Organizational culture

Organizational culture is an idea in the field of Organizational studies and management which describes the psychology, attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values (personal and cultural values) of an organization. It has been defined as "the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization."

This definition continues to explain organizational values, also known as "beliefs and ideas about what kinds of goals members of an organization should pursue and ideas about the appropriate kinds or standards of behavior organizational members should use to achieve these goals. From organizational values develop organizational norms, guidelines, or expectations that prescribe appropriate kinds of behavior by employees in particular situations and control the behavior of organizational members towards one another."

Organizational culture is not the same as corporate culture. It is wider and deeper concepts, something that an organization 'is' rather than what it 'has'. Corporate culture is the total sum of the values, customs, traditions, and meanings that make a company unique. Corporate culture is often called "the character of an organization", since it embodies the vision of the company’s founders. The values of a corporate culture influence the ethical standards within a corporation, as well as managerial behavior.

Senior management may try to determine a corporate culture. They may wish to impose corporate values and standards of behavior that specifically reflect the objectives of the organization. In addition, there will also be an extant internal culture within the workforce. Work-groups within the organization have their own behavioral quirks and interactions which, to an extent, affect the whole system. Roger Harrison's four-culture typology, and adapted by Charles Handy, suggests that unlike organizational culture, corporate culture can be 'imported'. For example, computer technicians will have expertise, language and behaviors gained independently of the organization, but their presence can influence the culture of the organization as a whole.

Strong/weak cultures

Strong culture is said to exist where staff respond to stimulus because of their alignment to organizational values. In such environments, strong cultures help firms operate like well-oiled machines, cruising along with outstanding execution and perhaps minor tweaking of existing procedures here and there.

Conversely, there is weak culture where there is little alignment with organizational values and control must be exercised through extensive procedures and bureaucracy.

Where culture is strong—people do things because they believe it is the right thing to do—there is a risk of another phenomenon, Groupthink. "Groupthink" was described by Irving L. Janis. He defined it as "...a quick and easy way to refer to a mode of thinking that people engage when they are deeply involved in a cohesive ingroup, when members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternatives of action." This is a state where people, even if they have different ideas, do not challenge organizational thinking, and therefore there is a reduced capacity for innovative thoughts. This could occur, for example, where there is heavy reliance on a central charismatic figure in the organization, or where there is an evangelical belief in the organization’s values, or also in groups where a friendly climate is at the base of their identity (avoidance of conflict). In fact group think is very common, it happens all the time, in almost every group. Members that are defiant are often turned down or seen as a negative influence by the rest of the group, because they bring conflict.

Innovative organizations need individuals who are prepared to challenge the status quo—be it groupthink or bureaucracy, and also need procedures to implement new ideas effectively.

Typologies of organizational cultures

Several methods have been used to classify organizational culture. Some are described below:

Hofstede (1980) demonstrated that there are national and regional cultural groupings that affect the behavior of organizations.

Hofstede looked for national differences between over 100,000 of IBM's employees in different parts of the world, in an attempt to find aspects of culture that might influence business behavior.

Hofstede identified five dimensions of culture in his study of national influences:

• Power distance - The degree to which a society expects there to be differences in the levels of power. A high score suggests that there is an expectation that some individuals wield larger amounts of power than others. A low score reflects the view that all people should have equal rights.
• Uncertainty avoidance reflects the extent to which a society accepts uncertainty and risk.
• Individualism vs. collectivism - individualism is contrasted with collectivism, and refers to the extent to which people are expected to stand up for themselves, or alternatively act predominantly as a member of the group or organization. However, recent researches have shown that high individualism may not necessarily mean low collectivism, and vice versa. Research indicates that the two concepts are actually unrelated. Some people and cultures might have both high individualism and high collectivism, for example. Someone who highly values duty to his or her group does not necessarily give a low priority to personal freedom and self-sufficiency
• Masculinity vs. femininity - refers to the value placed on traditionally male or female values. Male values for example include competitiveness, assertiveness, ambition, and the accumulation of wealth and material possessions.
• Long vs. short term orientation - describes a society's "time horizon," or the importance attached to the future versus the past and present. In long term oriented societies, thrift and perseverance are valued more; in short term oriented societies, respect for tradition and reciprocation of gifts and favors are valued more. Eastern nations tend to score especially high here, with Western nations scoring low and the less developed nations very low; China scored highest and Pakistan lowest.

Deal and Kennedy

Deal and Kennedy defined organizational culture as the way things get done around here. They measured organizations in respect of:

• Feedback - quick feedback means an instant response. This could be in monetary terms, but could also be seen in other ways, such as the impact of a great save in a soccer match.
• Risk - represents the degree of uncertainty in the organization’s activities.

Using these parameters, they were able to suggest four classifications of organizational culture:

• The Tough-Guy Macho Culture. Feedback is quick and the rewards are high. This often applies to fast moving financial activities such as brokerage, but could also apply to a police force, or athletes competing in team sports. This can be a very stressful culture in which to operate.
• The Work Hard/Play Hard Culture is characterized by few risks being taken, all with rapid feedback. This is typical in large organizations, which strive for high quality customer service. It is often characterized by team meetings, jargon and buzzwords.
• The Bet your Company Culture, where big stakes decisions are taken, but it may be years before the results are known. Typically, these might involve development or exploration projects, which take years to come to fruition, such as oil prospecting or military aviation.
• The Process Culture occurs in organizations where there is little or no feedback. People become bogged down with how things are done not with what is to be achieved. This is often associated with bureaucracies. While it is easy to criticize these cultures for being overly cautious or bogged down in red tape, they do produce consistent results, which is ideal in, for example, public services.

Charles Handy

Charles Handy (1985) popularized the 1972 work of Roger Harrison of looking at culture which some scholars have used to link organizational structure to organizational culture. He describes Harrison's four types thus:

• a Power Culture which concentrates power among a few. Control radiates from the center like a web. Power and influence spread out from a central figure or group. Power desires from the top person and personal relationships with that individual matters more then any formal title of position. Power Cultures have few rules and little bureaucracy; swift decisions can ensue.
• In a Role Culture, people have clearly delegated authorities within a highly defined structure. Typically, these organizations form hierarchical bureaucracies. Power derives from a person's position and little scope exists for expert power. Controlled by procedures, roles descriptions and authority definitions. Predictable and consistant systems and procedures are highly valued.
• By contrast, in a Task Culture, teams are formed to solve particular problems. Power derives from expertise as long as a team requires expertise. These cultures often feature the multiple reporting lines of a matrix structure. It is all a small team approach, who are highly skilled and specialist in their own markets of experience.
• A Person Culture exists where all individuals believe themselves superior to the organization. Survival can become difficult for such organizations, since the concept of an organization suggests that a group of like-minded individuals pursue the organizational goals. Some professional partnerships can operate as person cultures, because each partner brings a particular expertise and clientele to the firm.

Edgar Schein

Edgar Schein, an MIT Sloan School of Management professor, defines organizational culture as:

"A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned 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 you perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems".

According to Schein, culture is the most difficult organizational attribute to change, outlasting organizational products, services, founders and leadership and all other physical attributes of the organization. His organizational model illuminates culture from the standpoint of the observer, described by three cognitive levels of organizational culture.

At the first and most cursory level of Schein's model is organizational attributes that can be seen, felt and heard by the uninitiated observer - collectively known as artifacts. Included are the facilities, offices, furnishings, visible awards and recognition, the way that its members dress, how each person visibly interacts with each other and with organizational outsiders, and even company slogans, mission statements and other operational creeds.

The next level deals with the professed culture of an organization's members - the values. At this level, local and personal values are widely expressed within the organization. Organizational behavior at this level usually can be studied by interviewing the organization's membership and using questionnaires to gather attitudes about organizational membership.

At the third and deepest level, the organization's tacit assumptions are found. These are the elements of culture that are unseen and not cognitively identified in everyday interactions between organizational members. Additionally, these are the elements of culture which are often taboo to discuss inside the organization. Many of these 'unspoken rules' exist without the conscious knowledge of the membership. Those with sufficient experience to understand this deepest level of organizational culture usually become acclimatized to its attributes over time, thus reinforcing the invisibility of their existence. Surveys and casual interviews with organizational members cannot draw out these attributes--rather much more in-depth means is required to first identify then understand organizational culture at this level. Notably, culture at this level is the underlying and driving element often missed by organizational behaviorists.

Using Schein's model, understanding paradoxical organizational behaviors becomes more apparent. For instance, an organization can profess highly aesthetic and moral standards at the second level of Schein's model while simultaneously displaying curiously opposing behavior at the third and deepest level of culture. Superficially, organizational rewards can imply one organizational norm but at the deepest level imply something completely different. This insight offers an understanding of the difficulty that organizational newcomers have in assimilating organizational culture and why it takes time to become acclimatized. It also explains why organizational change agents usually fail to achieve their goals: underlying tacit cultural norms are generally not understood before would-be change agents begin their actions. Merely understanding culture at the deepest level may be insufficient to institute cultural change because the dynamics of interpersonal relationships (often under threatening conditions) are added to the dynamics of organizational culture while attempts are made to institute desired change.

Arthur F. Carmazzi

Main article: Arthur F. Carmazzi

From "Lessons from the Monkey King - Leading Change to Create Gorilla Sized Results" - Veritas Publishing, 2007

The Blame culture This culture cultivates distrust and fear, people blame each other to avoid being reprimanded or put down, this results in no new ideas or personal initiative because people don’t want to risk being wrong.

Multi-directional culture This culture cultivates minimized cross-department communication and cooperation. Loyalty is only to specific groups (departments). Each department becomes a clique and is often critical of other departments which in turn creates lots of gossip. The lack of cooperation and Multi-Direction is manifested in the organization's inefficiency.

Live and let live culture This culture is Complacency, it manifests Mental Stagnation and Low Creativity. People here have little future vision and have given up their passion. There is average cooperation and communication, and things do work, but they do not grow. People have developed their personal relationships and decided who to stay away from, there is not much left to learn.

Brand congruent culture People in this culture believe in the product or service of the organization, they feel good about what their company is trying to achieve and cooperate to achieve it. People here are passionate and seem to have similar goals in the organisation. They use personal resources to actively solve problems and while they don’t always accept the actions of management or others around them, they see their job as important. Most everyone in this culture is operating at the level of Group.

Leadership enriched culture People view the organization as an extension of themselves, they feel good about what they personally achieve through the organization and have exceptional Cooperation. Individual goals are aligned with the goals of the organization and people will do what it takes to make things happen. As a group, the organization is more like family providing personal fulfillment which often transcends ego so people are consistently bringing out the best in each other. In this culture, Leaders do not develop followers, but develop other leaders. Most everyone in this culture is operating at the level of Organization.

Carmazzi's model requires application of his Directive Communication psychology to evolve the culture. While the idea of having a Leadership Enriched organization is inspirational, it would require substantial Leadership resources to develop. The concept of Evolving the culture assumes that "Every Individual in the organization wants to do a good job", and the behaviours that result in poor performance are manifestations of psychology the group or organization has created through policies, leadership and poor communication.

Robert A. Cooke

The Organizational Culture Inventory: Culture Clusters

Robert A. Cooke, PhD, defines culture as the behaviors that members believe are required to fit in and meet expectations within their organization. The Organizational Culture Inventory measures twelve behavioral of norms that are grouped into three general types of cultures:

•Constructive Cultures, in which members are encouraged to interact with people and approach tasks in ways that help them meet their higher-order satisfaction needs.

•Passive/Defensive Cultures, in which members believe they must interact with people in ways that will not threaten their own security.

•Aggressive/Defensive Cultures, in which members are expected to approach tasks in forceful ways to protect their status and security.

The Constructive Cluster

The Constructive Cluster includes cultural norms that reflect expectations for members to interact with others and approach tasks in ways that will help them meet their higher order satisfaction needs for affiliation, esteem, and self-actualization.

The four cultural norms in this cluster are:

•Achievement

•Self-Actualizing

•Humanistic-Encouraging

•Affiliative

Organizations with Constructive cultures encourage members to work to their full potential, resulting in high levels of motivation, satisfaction, teamwork, service quality, and sales growth. Constructive norms are evident in environments where quality is valued over quantity, creativity is valued over conformity, cooperation is believed to lead to better results than competition, and effectiveness is judged at the system level rather than the component level. These types of cultural norms are consistent with (and supportive of) the objectives behind empowerment, total quality management, transformational leadership, continuous improvement, reengineering, and learning organizations.

The Passive/Defensive Cluster

Norms that reflect expectations for members to interact with people in ways that will not threaten their own security are in the Passive/Defensive Cluster.

The four Passive/Defensive cultural norms are:

•Approval

•Conventional

•Dependent

•Avoidance

In organizations with Passive/Defensive cultures, members feel pressured to think and behave in ways that are inconsistent with the way they believe they should in order to be effective. People are expected to please others (particularly superiors) and avoid interpersonal conflict. Rules, procedures, and orders are more important than personal beliefs, ideas, and judgment. Passive/Defensive cultures experience a lot of unresolved conflict and turnover, and organizational members report lower levels of motivation and satisfaction.

The Aggressive/Defensive Cluster

The Aggressive/Defensive Cluster includes cultural norms that reflect expectations for members to approach tasks in ways that protect their status and security.

The Aggressive/Defensive cultural norms are:

•Oppositional

•Power

•Competitive

•Perfectionistic

Organizations with Aggressive/Defensive cultures encourage or require members to appear competent, controlled, and superior. Members who seek assistance, admit shortcomings, or concede their position are viewed as incompetent or weak. These organizations emphasize finding errors, weeding out “mistakes,” and encouraging members to compete against each other rather than competitors. The short-term gains associated with these strategies are often at the expense of long-term growth.

Elements

G. Johnson described a cultural web, identifying a number of elements that can be used to describe or influence Organizational Culture:

• The Paradigm: What the organization is about; what it does; its mission; its values.
• Control Systems: The processes in place to monitor what is going on. Role cultures would have vast rulebooks. There would be more reliance on individualism in a power culture.
• Organizational Structures: Reporting lines, hierarchies, and the way that work flows through the business.
• Power Structures: Who makes the decisions, how widely spread is power, and on what is power based?
• Symbols: These include organizational logos and designs, but also extend to symbols of power such as parking spaces and executive washrooms.
• Rituals and Routines: Management meetings, board reports and so on may become more habitual than necessary.
• Stories and Myths: build up about people and events, and convey a message about what is valued within the organization.

These elements may overlap. Power structures may depend on control systems, which may exploit the very rituals that generate stories which may not be true.

Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument

Robert Quinn and Kim Cameron researched what makes organizations effective and successful. Based on the Competing Values Framework, they developed the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument that distinguishes four culture types. See their book: Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture.

Competing values produce polarities like: flexibility versus stability and internal versus external focus. These two polarities were found to be most important in defining organizational success.

The polarities construct a quadrant with four types of culture: Clan Culture - internal focus and flexible A friendly workplace where leaders act like father figures. Adhocracy Culture - external focus and flexible A dynamic workplace with leaders that stimulate innovation. Market Culture - external focus and controlled A competitive workplace with leaders like hard drivers Hierarchy Culture - internal focus and controlled A structured and formalized workplace where leaders act like coordinators.

Cameron & Quinn found six key aspects that will make up a culture. These can be assessed in the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) thus producing a mix of these four archetypes of culture. Each organization or team will have its unique mix of culture types. By assessing the current organizational culture as well as the preferred situation, the gap and direction to change can be made visible. This can be the first step to changing organizational culture.

Organizational culture and change

There are a number of methodologies specifically dedicated to organizational culture change such as Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline and Arthur F Carmazzi's Directive Communication. These are also a variety of psychological approaches that have been developed into a system for specific outcomes such as the Fifth Discipline’s “learning organization” or Directive Communication’s “corporate culture evolution.” Ideas and strategies, on the other hand, seem to vary according to particular influences that affect culture.

Burman and Evans (2008) argue that it is 'leadership' that affects culture rather than 'management', and describe the difference. When one wants to change an aspect of the culture of an organization one has to keep in consideration that this is a long term project. Corporate culture is something that is very hard to change and employees need time to get used to the new way of organizing. For companies with a very strong and specific culture it will be even harder to change.

Cummings & Worley (2005, p. 491 – 492) give the following six guidelines for cultural change, these changes are in line with the eight distinct stages mentioned by Kotter (1995, p. 2)3:

1. Formulate a clear strategic vision (stage 1,2 & 3 of Kotter, 1995, p. 2)

In order to make a cultural change effective a clear vision of the firm’s new strategy, shared values and behaviours is needed. This vision provides the intention and direction for the culture change (Cummings & Worley, 2005, p.490).

2. Display Top-management commitment (stage 4 of Kotter, 1995, p. 2)

It is very important to keep in mind that culture change must be managed from the top of the organization, as willingness to change of the senior management is an important indicator (Cummings & Worley, 2005, page 490). The top of the organization should be very much in favour of the change in order to actually implement the change in the rest of the organization. De Caluwé & Vermaak (2004, p 9) provide a framework with five different ways of thinking about change.

3. Model culture change at the highest level (stage 5 of Kotter, 1995, p. 2)

In order to show that the management team is in favour of the change, the change has to be notable at first at this level. The behaviour of the management needs to symbolize the kinds of values and behaviours that should be realized in the rest of the company. It is important that the management shows the strengths of the current culture as well, it must be made clear that the current organizational does not need radical changes, but just a few adjustments. (See for more: (Deal & Kennedy, 1982; Sathe, 1983; Schall; 1983; Weick, 1985; DiTomaso, 1987)

4. Modify the organization to support organizational change

The fourth step is to modify the organization to support organizational change.

5. Select and socialize newcomers and terminate deviants (stage 7 & 8 of Kotter, 1995, p. 2)

A way to implement a culture is to connect it to organizational membership, people can be selected and terminate in terms of their fit with the new culture (Cummings & Worley, 2005, p. 491).

6. Develop ethical and legal sensitivity

Changes in culture can lead to tensions between organizational and individual interests, which can result in ethical and legal problems for practitioners. This is particularly relevant for changes in employee integrity, control, equitable treatment and job security (Cummings & Worley, 2005, p. 491).

Change of culture in the organizations is very important and inevitable. Culture innovations is bound to be because it entails introducing something new and substantially different from what prevails in existing cultures. Cultural innovation is bound to be more difficult than cultural maintenance. People often resist changes hence it is the duty of the management to convince people that likely gain will outweigh the losses. Besides institutionalization, deification is another process that tends to occur in strongly developed organizational cultures. The organization itself may come to be regarded as precious in itself, as a source of pride, and in some sense unique. Organizational members begin to feel a strong bond with it that transcends material returns given by the organization, and they begin to identify with in. The organization turns into a sort of clan.

Entrepreneurial culture

Stephen McGuire defined and validated a model of organizational culture that predicts revenue from new sources. An Entrepreneurial Organizational Culture (EOC) is a system of shared values, beliefs and norms of members of an organization, including valuing creativity and tolerance of creative people, believing that innovating and seizing market opportunities are appropriate behaviors to deal with problems of survival and prosperity, environmental uncertainty, and competitors’ threats, and expecting organizational members to behave accordingly.

Elements of Entrepreneurial Culture

• People and enpowerment focused
• Value creation through innovation and change
• Attention to the basics
• Hands-on management
• Doing the right thing
• Freedom to grow and to fail
• Commitment and personal responsibility
• Emphasis on the future

Critical views

Writers from Critical management studies have tended to express skepticism about the functionalist and unitarist views of culture put forward by mainstream management thinkers. Whilst not necessarily denying that organizations are cultural phenomena, they would stress the ways in which cultural assumptions can stifle dissent and reproduce management propaganda and ideology. After all, it would be naive to believe that a single culture exists in all organizations, or that cultural engineering will reflect the interests of all stakeholders within an organization. In any case, Parker has suggested that many of the assumptions of those putting forward theories of organizational culture are not new. They reflect a long-standing tension between cultural and structural (or informal and formal) versions of what organizations are. Further, it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that complex organizations might have many cultures, and that such sub-cultures might overlap and contradict each other. The neat typologies of cultural forms found in textbooks rarely acknowledge such complexities, or the various economic contradictions that exist in capitalist organizations.

One of the strongest and widely recognised criticisms of theories that attempt to categorize or 'pigeonhole' organizational culture is that put forward by Linda Smircich. She uses the metaphor of a plant root to represent culture, describing that it drives organizations rather than vice versa. Organizations are the product of organizational culture, we are unaware of how it shapes behaviour and interaction (also recognised through Scheins (2002) underlying assumptions) and so how can we categorize it and define what it is?

Organizational communication perspective on culture

The organizational communication perspective on culture is divided into three areas:

• Traditionalism: Views culture through objective things such as stories, rituals, and symbols
• Interpretivism: Views culture through a network of shared meanings (organization members sharing subjective meanings)
• Critical-Interpretivism: Views culture through a network of shared meanings as well as the power struggles created by a similar network of competing meanings

There are many different types of communication that contribute in creating an organizational culture:

• Metaphors such as comparing an organization to a machine or a family reveal employees’ shared meanings of experiences at the organization.
• Stories can provide examples for employees of how to or not to act in certain situations.
• Rites and ceremonies combine stories, metaphors, and symbols into one. Several different kinds of rites that affect organizational culture:
  • Rites of passage: employees move into new roles
  • Rites of degradation: employees have power taken away from them
  • Rites of enhancement: public recognition for an employee’s accomplishments
  • Rites of renewal: improve existing social structures
  • Rites of conflict reduction: resolve arguments between certain members or groups
  • Rites of integration: reawaken feelings of membership in the organization
• Reflexive comments are explanations, justifications, and criticisms of our own actions. This includes:
  • Plans: comments about anticipated actions
  • Commentaries: comments about action in the present
  • Accounts: comments about an action or event that has already occurred

Such comments reveal interpretive meanings held by the speaker as well as the social rules they follow.

• Fantasy Themes are common creative interpretations of events that reflect beliefs, values, and goals of the organization. They lead to rhetorical visions, or views of the organization and its environment held by organization members.

Schema

Schemata (plural of schema) are knowledge structures a person forms from past experiences, allowing the person to respond to similar events more efficiently in the future by guiding the processing of information. A person's schemata are created through interaction with others, and thus inherently involve communication.

Stanley G. Harris argues that five categories of in-organization schemata are necessary for organizational culture:

• Self-in-organization schemata: a person’s concept of themselves within the context of the organization, including her/his personality, roles, and behavior.
• Person-in-organization schemata: a person’s memories, impressions. and expectations of other individuals within the organization.
• Organization schemata: subset of person schemata, a person’s generalized perspective on others as a whole in the organization.
• Object/concept-in-organization schemata: knowledge an individual has of organization aspects other than of other persons.
• Event-in-organization schemata: a person’s knowledge of social events within an organization.

All of these categories together represent a person’s knowledge of an organization. Organizational culture is created when the schematas (schematic structures) of differing individuals across and within an organization come to resemble each other (when any one person's schemata come to resemble aby other person's schemata because of mutual organizational involvement). This is primarily done through organizational communication, as individuals directly or indirectly share knowledge and meanings.

Mergers, organizational culture, and cultural leadership

One of the biggest obstacles in the way of the merging of two organizations is organizational culture. Each organization has its own unique culture and most often, when brought together, these cultures clash. When mergers fail employees point to issues such as identity, communication problems, human resources problems, ego clashes, and inter-group conflicts, which all fall under the category of “cultural differences”. One way to combat such difficulties is through cultural leadership. Organizational leaders must also be cultural leaders and help facilitate the change from the two old cultures into the one new culture. This is done through cultural innovation followed by cultural maintenance.

• Cultural innovation includes:
  • Creating a new culture: recognizing past cultural differences and setting realistic expectations for change
  • Changing the culture: weakening and replacing the old cultures
• Cultural maintenance includes:
  • Integrating the new culture: reconciling the differences between the old cultures and the new one
  • Embodying the new culture: Establishing, affirming, and keeping the new culture

See also

• Human fit
• Institutional memory
• Integrated Marketing
• Organizational climate
• Organizational learning
• Prometheus Process

References

• Black, Richard J. (2003) Organisational Culture: Creating the Influence Needed for Strategic Success, London UK, ISBN 1-58112-211-X
• Bligh, Michelle C. (2006) "Surviving Post-merger ‘Culture Clash’: Can Cultural Leadership Lessen the Casualties?" Leadership, vol. 2: pp. 395 - 426.
• Cummings, Thomas G. & Worley, Christopher G. (2005), Organization Development and Change, 8th Ed., Thomson South-Western, USA, ISBN 0324260601
• Harris, Stanley G. (1994) "Organizational Culture and Individual Sensemaking: A Schema-Based Perspective." Organization Science, Vol. 5,(3): pp. 309-321
• Kotter, John. 1992 Corporate Culture and Performance, Free Press; (April 7, 1992) ISBN 0-02-918467-3
• Markus, Hazel. (1977) "Self-schemata and processing information about the self." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 35(2): pp. 63-78.
• O'Donovan, Gabrielle (2006). The Corporate Culture Handbook: How to Plan, Implement and Measure a Successful Culture Change Programme, The Liffey Press, ISBN 1-904148-97-2
• Papa, Michael J., et al. (2008). Organizational Communication Perspectives and Trends(4th Ed.). Sage Publications.
• Phegan, B. (1996-2000) Developing Your Company Culture, A Handbook for Leaders and Managers, Context Press, ISBN 0-9642205-0-4
• Stoykov, Lubomir. 1995 Corporate culture and communication, Stopanstvo , Sofia.

External links

• Organizational Culture and Institutional Transformation - From the Education Resources Information Center Clearinghouse on Higher Education Washington, DC.
• What is Organisational Culture and how can you change it? - From iProCon HCM Insight London, UK.
• http://www.companyculture.com An practical informational website for managers, with articles on the theory and principles for understanding company culture and how to change it.
• Tool for measuring organisation culture by Geert Hofstede and Bob Waisfisz