions directed towards corporate culture become more complex as the firms’ activities expand internationally and the coordination of organizational as well as decision-making issues become significantly difficult (Moran et al. 210).

These corporations’ managers fight in vain to create corporate cultures that balance between the needs of the foreign markets and the impact of the cultural disparities on important organizational issues such as evaluation, compensation packages and promotion policies.

Second, understanding global difference is a challenge to new managers in appreciating the changing global environment. There are issues related to understanding corporate behavior in diverse global settings. Corporate culture becomes especially complicated at global level since desires, attitudes and values of employees differ across countries (Moran et al. 210).

Again, the issue of coordinating activities to match organizational environment becomes more complicated as these firms expand internationally. Apart from Citigroup, Enron and Hewlett-Packard, many organizations are locating to specific regions because these permit them to increase efficiency, but in this manner, also affect corporate culture.

Therefore, to address this issue, Citigroup, Enron and Hewlett-Packard corporate managers have opted to adopt global learning or the process of attaining and learning the knowledge, skills and corporate behaviours that have helped organizations abroad to become strongly positioned in the global market.

Besides, for this challenge, the managers create corporate cultures that might allow the firms to rotate employees to other foreign operations in order to learn the opportunities and problems that lie overseas. Apparently, this is difficult for the managers and costly to the firms.

No wonder many researches on expatriation have pointed the key challenge to successful expatriation as the capacity of the organization to create a culture that arms the employees with the necessary skills and knowledge to fit in foreign cultures (Du Plessis and Beaver 170; Franke and Nicholson 25).

Technological environment

Corporations such as Citigroup, Enron and Hewlett-Packard almost create cultures that might make the employees more creative. In these organizations, the most significant driver to innovation is information technology (IT) and its integration in business operations. They have no other alternative but to involve IT when changing the organizational culture. Study reveals that, organizational learning can only occur if the employees appropriately manage knowledge and information to attain a better understanding of the need to change.

Regarding technology Melitski, Gavin and Joanne shed light on organizational culture and its adoption (547). According to them, organizations are increasingly operating in uncertain, decentralized, networked environments, where adoption of IT has become essential to organizational change (546).

Managers of Citigroup, Enron and Hewlett-Packard agree that organizational cultures institutionary shape the way in which firms choose to use technology. They showed that there are environmental factors which influence employees’ willingness to adopt new technology and these form part of their strategic actions in dealing with this issue.

When the organizational culture is supportive, the probability of adoption is substantially higher. Employees who work in firms where work is well organized, their opinions are considered and they are well informed about the relevant issues in the firm. Thus, they will be willing to adopt new technologies.

Unfortunately, many organizations do not have supportive cultures that can enhance the willingness of employees to adopt new technologies. Recently, changes in organization culture have taken many directions with respect to technology, work and employment relationships.

Technology adoption has been associated with downsizing, the growth of temporary workers or contingents, outsourcing, and with employees who no longer spend their full careers in one firm. As a result, new managers have to work with employees whose confidences in the firm are fainted by changes taking place within. Hence, they are likely to resist change.

Conclusion

Organizational culture change means changing the corporate philosophy, the values and images that inform action, and this new approach to understanding the corporate life must be passed on to the process of management. The reason why it is difficult to implement change of an existing culture lies in the challenges posed by changes in global, technological, social and cultural environments.

Works Cited

Cronley, Courtney and David Patterson. “How Well Does It Fit? An Organizational Culture Approach to Assessing Technology Use among Homeless Service Providers.” Administration in Social Work 34.3 (2010): 286-303. Print.

Du Plessis, Andries and Bob Beaver. “The Changing Role of Human Resource Managers for International Assignments.” International Review of Business Research Papers 4.5 (2008): 166-181. Print.

Franke, Johann and Nigel Nicholson. “Who Shall We Send? Cultural and Other Influences on the Rating of Selection Criteria for Expatriate Assignments.” International Journal of Cross Cultural Management 2.1 (2002): 21-36. Print.

Mohanty, Jagannath and Bhabani Rath. “Influence of Organizational Culture on Organizational Citizenship Behavior.” Global Journal of Business Research 6.1 (2012): 65-76. Print.

Moran, Robert, Harris Philip and Moran Sarah. Managing Cultural Differences: Global Leadership Strategies for Cross-Cultural Business Success. New York: Routledge, 2010. Print.

Scheffknecht, Sabine. “Multinational Enterprise-Organizational Culture vs. National Culture.” International Journal of Management Cases 13.4 (2011): 73-78. Print.

Schuler, Randall. “The Internationalization of Human Resource Management.” Journal of International Management 6.8 (2000): 239-260. Print.

Sims, Ronald. “Toward a Better Understanding of Organizational Efforts to Rebuilding Reputation Following an Ethical Scandal.” Journal of Business Ethics 90.4 (2009): 453-472. Print.

York, Christopher, Gumbus, Andra and Stephen Lilley. “Reading the Tea Leaves-Did Citigroup Risk Their Reputation during 2004-2005?” Business and Society Review 113.4 (2008): 199-225. Print.