★ Must-know
📌 Organisational values are often broad and explicitly stated, whereas beliefs are more specific and can be inferred from how members discuss organisational issues.
Further detail
Culture can exist at four levels:
Organisational behaviours include prescribed routines and structures as well as informal expectations such as dress codes and patterns of social interaction.
Taken-for-granted assumptions form the core of culture, express a shared understanding of how things are done, and can be shaped by collective experiences such as organisational crises. - Schein, 2004
★ Must-know
📌 In loose cultures, newcomers are largely left to observe and adopt others’ behaviour, whereas strict cultures explicitly induct members into expected behaviours.
📌 Strong organisational cultures can provide structure and comfort for some employees but feel stifling or controlling to others, so strength alone does not make a culture beneficial or harmful. - Kuenz, Inside the Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World, 1995
Further detail
Disneyland recruits undertake a 40-hour training programme covering its history, philosophy, regulations and work procedures. - van Maanen, 1991
Disneyland socialisation includes detailed rules for employee appearance, customer interactions, role performance and the use of costumes, alongside supervisory monitoring and informal peer pressures. - van Maanen, 1991
Loose rules leave newcomers to observe; strict rules explicitly induct them.
★ Must-know
Further detail
A task-oriented subculture in a research and development team can help the team perform appropriately within an otherwise hierarchical organisation.
Elite subgroups can harm an organisation when they direct critical resources towards themselves, and their influence can generate resentment among other members.
Informal norming occurs when people are pressured to adopt nearby colleagues’ attitudes and norms instead of organisational norms, potentially creating conflict.
UK police subcultures have been associated with condoning misogyny and discrimination and with assumptions about terrorists that contributed to anti-terrorist units pursuing and shooting the wrong person. - Dodd
★ Must-know
📌 People can hold multiple values that come into tension, and different situations can activate different values, making behaviour appear inconsistent with stated values. - Rokeach, 1968
Values are generally enduring, relate to how people behave and concern desired outcomes.
There is no value-free organisation or activity; businesses described as not value-based may still be guided by values such as power, wealth, economic growth or competition.
Further detail
Values shape desired outcomes and motivation, which in turn influence behaviour.
📌 The two opposing dimensions in the Schwartz Value System are self-enhancement versus self-transcendence and openness to change versus conservation. - Schwartz and Bilsky, 1987
The system identifies 10 broad value types (Schwartz et al., 2012):
The value types form four groupings (Schwartz and Bilsky, 1987):
Self-enhancement opposes self-transcendence; openness to change opposes conservation.
📌 Power values concern wealth, social status and authority, whereas self-direction values concern independence and shaping one’s own destiny.
Managers of family-owned businesses, especially businesses passed down over several generations, may be motivated by tradition and filial responsibility.
People motivated by achievement may want to perform well and be recognised for doing so without being chiefly concerned with money or social status.
Small-business owner-managers may combine achievement values in implementing environmental programmes with benevolence values such as leaving a better world for their children and providing a good working environment. - Schaefer, Williams and Blundel, Individual values and SME environmental engagement, 2020
Organisational values tend to remain stable as employees leave and join, partly because new employees may be selected for shared values or socialised into them.
Schwartz Value Groupings
| Grouping | Value types |
|---|---|
| Self-enhancement | Power, achievement, hedonism |
| Self-transcendence | Universalism, benevolence |
| Openness to change | Self-direction, stimulation, hedonism |
| Conservation | Conformity, tradition, security |
Take a 20-question practice quiz on Organisational Culture and Values, with every answer explained.
1. What best describes organisational culture in Schein’s framework?
2. Which set names Schein’s four layers of organisational culture?
Memorize the key concepts of Organisational Culture and Values with 47 flashcards.
According to Schein (2004), what is organisational culture?
Shared basic assumptions and beliefs that unconsciously shape members’ taken-for-granted view of their organisation and its environment.
According to Schein (2004), what are the four layers of organisational culture?
Values, beliefs, behaviours, and taken-for-granted assumptions.
How do organisational values differ from beliefs in how they are expressed?
Values are often broad and explicitly stated, while beliefs are more specific and inferred from members’ discussions of organisational issues.
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