Organizational Culture as Context
Change the context, change the culture
How are the patterns that make up organizational culture held in place?
So far in our definition of organizational culture, we have explored the ideas that organizational culture can be understood as the patterns (invariances) in values, goals and assumptions held throughout the organization, and that these patterns can be seen as “holographic”—the overall pattern is observable in specific instances. These patterns are held in place by certain constraints.
The last added layer of how we define organizational culture in such a way that rapid cultural change is possible is that most of the constraints keeping the particular cultural patterns from being anything other than what they are right now come in the form of the signals that indicate context.
When we can identify the contexts that correspond to the cultural phenomena we are considering, and identify the communicational signals that create these contexts, we can rapidly shift the context from one to another by changing these signals.
The good news in all this is that whilst organizational culture may appear at times, to those attempting to initiate change, to be as solid as a rock (and more the Gibraltar variety than the Brighton), it turns out, rather, to be extremely fragile.
—Ellen, editor of Change
Organizational Culture as Context
How are organizational patterns maintained? Is it not extraordinary that in the midst of so much change and upheaval, when so much else within and without is in constant flux, that certain patterns should persist?
In answering the question about how (cultural) patterns of organizational behaviour are maintained, we shall find ourselves coming at the notion of constraint from another direction. One question we might ask is this: Given a recurring pattern of behaviour, what prevents that behaviour from deviating from the pattern—what would happen if it started to deviate? Another way to ask virtually the same question would be to ask, “Of all the patterns that could conceivably obtain here, how is it that this is currently the only possible one?” To ask such questions is to ask about the nature of the constraints on that behaviour. As we have said, a behavioural pattern is defined by stating the constraints within which the behaviour in fact varies; yet if we are interested in intervening to replace the existing pattern with another one, we will be on the lookout for “outlying” constraints as it were, other patterns in which the pattern in question is embedded, as a text is embedded in a context.
What are the constraints in the wider organizational context that act to keep that pattern of behaviour within bounds?
Sometimes, we can identify more-or-less specific adverse consequences of going out of bounds, in the form of direct or indirect penalties for stepping out of line.
More often, the situation is not quite so simple. The constraints will be found to lie, rather, in the inter-relationship between the pattern and its immediate wider context. The context defines what patterns are appropriate within it, and more importantly perhaps, what patterns are inappropriate. At the same time, the patterns themselves define the context we are in. To shift to a different pattern may be to be regarded as behaving inappropriately and so to be open to reproach, or, in certain circumstances, to actually re-define the context in a way that may not be desirable for one’s purposes.
Let’s take an example. This is supposed to be a conference on management and organizational development.1 Suppose I wish to transform the culture of organizational development itself, and choose to begin by breaking the mould of how development is understood to be done, to wit: I can describe as development our approach of ‘merely’ making minimal, “communicational” interventions from the top, as discrete nudges, without involving any managers in workshops or individual or team development, or what have you. Now if I were hoping to influence the field by breaking an existing pattern, there would be at least two ways in which my ‘reforming’ ambitions might be disappointed: In the first place, I might merely be seen as doing organizational development wrong (new pattern inappropriate to context). Alternatively, I might be seen as not doing organizational development at all (new pattern re-defines what context we are in—and whatever it is, it’s no longer development). [When Rossini, after the first performance of The Huguenots, was asked by his students, “Maestro, maestro, what did you think of the music?” he replied, “Music? I didn’t hear any music.”]
Contexts themselves need to be maintained, and this can only happen through the more-or-less continuous presence of the relevant context-markers—the abstracted aspects of communication that serve to signal and differentiate contexts. It is the context-markers that tell us, if you like, what context we are in. The reason that substituting one pattern for another can sometimes inadvertently re-define the context is that the behavioural patterns themselves may be the key context-markers on which maintenance of the context depends. If not maintained, contexts become ambiguous, and therefore up for grabs. It is the context that gives meaning to all of the patterns within it, and once the context has become ambiguous, each of those patterns becomes ambiguous too. And then, almost anything might happen.
The good news in all this is that whilst organizational culture may appear at times, to those attempting to initiate change, to be as solid as a rock (and more the Gibraltar variety than the Brighton), it turns out, rather, to be extremely fragile. If some of the key context-markers can be manipulated, then whole cultural contexts, and all the patterns within them, can be transformed at a stroke. It is only in virtue of the continuous ‘broadcasting’ of the relevant context-markers that organizational culture can be maintained at all, holographically, right across an organization; and it is in virtue of the susceptibility of these context-markers to accidental or purposeful manipulation that, as we have discussed, changes appearing in one part of the organization can begin simultaneously to appear throughout.
This post has been adapted from “How Change has Changed: Organizational Culture and Justified Intervention,” by James Wilk
© Copyright 1987, 2022 Dr James Wilk
The moral right of the author has been asserted
This paper was originally presented at a three-hour workshop entitled: “Shifting Contexts: Minimalist Approaches to Transforming Organizational Culture”; presented in 1987 at the University of Lancaster, at the Sixth Conference on Education and Development in Organizations: “Rediscovering Development: The Future in Practice,” sponsored by The Centre for the Study of Management Learning, University of Lancaster.