Defining and sustaining a total service culture through leadership, beliefs, values, and norms L6

Importance of Culture for Service

  • Understanding culture is crucial; failure to do so can make one a victim of its forces (Emeritus Prof Edgar Schein).

The Power of Culture

  • Culture significantly impacts social and organizational dynamics.
  • Without understanding its operations, individuals and organizations may be negatively affected.

Culture and Reputation

  • Company culture directly influences its reputation.
  • All organizations possess a culture.
  • Unmanaged cultures pose risks, potentially empowering individuals who may not align with the organization's mission or even seek to undermine it.
  • Training new employees in the company's culture is a key responsibility of managers.

Culture as a Competitive Advantage

  • Strategy implementation relies on a supportive culture.
  • Organizations should identify and emulate successful cultures and their processes.
  • Cultivating employees who embody the desired spirit is essential.

Culture as Core Competence

  • Organizational culture can be a core competency that provides a competitive edge.

Culture and Leadership

  • Leadership plays a crucial role in shaping and maintaining organizational culture (McGregor, 1966).

Culture and the Environment

  • Consider how the organization relates to the external world.
  • Examine how the organization's members interact internally.
  • Closed View: 'us-versus-them' mentality.
  • Open View: faster adaptation to changes but be mindful of 'involution'.

Defining Culture

  • Culture is a pattern of basic assumptions developed by a group to cope with external adaptation and internal interaction problems (E. Schein).
  • These assumptions are validated through successful application and are taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel.

Importance of Local Knowledge

  • Understanding local contexts is important for cultural management

Difficulties in Managing Cultures

  • Managing culture can be complex and challenging.

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions

  • Study involved surveying 100,000 IBM employees from 1963-1973.
  • Employee attitudes and values were compared across 40 countries.
  • Four dimensions were identified to summarize culture:
    • Power distance
    • Individualism vs. collectivism
    • Uncertainty avoidance
    • Masculinity vs. femininity

Power Distance

  • Cultures are ranked based on their ability to handle inequalities.

Individualism Versus Collectivism

  • Focuses on the relationship between the individual and their community.
    • Individualistic societies:
      • Loose ties.
      • Value individual achievement and freedom.
    • Collectivist societies:
      • Tight ties.
      • Relationship-oriented.

Uncertainty Avoidance

  • Measures how cultures socialize members to accept ambiguity and tolerate uncertainty.

Masculinity Versus Femininity

  • Examines the relationship between gender and work roles.

Work Related Values for Twenty Countries

  • Presents a comparative table of Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism, and Masculinity across 20 countries.

Problems with Hofstede’s Findings

  • Assumes a direct relationship between culture and the nation-state.
  • The sample may have been culturally biased.
  • Survey respondents were from a single industry (computer) and company (IBM).

Managing Culture Through Beliefs, Values, and Norms

  • Culture can be managed by influencing beliefs, values, and norms.

Management by Culture

  • Stronger cultures reduce the need for bureaucratic controls.
  • In uncertain tasks, employees rely more on corporate culture.
  • This is especially important in experience innovation where expertise is needed.

The Chef as Leader

  • Leadership is essential in shaping organizational culture, similar to how a chef leads a kitchen.

Beliefs, Values, and Norms

  • Beliefs:
    • Define how members understand their relationships with the external world and their impact on the internal organization.
  • Values:
    • Preferences for certain behaviors or outcomes (right/wrong, preferred/not preferred, desirable/undesirable).
  • Norms:
    • Standards of behavior that define expected actions within the organization.

Norms of Appearance

  • Examples include the 'Disney Look' versus the 'Ritz-Carlton Look,' illustrating how appearance norms vary across organizations.

Folkways and Mores

  • Folkways: customary, habitual actions or thoughts without deep reflection.
  • Mores: folkways that establish the firm’s code of ethics and accepted behaviors.

Learning the Culture, Learning from the Culture

  • The hospitality industry involves many unusual events.
  • Managers must teach the reasons behind dealing with customers in certain ways.

Communicating the Culture

  • Laws: critical norms that are written down.
  • Language: can be specific to the organization and hard for outsiders to understand.
  • Symbols: communicate unspoken messages.
  • Rituals: symbolic acts to gain and maintain membership or identity.
  • Stories, legends, and heroes: e.g., César Ritz and the Savoy London.

Key Questions

  1. What is culture in the organizational context?
  2. Explain ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’!
  3. Explain Theory X and Theory Y and their impact on organizational culture!
  4. What is ‘management by culture’?
  5. What are beliefs, values, and norms?
  6. Explain the difference between folkways and mores!