Management of Organizational Culture as a Stabilizer of Changes

Organizational Culture Management Dilemmas

Ibrahiem M. M. El Emary, Anna Brzozowska, Dagmara Bubel

• Editore: CRC Press
• Anno: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000060973
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Informatique
• Categoria: Sciences générales de l'informatique

No enterprise today is proud of being unchanged. Stability is understood more as a sign of stagnation than reliability, and enterprises that do not change and do not evolve are commonly regarded as fossilized. Increasing globalization processes often force today's enterprises to make organizational changes, but the effectiveness of these processes relies on its organizational culture. This book argues that the problem behind organizational culture is its multilevel structure, including the visible and hidden levels. It addresses difficult questions, such as: Is it better to make thorough, but more painful changes, or to gradually introduce small improvements? It also demonstrates that organizational culture is not a fixed phenomenon: its shaping takes place in stages, and it is essential to take such stages into account in the process of implementing the strategy of an enterprise.

Providing a comprehensive insight into "organizational culture" and its relationship to change, this book will be essential reading for professionals involved in business management and IT management throughout the world. Its analyses and suggestions will allow for improved organizational culture and change management in business environments.

1

Knowledge and Success of an Organization

It is worth starting the discussion about the relationship between organizational culture and the process of organizational change by outlining the meanings of these two notions. The publication will present dominant directions in thinking about organizational culture and organizational change as well as their studies. The aim of these preliminary reflections is to provide a broader perspective for the research studies in the field of interest analyzed further in greater detail.

1.1 Knowledge as a Strategic Resource of an Organization

When analyzing knowledge as an organization’s strategic resource, the first step is to determine the usefulness of possessed knowledge in terms of the implementation of the organization’s strategy (strategic value of knowledge). When an organization has excess knowledge relative to the knowledge necessary for sustaining competitive advantage, the problem is not so much about acquiring new knowledge as about proper use of the knowledge in possession. An organization that is better at using its knowledge than its competitors gains advantage over them. Better use of knowledge means better access to it, possibility of creating different combinations of knowledge and using it in a way that leads to identifiable progress in products, services and processes. This means that it is necessary to search for the most beneficial ways of using knowledge within an organization and in many competitive niches. Yee, Tan and Thurasamy (2019, pp. 1–3) claim that all organizations grow when they skillfully coordinate their activities and ensure consistency in everything they do. This is a very important problem also with respect to the field of knowledge. Various knowledge resources need to be allocated in different parts of an organization in a way that allows them to effectively support those responsible for operational and strategic decisions. The right knowledge should be at the right place and at the right time so that it can be used by a decision-maker in the decision-making process. For that to happen, it is necessary to develop the capacity for transferring knowledge so that it becomes common to the whole organization. This is the second level of the evolution of knowledge management (the first one is “capturing” knowledge, while the third one is generating new knowledge). In an organization, there must exist a constant flow of knowledge between organizational units, people, and significant activities and events.

An organization’s knowledge resources, supplemented by the knowledge acquired from the environment and generated in the organization, play a significant part in decision-making processes. New knowledge is also created in organizations as a result of learning processes, which generate new ideas, concepts or innovations. Learning is a sequence of constant experimenting and thinking by humans that goes beyond the existing limitations in problem-solving. It is supplemented by adaptive learning, which involves incremental enriching of knowledge as a response to problems arising in the environment. When organizational members interact with the environment within the organization and with the environment of the whole organization, they continuously perceive changes as they occur; they absorb new information and reject old one. The sum of new information may be relatively small, the changes may be slight, but the organization can learn to adapt to these changes. Adaptive learning at the level of an entire organization is about adaptation to the environment. Organizational members are able to identify problems in the organization’s environment, develop an appropriate strategy, or modify it, and implement it in a way that ensures that the problems are solved. If the learning process is continued, the results achieved by the organization become the basis for learning and drawing conclusions about the need to correct how things are done. In this way, an organization tries to adapt to the changes and difficulties that exist or will emerge in its environment. These adaptation processes are undertaken within the organization’s mental model (Burke 2017, pp. 217–221), which comprises the elements of individual models that are common to the key managers who have an impact on the entire organization. This occurs in the domain of the dominant system of values, individual and group interests and organizational subcultures in the organization.

The learning process is determined by the norms and values regarded as rational in an organization. This means that on the one hand, an organization notices the factors in its environment that can represent potential opportunities or threats to it, but on the other hand, it does not question the existing norms and values through which the reality is assessed. Thus, adaptive learning is a process of assessing the effectiveness of achieving certain objectives by reacting to changes in the environment (Truong 2016, pp. 1185–1193).

Adaptive learning should be an integral part of a system. The knowledge possessed by an organization can be a result of experiences gained during important activities. It can be learning that precedes actions, learning during actions or post-factum learning. There is a view in the literature that this type of learning is very important for an organization. It is, however, a result of subjective assessment. When designing systems for learning based on significant events, a checklist of actions and events can be created. Of importance is also learning before action, as it anticipates probable events. It concentrates on concrete problems that can bring success. It consists of three stages, which are presented in Figure 1.1.

FIGURE 1.1 Learning stages influencing the success of an organization. (Own work based on: Nikodemus P., Integration von Wissensmanagement und kooperativem Lernen, [in:] Lernprozessorientiertes Wissensmanagement und kooperatives Lernen, Springer, Wiesbaden, 2017, pp. 155–238.)

With learning during actions, executors of actions, who are best positioned to observe what is happening and how “things are going,” can immediately take appropriate measures. It is important to preserve the knowledge so that it can be used to achieve future successes, using the four-question procedure shown in Figure 1.2.

FIGURE 1.2 Key aspects of knowledge that drive the achievement of success in an organization. (Own work based on: Pawlowsky P., Wissensmanagement, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2019, pp. 201–205.)

These or other similar approaches facilitate ordered reflection during the event. In post-factum learning, all the participants of the action have to be engaged in defining what was a success and what can be done differently in the future, which can be achieved through the steps shown in Figure 1.3.

FIGURE 1.3 Learning stages. (Own work based on: Winkler K., Heinz T., Wagner B., Gut zu wissen: Herausforderung New Work–Wissen managen und Lernen fördern, [in:] Zukunft der Arbeit–Perspektive Mensch, Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden, 2018, pp. 193–203.)

In terms of knowledge management, it is necessary to consider how to use the reflections that are a result of the day-to-day intellectual work of knowledge workers as well as their actions that increase the knowledge resources of the organization. It is especially important to create an atmosphere in which people feel that their ideas are treated seriously. Moreover, there are various systems that encourage people to be more active (e.g., communities of practice). Knowledge is stored by various means as shown in Figure 1.4.

FIGURE 1.4 Elements of knowledge archiving. (Own work based on: Klein L., Business excellence execution, [in:] Business Excellence, Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden, 2018, pp. 11–24.)

People preserve both implicit and explicit knowledge, which is generated as a result of their day-to-day experiences as they produce and deliver products and services and participate in processes that create the conditions enabling the organization to function. It is their individual knowledge. At the beginning, it has the character of tacit knowledge, which is only used by those who possess it. This knowledge is enriched not only when more and more experience is gained during day-to-day work and there are appropriate conditions for using it. This knowledge, combined with the organization’s knowledge available to an individual employee, especially a decision-maker, creates a new quality (value) of his/her individual knowledge. Individual people are in various relations with others, forming different types of formal and informal groups. Within them, there is a flow of tacit and explicit knowledge and a group memory is created in which important knowledge is stored. Knowledge is also preserved through interpersonal relations. Work processes characterized by cooperation between people create conditions for preserving common knowledge.

Databases are sets of explicit knowledge. Work processes and supporting systems are essentially a result of designing processes and systems by means of explicit knowledge of an organization. Knowledge is rooted in this case in operational activities. It can be characterized as knowledge about how to meet consumer needs, perform control processes and coordinate contractors’ activities. Knowledge also resides in behavior patterns during past decisions. Most of these processes are standardized, codified and transferred to the different parts of the organization. Products and services contain knowledge that is necessary for meeting consumer needs.

Creating appropriate conditions for the flow of knowledge requires standardization of the interface and practices, technological support necessary for coordinating knowledge resources, a culture of trust and openness that facilitates knowledge sharing, and finally a coherent group of people responsible for managing activities aimed at implementing knowledge-related objectives (the so-called practices). Standardization is crucial, as organizations have numerous internal boundaries and networks (functional, structural, cultural, national). For knowledge to flow across such boundaries, a mechanism is needed to enable such boundaries to be overcome. This mechanism is knowledge standardization, which can facilitate the coordination of the flow of knowledge. Technologies are often used to create tools and techniques for structuring, communicating and effectively using knowledge resources. Applied technologies mainly enable the sharing of explicit knowledge. However, this issue will not be discussed here in more detail. Instead, we will move on to another factor impacting knowledge flow—organizational culture.

1.2 Creation of Knowledge in an Organization in the Context of Decision-making

Organizational culture plays an essential part in forming behaviors that lead to knowledge creation, sharing and use, as it shapes assumptions as to what knowledge is and what knowledge should be managed; it impacts the relations between individual knowledge and organizational knowledge; it creates a context for social interactions, which determine how knowledge should be used in specific situations (who should exercise control, who is responsible for knowledge sharing); and it impacts the shaping of the processes of knowledge creation, verification and distribution.

Organizational culture also creates the causes of people’s aversion to knowledge sharing or using the knowledge of others (Figure 1.5).

FIGURE 1.5 Knowledge-determining factors. (Own work based on: Asrar-Ul-Haq M., Anwar S., A systematic review of knowledge management and knowledge sharing: Trends, issues, and challenges. Cogent Business & Management, 2016, 3.1: 1127744.)

The factors of organizational culture that play an important role in organizations that have best practices in terms of effective use of knowledge are described in Figure 1.6. These practices include engaging people in what makes them interested in using knowledge and motivating them to share their knowledge and come up with ideas together with others. The conclusions from the above practices are as follows (Figure 1.6).

FIGURE 1.6 Good practices implying the use of knowledge. (Own work based on: Hislop D., Bosua R., Helms R., Knowledge Management in Organizations: A Critical Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 78–82.)

Knowledge-sharing processes, even the informal ones, should be controlled by management, which is a symptom of strategic management that aims to ...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Authors
• Introduction
• 1 Knowledge and Success of an Organization
• 2 Organizational Culture Management in Terms of Knowledge Accumulation
• 3 Cultural Value Diversity in an Organization in the Context of Changes
• 4 Process of Stabilizing Changes in Organizational Culture Management
• 5 Global Management of an Organizational Culture
• 6 Global Dimension of Organizational Culture Management: Functionalist and Metaphorical Approaches
• Conclusion
• References
• Index