Cultural Management and Organizational Change

Joseph Eric Massey

Stanley A. Deetz, Sarah J. Tracy, and Jennifer Lyn Simpson. Leading Organizations Through Transition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000. xvi + 232 pages. $72.95 (cloth); $34.95 (paper).

Organizations are changing more rapidly now than ever, owing to a variety of factors, including globalization, technological innovations, and increasing mergers and acquisitions, among others. Leading Organizations Through Transition is a handbook for managing organizational change, and is a timely and valuable resource for organizational leaders planning or experiencing change. The book is adopted from an online course from SETONWORLDWIDE and would be suited mostly for practitioners and students in Executive MBA programs, although the book would be a valuable resource in undergraduate and graduate courses in organizational communication as well.

The goal of the book is to explore the role of communication in organizational change efforts generally, and cultural change efforts specifically. The book takes a decidedly managerial position, discussing the necessary leadership and communication skills for managers of cultural change. The duality or tension between strategic and participatory communication, or what others have called monologic and dialogic communication (for example, Botan, 1997) is examined in the first several chapters of the book. The authors take the position that communication can and should be considered as both strategic and participative. They state that, "strategic communication functions to direct, inspire, and coordinate and arises from a leader’s vision or overall plan. Participatory communication, in contrast, is the process through which we create, invent, and innovate together" (xi). This dualistic approach creates a tension that exists throughout a majority of the book. On the one hand, the authors are providing advice for cultural change managers as they attempt to strategically control workers, and, on the other hand, they are suggesting that cultural change efforts should involve workers whenever possible. Although the authors state throughout the book that cultural management should not be used to coerce workers, they also point out that this type of management will lead to employees buying in to the organization’s goals. The reader is therefore left to determine whether cultural management is good or bad. The authors take the position that when done properly, cultural management is good for both organizations and employees. Unfortunately, controlling the organization’s culture typically means controlling the organization’s employees.

There are 10 chapters and an introduction in the book. The introduction does a very nice job of setting up the book’s goal and stance. Chapter 1, "Managing Hearts, Minds, and Souls," provides a history of the cultural approach, discussing the three classic books that led to the approach: Ouchi’s Theory Z, Deal and Kennedy’s Corporate Cultures, and Peters and Waterman’s In Search of Excellence. The authors argue that the cultural approach has replaced older models of organizational control because cultural management does not require the surveillance that older management approaches required. When employees "buy into" the goals of the organization, surveillance becomes unnecessary because employees become self-policing. The authors develop their own concept of culture in this chapter, defining culture as "a set of loosely structured symbols that are maintained and co-created by a recreative pattern of internal factors and external factors" (11).

In chapter 2 the authors argue that although organizations are resistant to change, cultural change is possible. When cultural change is an organizational goal, a strategic plan with clear objectives must be implemented. There are several reasons for changing an organization’s culture, but the most important of these is that a strong corporate culture can provide an organization with a strategic advantage over the competition. Harkening back to Peters and Waterman’s idea, the authors state that to be "excellent," a company must have "a strong company spirit, a powerful corporate identity, and employees who hold a high level of organizational commitment and identification" (31). The authors mention other reasons for cultural change; discuss the evaluation necessary to determine whether change is necessary; provide advice for organizational elites as they attempt to lead change efforts; and discuss the process of cultural change. The chapter provides a very thorough discussion of the change process and factors that can enhance change efforts.

Chapter 3 discusses the "vision thing," arguing that "a good vision is realistic enough to create a recognizable picture of the future, powerful enough to generate commitment to performance, coherent enough to provide coordination, and open enough that others can make it over into their own" (52). Organizations should create a strong vision because organizations that do so "consistently rise to the challenge of outdoing themselves" (53). The chapter provides guidelines for how to create a strong vision. One question that remains at the end of the chapter concerns the relationship between the development of vision and cultural management. Although the authors do not sufficiently develop the connections between this and previous chapters, the potential connections are rich. For example, does organizational vision affect culture, does culture affect vision, or is the relationship between these two variables interdependent? The authors seem to suggest that a strong vision will create a strong culture, but do not fully articulate their position.

In chapter 4, framing is presented as another means of creating a shared culture. As the authors define it, "framing is a quality of communication that leads others to accept one meaning over another," or one interpretation over another (72). Whereas chapter 3 may have left the relationship between vision and cultural management as a question, chapter 4 nicely ties together framing, organizational vision, and cultural management. The authors state that one way leaders can communicate the organizational vision is through framing, and through framing "leaders can use discursive constructions to produce and change the cultures of their organizations" (75). The remainder of the chapter discusses the tools of framing, including metaphors; stories; traditions; slogans, jargon, and catchphrases; artifacts; contrast; and spin. The chapter again brings up the tension between strategic and participatory communication. The tools of framing, including stories and myths about the organization, "function as a powerful, sometimes insidious type of control" (86). Therefore the authors suggest that when using framing as a means of cultural management, "managers should analyze how their language both accents and marginalizes different ideas, values, and groups of people" (86).

Employee participation is the topic of chapter 5. The authors argue that no other characteristic of management has proven to lead to higher levels of organizational success than employee involvement in organizational decision making. In one of the strongest chapters of the book, the authors discuss the reasons why organizations have moved to a more participative model of management (globalization, technological change, stakeholder demands); provide a thorough discussion of empowerment; discuss the methods for involving employees in change; and articulate the principles of dialogic communication. They remind cultural managers that employee participation should not be thought of as a means of controlling workers. Rather, employee participation should be genuinely sought out to allow workers to be empowered. If not, workers will see that management is insincere, and a boomerang effect could result, causing workers to distrust management. According to the authors, "many managers have difficulty making a distinction between leading the organization and controlling it" (102).

In chapter 6, the ethical implications of cultural management are addressed. The authors argue that managing the hearts, minds, and souls of employees has ethical complications, and that no matter how useful such control might be in an organization, cultural managers must treat employees ethically. The authors make this point well when they state that the aspect of cultural control that makes it so effective–that it is unobtrusive–is also what makes it potentially insidious. "Because cultural control is almost invisible, it is difficult for employees to discuss or resist" (126). A question that arises is this: if a culture is managed that is ideal, in that it has no negative effects on the organization, organizational stakeholders, or the physical environment, is it ethical? In other words, is any form of organizational control "ethical"? Although the authors do not address this point, they do provide a thorough discussion of organizational ethics, and the implications for utilizing cultural management as a tool for controlling the organization.

In chapter 7 the authors investigate the relationships among culture, technology, and organizational change. They argue that technology shapes organizational practices and therefore technology shapes culture. The authors provide good advice in chapter 7 for organizations that may wish to implement technological change to achieve organizational goals. The position the authors take is that before implementing technological change, organizational leaders should carefully examine the potential effects on organizational stakeholders and the culture of the organization itself. Although in the "information age" many organizational leaders believe that new technologies can provide the solution to most organizational challenges, the authors argue that technological change must not be made in haste. The implications of technological change are many, and must be thought out carefully before introducing new technology into the workplace.

Although all organizations must go through minor, continuous, cultural change, occasionally organizations go through periods of dramatic, wholesale change. Chapter 8 addresses such major cultural changes as mergers and acquisitions; the passing of organizational leadership; significant changes in the market; and other drastic changes. Major change requires careful management of the organizational culture. The authors argue that, "far too often, personnel and culture issues are assigned a low priority during a transition period, and in other instances they are not investigated until they become a major problem" (162). Rather than waiting for problems to arise, organizations should take a proactive approach to major transition and prepare organizational stakeholders for such cultural changes before they occur.

Chapter 9 addresses the fact that organizations are increasingly multinational, having operations in multiple cultures around the world. Multinational organizations face particular problems when attempting to manage culture and cultural change. The problems faced by these organizations are addressed and suggestions for managing culture are provided. The main argument is that multinational organizations should be culturally sensitive to their varied and diverse organizational stakeholders in order to be effective.

The last chapter of the book promises "a review and reinforcement of the development of ideas in the book as a whole" (196). While the chapter does provide a nice discussion of the development of case studies and provides a good example of an actual case study of cultural change, the reader is left wishing for a conclusion to the book that more thoroughly ties together all of the diverse issues of cultural change addressed in the book. As chapter 10 is currently constructed, it unfortunately seems to end rather abruptly, with little summary of the book, and no real conclusion to provide a cohesion that seems to be lacking.

Although a stronger conclusion would have strengthened the book’s contribution, it does not detract too much from the overall value of the book. The book does a good job of addressing issues of cultural management in a variety of organizational contexts, and provides a strong theoretical foundation for the many prescriptions made for the management of organizational culture. The book also raises several critical questions for practitioners and researchers that must be addressed given the changes that have occurred in the last several years. For example, in a technologically driven global marketplace, where information is instantly available virtually anywhere, anytime, how can organizations strategically control organizational communication processes? What are the potential effects of controlling communication on organizational stakeholders, and particularly employees? Is control possible? Also, given that many organizations are now transnational, can one, singular organizational culture be produced and managed? Is this desirable? While an integrated communication approach that produces a consistent image to organizational stakeholders is desirable (Massey, 2001), suppressing one culture’s voice in favor of another is not, as the authors of the text point out. How then, can transnational organizations, like McDonald’s or Nike, provide a consistent image, while at the same time demonstrating sensitivity to host cultures? This issue of cultural sensitivity affects not only transnational organizations, but also any organization with culturally diverse stakeholder groups. And finally, if cultural meaning resides in people, does it not then follow that controlling culture implies controlling employees and other stakeholders? If the answer is yes, then the ethical implications of cultural management must be addressed critically and not simply treated as the strategic management of organizational resources.

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