Factors that will define the existing culture of an organisation

ADS Within the organisation, there will also be a series of factors that will define the existing culture
of an organisation. Leaders may fi nd it useful to analyse them under the following headings.
 
History and ownership
A young company may have been founded by one individual or a small group who will continue to
infl uence its development for some years. Centralised ownership will clearly concentrate power and therefore will concentrate infl uence and style. Family fi rms and owner-dominated fi rms will have clearly recognisable cultures.

Size
As fi rms expand, they may lose the tight ownership and control and therefore allow others to infl uence
their style and culture. Even if ownership remains tight, larger companies are more diffi cult to
control from the centre

Technology
This will infl uence the culture of the company, but its eff ects are not always predictable. 40 Those technologies that require economies of scale or involve high costs and expensive machinery usuallymrequire a formal and well-structured culture for success: examples might include large-scale chemical production or beer brewing. Conversely, in fast-changing technologies, such as those in telecommunications,
a more fl exible culture may be required

Leadership and mission
Individuals and their values will refl ect and change the culture of the organisation over time, especially
the chief executive and immediate colleagues. These issues are vital to the organisation.

Cultural web
The cultural web consists of the factors that can be used to characterise some aspects of the culture
of an organisation. It is a useful method of bringing together the basic elements that are helpful in analysing the culture of an organisation  It is important because culture can shape strategy. The main elements are

•  Stories . What do people talk about in the organisation? What matters in the organisation? What constitutes success or failure?
• Routines . What are the normal ways of doing things? What are the procedures (not always written down)
•  Rituals . Beyond the normal routine, what does the organisation highlight? For example, long service? Sales achievement? Innovation? Quality standards? How does it highlight and possibly reward such rituals?
• Symbols . What are the symbols of offi ce? Offi ce size? Company car size? Separate restaurants for diff erent levels of managers and workers? Or the absence of these? How do employees travel: fi rst, business or tourist class
•  Control systems . Bureaucratic? Well-documented? Oriented towards performance? Formal or informal? Haphazard
•  Organisational structure . Who reports to whom in the organisation on a formal basis and who has an informal relationship?
•  Power structures . Who makes the decisions? Who infl uences the decisions? How? When?

The cultural web can usefully distinguish also between what is done offi cially in an organisation,
such as press releases and post-project evaluation, and what is done unoffi cially , such as grapevine
stories, offi ce parties, e-mail messages and so on. The paradigm not only links the elements but may
also tend to preserve them as ‘the way we do things here’. It summarises the culture of the organisation. ADS