Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
Lecture Notes
Chapter 14: Organizational Culture
Learning Objectives
14.1: Define organizational culture, and describe the seven characteristics.
14.2: Compare and contrast market, bureaucracy, and clan cultures.
14.3: Demonstrate understanding of the two characteristics of strong cultures by
providing examples.
Chapter Summary
Chapter summary here.
Annotated Chapter Outline
I. The Team Culture at Warby Parker
A. Warby Parker began as a startup and quickly became a global retail powerhouse.
B. Cofounders Neil Blumenthal and David Gilboa view their team culture as essential
to their success.
i. Part of their mission is to donate a pair of glasses to someone in need for
every pair purchased.
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
i. Better retention (lower recruiting costs)
ii. More efficient teams
iii. Higher revenue
II. What is Organizational Culture?
A. Organizational culture: The pattern of basic assumptions, which a given group
has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of
external adaptation and internal integration, and that have worked sufficiently
well to be considered valid, and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the
correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems
B. Cultural variability in visibility and concreteness:
i. Artifacts and creations: Observable and abstract reflections of
organizational culture, such as dress, office decoration, and the architecture
of buildings
ii. Values: The reasons people give for their behavior
a. Espoused values: Stated values
b. Enacted value: Values that are acted out, perhaps unconsciously
C. To understand an organization’s culture, a person must go beyond what they can
see and hear (artifacts and creations) and gain an improved awareness of values
first and then assumptions.
D. Seven Characteristics of Culture
i. Cultural values of four industries in the service sector differed as per the
industry and were related to levels of industry, technology, and growth:
a. Innovation and risk-taking
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
III. Markets, Bureaucracies, and Clans
A. Another approach to describing organizational cultures is to examine the
mechanisms used for control when organizations are faced with goal
incongruence and performance ambiguity.
B. Three ways organizations address control according to a classic theory at the
organizational level of analysis:
i. Market control: Exists when prices determine how social interactions
between people are formed
ii. Bureaucratic control: When legitimate authority governs social
v. Employee organizational commitment is highest in the clan culture
because they have internalized the organization’s cultural value system.
C. National Culture and Organizational Culture
i. Since the term culture is used for both national and organizational cultures,
this may be a source of confusion.
ii. Four important organizational culture values:
a. Adaptability: The ability to transfer the demands of the market into
organizational actions
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
d. Consistency: Defining values and subsystems that are the basis of a
strong culture
iii. Significant statistical associations:
IV. Strong Organizational Cultures
A. Strong cultures are based on two characteristics:
i. High levels of agreement among employees about what they value
ii. High intensity towards these values
iii. Strong cultures are critical to bottom-line performance.
B. Zappos: A Strong Organizational Culture
i. Zappos acknowledges five specific drivers in building a culture that results
in a great place to work, exceptional customer service, and impressive
organizational performance.
a. Committed leaders
b. Core values
ii. 10 core values:
a. Deliver wow through service
b. Embrace and drive change
c. Create fun and a little weirdness
C. Organizational Subcultures
i. Three general organizational subcultures exist in most organizations.
ii. Operators: The line managers and employees who are involved in making
products, delivering services, and directly interacting with customers
a. Value teamwork
b. Desire engagement in their work
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
a. May include employees who design and implement information
technology systems, financial analysis systems, and marketing
research
iv. Executives: Employees who have worked their way up organizational
career ladders and are financially responsible to their board of directors and
shareholders
V. Socialization
A. Organizational socialization: The process an organization utilizes to ensure that
new members acquire necessary attitudes, behaviors, knowledge, and skills to
become productive organizational members
metamorphosis
B. Anticipatory Socialization
i. Organizational anticipatory socialization: The process an individual
goes through as they attempt to identify an organization to join
ii. Two basic processes:
a. Recruiting
b. Selection
iii. Both applicant and organization seek good person-organization fit.
a. Applicants often adapt their responses on personality inventories
strategically to appear as a match to organizational culture.
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
b. New employees are typically concerned about how they are seen by
existing organizational members and engage in impression
management to influence the perceptions of new coworkers.
c. Current organizational members form perceptions of new hires and
consider how well they will fit in.
iv. Onboarding: The process of welcoming and orienting new organizational
members to facilitate their adjustment to the organization, its culture, and
its practices and help them adjust to their new work environment
a. Psychological contract: The employees’ beliefs about mutual
obligations between them and their employers
D. Metamorphosis
i. Metamorphosis: The final stage of organizational entry and assimilation,
in which a person transforms from a new employee to an established
contributor who is valued and trusted by other organizational members.
ii. New employee is comfortable with the organization, their boss, and their
work group.
a. They have internalized the organizational culture and understand
their job and the rules, procedures, and norms.
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
b. Employees who select to join an organization are more likely to
share organizational values than those that do not (attraction-
selection).
VI. How Employees Learn Culture
A. Stories
i. Storytelling is the sharing of knowledge and experiences through narrative
and anecdotes to communicate lessons, complex ideas, concepts, and
causal connections.
B. Rituals
i. Rituals are defined as “a form of social action in which a group’s values
and identity are publicly demonstrated or enacted in a stylized manner,
within the context of a specific occasion or event.”
a. Reinforce the cultural values of the organization by providing a
tangible way for employees to see the values espoused
C. Symbols
i. Symbols represent the sharing of knowledge through access and exposure
to images, diagrams, or objects that represent or illustrate a cultural value
or an idea
ii. Material symbols: office size, location, and view
iii. Dress symbols: expectations of what particular employees should wear
D. Language
VII. Organizational Climate
A. Organizational climate: Shared perceptions of the way things are around here
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
i. Level of agreement in perceptions about the organization and work
environment among employees
B. Key distinction between culture and climate is that culture is viewed as evolving
over time and is studied from a sociology or anthropology viewpoint.
i. Climate, however, can be altered via management interventions.
ii. Culture is an evolved context, and climate is a situation that employees are
in.
C. Climcult: Perspective which suggests that culture and climate work together to
influence how people experience their work environment.
i. Elements of climcult:
a. Global climate or culture for well-being
ii. The climcult perspective suggests combining survey measures of climate
and culture to gain a more complete view of how people describe their
organization’s values and their work experiences.
D. How Climate Influences Organizational Performance
i. Climate significantly impacts on the dependent variables studied in
organizational behavior.
ii. Some studied facets of climate:
a. Service
E. Ethical Climate
i. Leaders influence an organization’s ethical climate and employee attitudes.
a. Leader moral development influences ethical climate, employee job
satisfaction, and turnover intentions.
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
c. Rules
d. Instrumental
e. Independence
iii. Studies suggest organizations have distinct types of ethical climates, and
the ethical climate is shaped by norms, bureaucracy, and the history of the
organization.
iv. Ethical organizational culture plays a significant role in enhancing
employee well-being measured as sickness absence.
VIII. Leadership Implications: Culture Change
A. Culture is one of the key factors in Fortune magazine’s ratings of the best
companies to work for, since the ranking includes surveys of employees about the
company culture.
i. Leaders influence culture through their strategies, practices, values,
leadership style, and setting an example.
B. Leadership is particularly critical when it provides psychological and motivational
resources lacking in the organization’s culture.
C. Ways of changing organizational culture:
i. Make strategy and culture important leadership priorities
ii. Develop a clear understanding of the present culture
D. Tool #1: Recruiting and Selecting People for Culture Fit
i. Selection is the process of choosing new members of the organization.
ii. Requires planning for what the organization will need to reward in the
future in terms of knowledge, skills, and abilities of employees
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
a. Values
b. Expectations
c. Behaviors needed to succeed
ii. Two key aspects of effective socialization are ensuring that employees
acquire cultural knowledge and that they bond with one another.
iii. Most organizations have an orientation program for onboarding new
employees and regular training programs that reinforce the organization’s
cultural values.