Chapter 8

8.1 Aligning Culture, Structure, and HR Practices to Support Strategy

Managers must align the organization’s culture, structure, and HR practices to support strategic execution
Organizational culture is defined as the set of shared, taken-for-granted implicit assumptions that a group holds and that determines how it perceives its various environments.
Organizational structure is a formal system of task and reporting relationships that coordinates and motivates an organization’s members so that they can work together to achieve the organization’s goals.

8.2 What kind of organization culture will you be operating?

Culture has three levels:
- observable artifacts
- espoused values
- basic assumptions
Employees learn culture through symbols, stories, heroes, rites, rituals, and socialization.
The competing values framework classifies organizational cultures into four types:
- clan
- adhocracy
- market
- hierarchy

8.3 The Process of Culture Change

The 12 mechanisms/levers managers use to embed or change organizational culture are:
- Formal Statements
- Slogans and Sayings
- Rites and Rituals
- Stories and Legends
- Leader Reactions to crises
- Role Modeling, training and coaching
- physical design
- rewards, titles, and promotions
- organizational goals
- measurable activities
- organizational structure
- organizational systems
Changing culture requires using multiple levers.

8.4 The Major Features of an Organization

An organization is a system of consciously coordinated activities or forces two or more people.
Organizations vary according to seven features:
- Common Purpose
- Coordinated Effort
- Division of Labor
- Hierarchy of Authority
- Span of Control
- Centralization vs. Decentralization
- Formalization

Whatever the size of an organization, it can be represented in an organization chart, a boxes-and-lines illustration showing the formal lines of authority and communication. This chart helps clarify the relationships between different roles and departments, making it easier to understand the span of control, centralization versus decentralization, and the level of formalization within the structure.