a cultural view of - insead
TRANSCRIPT
"A CULTURAL VIEW OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE"
by André LAURENT*
N° 87 / 10
* André LAURENT, INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France
Director of Publication :
Charles WYPLOSZ, Associate Dean for Research and Development
Printed at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France
FS/AL.culorg2.260387
A CULTURAL VIEW OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE*
André LAURENT
Organizational change can hardly go beyond our own capacity to
conceive it. This capacity is often constrained by our own
premises, assumptions and conceptions about the nature of
organizations and the nature of change. Major or strategic
organizational change requires a transformation of the actors'
view of the organization.
This chapter will argue that similarly our understanding of
organizational change can benefit from a systematic probing of our
assumptions and beliefs about the nature of organizations and the
nature of their change. This probing process will be conducted
here at three interlocking levels of analysis: individual,
organizational and societal.
The first part of this chapter will examine a number of basic
assumptions that individuals may hold about organizational change
and will attempt to assess their validity against the evolution of
modern organizations.
* I wish to thank Michael Brimm and Paul Evans for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
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Looking at change from the perspective of the actors' assumptions
and belief systems and approaching organizations as social
constructions will bring us naturally to a cultural view of
organizations and their change. In the second part, we will try to
assess the consequences and the limits of a vision of
organizations as cultures and of a conception of organizational
change as cultural change.
This inquiry would be incomplete without giving careful
consideration to the wider cultuiul context of organizations.
Thus, the third part will broaden the picture to the societal
level by providing a comparative and research-based cross-cultural
perspective to organizational change.
3
ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
The dynamics of organizations reflect to a certain extent the
processes that individuals conceive as being probable, possible,
feasible, desirable. The process of change is no exception.
Organizations are social inventions (Greenfield, 1973).
Organizational change refers to the ongoing nature of that
invention process which is embedded in the actors' assumptions.
The complexity of any organization makes it extremely difficult to
recognize the assumptions that have guided its development. Thus
the validity of such assumptions cannot be tested empirically.
One can only speculate on the logical consequences generated by
alternative sets of assumptions on organizational change. Such
speculation is important as a way of exposing implicit assumptions
to open inquiry and of broadening the spectrum of options that the
architect of change may envision.
The focus of this section will be on the pitfalls that individuals
may create through their own assumptions about organizational
change and on the opportunities that alternative assumptions may
generate.
Organizational shift versus organizational transformation
As a process of evolution, organizational change requires a dual
perspective: where we coure from and where we are going, the skills
of the historian and the skills of the visionary. A great deal of
confusion as to the nature and dynamics of organizational change
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may originate from our mental inability to grasp the process of
change in its totality and from our obsessive concern for its
expected outcomes. Indeed, organizational change has very little
to do with shifting from state A to state B, but has much to do
with transforming state A into state B, which is very different.
A process of transformation requires equal attention to be given
to understanding the past, assessing the present and envisioning
the future.
This may be a place where our western linear conception of time
needs to be enriched by the eastern circular conception (Hall,
1983). A spiral provides a more accurate imagery of change than a
straight line does. Spirals remind us better of the historical
essence of evolution where previous states are progressively
transformed into new states. Straight lines may feed the illusion
that the past can be left behind and encourage a "fuite en
avant"(*) - type pathology. This particular perspective is
reinforced by the "doing" orientation of many western cultures
whereby individuals and groups tend to be defined mostly on the
basis of their actions and achievements.
(*) literally escaping forward i.e. a tendency to engage in new activities/thoughts as a way of postponing the consideration of past ans present problems.
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While this orientation may provide impetus and movement, it needs
to be balanced by the insight of many eastern cultures that
exhibit more of a "being" orientation whereby individuals and
groups are defined predominantly in terms of their affiliative
context.
An effective conception of organizational change as a
transformation process also calls for a dual consideration of the
instrumental and social nature of organizations.
Resistance to change versus change capability
it is interesting to observe that a great deal of organizational
literature has been devoted to the issue of resistance to change.
Yet the evidence of today's world seems to indicate that
organizations can change and do change rather drastically over
time, either as a result of outside pressures, inside initiatives
or both. Dramatic turnarounds abound, so do mergers, acquisitions
and the like. Change is ail over the place whether organizations
moue from a state of success to a state of failure, disintegration
and death or whether they moue from mediocrity to excellence. In
spite of their noted resistance to change, the evidence seems to
be that organizations also have in fact a tremendous capability
for change which maybe has not been stressed enough in the
organizational literature.
As a matter of fact one could reasonably argue that organizations
have a much greater capacity for change than smaller organisme
like the individuals who populate them or larger entities like the
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societies and cultures that constitute their environment.
In some caricatural way, the relative change capability of
individuals, organizations and societies could be sketched
according to the following diagram:
HIGH
change capability
LOW
organizations
. . individuals societies
Relationships between structural entities may be more amenable to
change than structural entities themselves. From this point of
view, it may be useful to look at both the individual and society
as fairly stable structural entities whereas organizations can be
viewed as temporary systems of relationship and transaction
between individuals and their environment. Whereas personality
confers stability to the individual and culture confers stability
to society, social organizations represent more of a "lieu de
passage", a cross-road, transaction fields, temporary arrangements
which result from choices and initiatives. Organizations are the
privileged places where change can occur most drastically. They
can also be conceived as the most significant levers of both
individual and societal change. They mediate important changes
such as technological change.
As they are populated by individuals and embedded into societies,
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organizations are given attributes which are borrowed directly
from the individual level (we talk about the personality or
identity of an organization) and from the societal level (we now
talk about the culture of an organization). Even though such
concepts may help our understanding, they also contrebute to a
certain degree of confusion. For instance we may be led to
attribute to organizations some of the resistance to change
properties of both individuals and societies.
We may also be led to overlook thr, fact that the conjunction of
minor consistent changes in behavior at the individual level
throughout an organization can bring significant organizational
change that may become contageous and result in major turnarounds,
if the process is properly managed and orchestrated.
Alternatively, we often underestimate the impact of the larger
context, for instance national cultures, on organizations and
their ways of operating. We often fail to recognize that
organizations tend to reproduce in their internai structuring and
functioning significant features of their national environment,
mediated for instance by the educational system (Brossard and
Maurice, 1976) or by the founders and dominant elite of the
organization (Hofstede, 1985). Then when organizations become
multinational, they suffer from an inability to fully recognize
their cultural diversity and use it as a major asset and a source
of synergy. The opportunity loss is tremendous and the costs may
be enormous.
In the final analysis, it may be that our tendency to reify
8
organizations distorts our vision so much that we create in our
mind rigid pictures of what they are and we tend to underestimate
their change capabilities. Resistance to change may stem more
from our very ways of thinking about organizations than from any
objective organizational property.
Traditional versus new forms of organization
Our minds are prisoners of many other traps when thinking about
organizations and conceiving of their change. Significant traps
are created by our assumptions about the design of organizational
structures and systems. The cost of such unquestioned assumptions
is that we use obsolete forms of organization that cannot meet the
changing requirements of new tasks, new technologies, new people,
new environments. Organizational forms remain surprisingly
unchanged in spite of such changing requirements.
In spite of the well-known dysfunctions of organizational
hierarchies, only limited imagination and effort are being
invested into the design of alternative organizational forms that
would significantly deviate from the traditional pyramid. A
majority of managers have negative perceptions of such notions as
"boss" and "subordinate". They often like to substitute
alternative labels like "associate", "colleague", "co-worker",
etc. which they perceive as more socially desirable. Yet the same
people continue to enrich the organizational folklore everyday by
acting out, often unconsciously, fixed conceptions of upward and
downward relationships that essentially reflect the power
differential between the parties which a formai hierarchy of
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authority implies (Bartolomé & Laurent, 1986). Managerial
cognitive maps for downward and upward relationships differ so
much that it becomes difficult to imagine that the same
individuals can shift from the role of boss to the role of
subordinate and vice-versa without losing their sense of personal
identity and integrity. Such models draw their stability and
unquestionability from outdated assumptions about organizational
relationships that perpetuate dysfunctional myths and we end up
with the ineffective organizational forms that we deserve.
Most managers remain unquestionably and emotionally attached to
the classical management principle of unity of command while there
is evidence that multiplicity of command may be more appropriate
and effective in a number of situations. The limiting assumption
that one cannot have two or more direct bosses is so deeply
anchored that if often undermines the effective functioning of
matrix-type organizational arrangements (Laurent, 1981).
At a broader level of organizational design, the very same mental
attachment to traditional hierarchies may prevent large
multinational corporations to consider their structural evolution
toward alternative designs such as a heterarchy of many different
kinds of strategic centers throughout the world that would replace
the traditional mother-daughter conception of
headquarter-subsidiary relationship (Hedlund, 1986).
Management versus leadership of organizational change
Organizations exist where they were Born in the first place, that
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is in the mind of people. For organizations to change, people
have to change their minds about them. The social fabric of
organizations then requires a collective change of mind and this
in turn cannot occur without the federating lever of leadership.
Examples abound of carefully planned organizational changes that
have failed in spite of systematic management. Management may be
an excellent tool to maintain stability, ensure survival and keep
things going. It is not sufficient to transform or revitalize an
organization. Minds cannot be managed. They can only be
inspired.
Yet the literature on organizational change and development has
often communicated the impression that change could be managed
with the help of a few techniques and almost without inspiration.
At the same time, the observation of major changes in
organizations has almost inevitably indicated the presence of some
timely hero at the top. This has helped both theoreticians and
practitioners to better realize that the over-emphasis on
management had resulted in our overlooking the critical importance
of leadership. Unfortunately and at the same time the available
literature on leadership was not the most inspiring body of
knowledge as this field had been sterilized by a positivist
behavioral approach.
Salvation came from anthropology. If organizational change has to
do with a collective change of mind that needs to be inspired by
spirited leaders, then a conception of organizations as cultures,
a vision of organizational change as cultural change and a
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definition of leadership as managed culture change (Schein, 1985)
could be helpful. This cultural perspective was reinforced and
encouraged by the economic success of Japan that seemed to suggest
that management and organizations could also reflect aspects of
their langer cultural context.
ORGANIZATIONS AS CULTURES AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AS CULTURAL
CHANGE
Numerous books have appeared ip k he last few years that have taken
a cultural perspective on organizations (Ouchi, 1981; Pascale &
Athos, 1981; Deal & Kennedy, 1982; Peters & Waterman, 1982;
Davis, 1984; Frost et al, 1985; Kilmann et al, Eds, 1985; Sathe,
1985; Schein, 1985). Academic journals have devoted special
issues to the topic.
One of the benefits of this movement is an invitation to look at
organizations in holistic terms, as totalities and as symbolic
systems of meaning. It can be seen as a revitalization of systems
theory on a different ground or as a synergy between systems
theory and a vision of reality as socially constructed (Berger &
Luckman, 1956). This perspective stresses the importance of
looking at organizations from the point of view of the meaning
that is attributed to behaviors and actions. Interestingly, if
one thinks of organizations as cultural systems, one can argue
that it may be easier and more effective to try to change the
whole organization in some minor or major way than to attempt to
modify some of its parts. The latter strategy is more likely to
upset the totality than to transform it.
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What has been often labeled in the past as resistance to change
may have been the legitimate reaction of social actors against
attempts by some at changing aspects of the culture of an
organization without saying so, a reaction against undeclared or
hidden cultural engineering. In the same way that cultures resist
imposed change, they may also be motivated to foster their own
change provided that they perceive it as a process of mastering
their own destiny.
Beyond this theoretical perspective, we need to assess whether
indeed a vision of organizations as cultures can help to better
conceive their change.
Some people argue that culture may only be another of these labels
reflecting what may only be a passing fad. Some academics argue
that organizational culture is like a can of worms: if you try to
pull a few - like symbols - you get the whole messy pack of them
that include the taboos, values, heros, myths, rituals and
ceremonies, and then you wonder what to do with it. One could say
that an improvised surgeon would easily corne to the same
conclusion about the human body. Thus our understanding of
organizations as cultures might be enhanced by borrowing the
insights of experts. Anthropologists are supposed to know
something about culture. One of them (Geertz, 1973) defines
culture as "the fabrics of meaning, out of which human beings
interpret their experience and guide their action". From this
perspective, organizations become fabrics of meaning,
organizational change a process whereby new meanings emerge that
help reinterpret past experience and reorient action along new
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lines that break away from repetitive cycles. The leadership of
organizational change becomes a process of imparting visions that
coherently and powerfully promote new lines of thinking and
action. It finally recognizes that social systems are symbolic
systems and that what counts in organizations is not so much what
people do, their overt behavior, but mostly the shared meaning
that is given by the whole group to these behaviors and actions.
It is so clear for instance that the very same behavior of
bypassing the hierarchical line may constitute the most legitimate
and praised action in organization A and the most dreadful sin in
organization B. Bypassing is obviously not the issue here. The
institutionalized meaning of it is. Organizational change refers
to the process by which new meanings get institutionalized.
Although the cultural perspective on organizations may be
promising, it does include a few traps as well and these will stem
again from our very conception of what culture is ail about.
Organizations may obviously die because of their strong culture.
The stronger the culture, the more solid the consensus on what
means what and what should be, the more rigidity, conformity, and
sclerosis can be expected and innovation may become unlikely when
needed. At the other extreme, organizations may die from their
weak culture. If everything has a different meaning to the
different organizational members and if everybody has different
ideas on what should be done, creativity may flourish for a while
but the whole edifice is likely to collapse from lack of
consistency, coordination and direction. The concepts of strong
and weak cultures may not be more useful than the popular concepts
of strong and weak personalities. More conceptual differentiation
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is required. Effective corporate cultures may be those that have
developed a capacity to learn about themselves and their
environment in such a way as to monitor their own development.
Effective organizations are those that recognize better the dual
essence of culture as an inward and outward phenomenon. Corporate
culture becomes a snapshot of the organization's ways of defining
its environment, interpreting it and transacting with it.
This may reflect a number of basic assumptions on nature, reality
and truth (Schein, 1984) which are extremely bard to change. But,
maybe more importantly, an organization's culture will reflect
assumptions on clients, employees, mission, products, activities,
that have worked well in the past and that get translated in norms
of behavior, visions of the expected, appropriate, legitimate and
desirable ways of thinking and acting. Such norms are more
changeable than basic assumptions on nature. Following this line
of reasoning, we can argue that although large cultures like
nations and civilizations do not and cannot change easily or
rapidly as they are embedded into deep seated assumptions on
themselves and their environment, the same rationale does not hold
for goal-oriented younger and smaller social organizations like
commercial or industrial firms (Laurent, 1986). Such
organizations are likely to reflect the larger cultural context
(national for instance) from which they emerged and are not likely
to strongly modify the basic cultural assumptions that they have
borrowed from that initial context (Laurent, 1983). On the other
band these organizations have the power and freedom to shape
behavioral norms and to institutionalize preferred ways of acting
that are far more amenable to change than the earlier mentioned
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assumptions.
If these norms of action constitute the heart of an organization's
culture, they are also the locus of its capacity for evolution and
change. Such a conception of organizational culture makes it
easier to understand major changes that some organizations have
been able to manage and to view organizations as highly changeable
in spite of the fact that cultures are not.
Wherever we locate the essence of organization's culture, there
seems to be a wide recognition among both researchers and
practitioners that it has a profound effect on strategy,
structure, results and many organizational processes. After
lengthy debates in the literature on whether structure follows
strategy or the reverse, there seems to be more agreement now that
both assertions are correct and that the dynamic interaction
between structure and strategy is mediated and shaped by the
culture of the firm. In this sense, culture is seen as the glue
that holds the different parts together in a coherent, consistent
and meaningful way. As cogently exposed by Schein (Chapter X in
this book) this glue will serve different functions at different
stages in the life of organizations.
The gap however is tremendous between the spreading awareness of
the critical importance of organizational culture and our limited
capacities or means to do something about it. If corporations
recognize that their culture is so critical to their success, why
is it that so little of corporate budget is being currently
invested into trying to find out about it in such a way as to be
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in a better position to act more upon it, develop it, transform
it? Only a very limited number of corporations are presently
engaged into explicit and systematic attempts at better diagnosing
their culture, its history, roots, evolution, positive and
negative manifestations. Historians and social anthropologists
are not yet so numerous on corporate payrolls yet their
expertise seems to be needed.
To be fair to the corporate world, one should also recognize that
there is a similar gap among students of organizations between
their interest in the concept of organizational culture and the
available methodologies for cultural diagnosis and change that
they can propose. So everybody is aware of the presence of the
elephant but its investigation partly remains one of Blind people.
There is a long way to go for researchers, consultants and
practitioners to fill the gap between awareness and action
capability. Existing skills in transforming and revitalizing
organizations need the support of new knowledge and approaches.
The state-of-the-art in cultural change is probably to be found in
those organizations that try to go beyond the limited folklore of
corporate culture booklets and credos or the quick "fix it" type
consulting tricks. In any event there is indication that the
interpretation of organizational change as a case of cultural
change may enhance our understanding of the evolution of social
organizations by re-establishing the evidence that change can
hardly occur without a transformation of the actors' views,
attitudes and beliefs (Pettigrew, 1985).
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A CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE ON ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
If the concept of organizational culture is relatively new, the
concept of national culture has been around for quite a while.
National cultures represent an important element of an
organization's context from which it draws its resources and with
which it transacts. In spite of its obvious impact and in spite
of the organizational literature focus on environments, the
national cultural context of organizations has been grossly
overlooked for many years in the literature. Unconscious
parochialism and unfounded universalistic claims have marked the
field of management and organization (Hofstede, 1980 b.).
Conceptions and approaches of organizational change have suffered
from the same ethnocentric pathology (Faucheux et al, 1982).
Strategies for organizational change developed in one particular
national culture continue to be viewed by many as perfectly
appropriate for any other culture. Management and organizational
theorists persist in entertaining the comfortable assumption that
their object of study, their observations and their concepts are
culture-free.
Yet comparative research has demonstrated that different national
cultures hold different conceptions and assumptions about
organizations and their management (Hofstede, 1980 a; Laurent,
1983). Managers from different national cultures hold different
assumptions on the nature of management, authority, structure and
organizational relationships. These different sets of assumptions
shape different value systems and get translated into different
management practices which in turn reinforce the original
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assumptions.
Strategies for organizational change can be considered as cultural
artifacts reflecting and reinforcing the basic assumptions and
values of the national cultures in which organizations are
embedded. As cultural artifacts, they may be highly meaningful
for the home culture and possibly confusing and ineffective in
other cultures (Kreacic & Marsh, 1986).
For example, national cultures nitr be positioned on a continuum
from a basically instrumental to an essentially social view of
organizations. In the first case - which is more typical of the
North American context - the organization is perceived primarily
as a set of tasks to be achieved through a problem-solving
hierarchy where positions are defined in terms of tasks and
functions and where authority is functionally based. According to
the social view - which is to be found particularly in Latin
cultures - the organization is primarily conceived of as a
collective of people to be managed through a formai hierarchy,
where positions are defined in terms of levels of authority and
status and where authority is more attached to individuals than it
is to their offices or functions (Inzerilli & Laurent, 1983).
The instrumental view looks at authority as a means to achieve
tasks and conceives relationships as being instrumental to task
achievement. The social view looks at tasks as means to establish
authority and conceives tasks as being instrumental to the
development of relationships (Amado & Laurent, 1983). When the
instrumentally-oriented manager is primarily interested to find
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out or define who is responsible for what, the socially-oriented
manager is more inclined to consider who has authority over whom.
While these represent ideal types, there is some evidence that
different cultural contexts approximate such ideal types to
differing degrees. By and large US organizations tend to reflect
more of the instrumental type whereas French organizations reflect
more of the social type (Inzerilli & Laurent, 1983). In the very
same way that it has taken some time and the help of the Japanese
mirror for American management writers to better identify what is
American in American management (Schein, 1981), some time has been
needed to recognize the cultural values that have inspired various
approaches to organizational change. Such movements as "OD" in
Northern America, "industrial democracy" in Northern Europe,
"institutional analysis" in France, or "quality control circles"
in Japan are obviously not independent from the cultural context
in which they have emerged. Thus it should not corne as a surprise
that OD emerged in the US with an instrumental focus on
organizational processes as tools to be improved, while the Latin
countries favored institutional approaches that tried to deal with
the social intricacies of human collectivities (Faucheux et al;
1982). Nor should we be surprised that the OD movement has
traditionally downplayed the importance of power issues in
organizations, while institutional analysis has been obsessed by
such issues.
If organizations reflect their societal context (Maurice et al,
1980), strategies for changing organizations obviously cannot
ignore it. Different change strategies are likely to be needed in
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different cultural environments. A contingent approach to
organizational change needs to be developed that takes national
culture as a major parameter.
When a majority of German managers perceive their organization as
a coordinated network of individuals who make rational decisions
based on their professional knowledge and competence, any process
of planned organizational change in Germany will have to take this
into consideration.
When a majority of British managers view their organization
primarily as a network of interpersonal relationships between
individuals who get things done by influencing each other through
communicating and negotiating, a different approach to
organizational change may be needed in England.
When a majority of French managers look at their organizations as
an authority network where the power to organize and control the
actors stems from their positioning in the hierarchy, another
change model can be called for in France.
The above national caricatures based on comparative research in
managerial assumptions (Laurent, 1986) are obviously
over-simplistic like any other caricature. They are mostly
intended to highlight the challenge faced by organizations that
operate across national cultures when it coures to the management
of change.
Research indicates that the corporate culture and policies of
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long-established large multinational companies do not reduce
national differences in management conceptions (Laurent, 1983).
while the corporate culture may lead to the creation of important
norms that result in significant behavioral adjustment, it seems
to leave intact the deep seated assumptions of the various
nationals.
What are the implications of such findings for the management of
change in multinational organizations? If the cultural change of
organizations has to do with the creation of new meanings, how can
this process be managed when different sets of meanings exist in
the first place across the various national organizations that
constitute the multinational?
In order to better frame the issues at stake here, we need to
return shortly to a number of points made earlier in this chapter.
If we look at organizational change as a process of transformation
of state A into state B, the easiest part of the management task
may be to specify what state B ought to be. Most organizations do
not encounter too many problems at this stage. Few organizations
would be explicitly against the development of a total quality
concept, against a people orientation that takes into fuller
consideration their clients and personnel, against the achievement
of equity inside, competitive performance outside, innovation and
flexibility in dealing with the environment and some degree of
corporate integration (Evans, 1986). Gospels of corporate culture
distributed by companies to their personnel show more similarities
than differences. Reaching consensus on such overarching
corporate goals may not be too difficult even in large
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multinational firms that have a high degree of cultural diversity.
Presumably a key criterion for the strength of the international
consensus will be the extent to which the corporation has
mobilized a fair representation of its national constituencies in
the shaping, elaboration and diffusion of the new vision B.
Cross-national difficulties may start however at other levels.
First, different national organizations are likely to favor
different means and strategies to implement the desired change.
These preferred means will reflect culturally-based conceptions,
skills, and insights in the art of managing and organizing. They
may also reflect a completely different assessment of state A -
that is a different assessment of what needs to be transformed in
the first place.
Effective strategic organizational change, at a minimum, will then
require the integrative management of a decentralized process, if
it wishes to avoid the pitfalls of ethnocentrism and to build on
cultural differences as assets.
If the multinational ambition of the corporation is of a higher
order, it will include some awareness that as a total system, the
corporation can actually learn from the various cultural
definitions of its constituencies, transfer and adapt change
know-how from subsidiaries to headquarters and across subsidiaries
in such a way that some degree of cross cultural learning and
synergy can be reached.
Such an orientation can be described as a strategic posture
23
whereby a multinational firm progressively acquires a true
multinational identity through a deliberate use of its cultural
diversity. However this cannot be the result of a rational
management decision. It requires an evolution of the mind from a
parochial and ethnocentric conception of management and
organization to a world view of it. This may be the most
important challenge in the strategic change of multinational
organizations.
Conclusion
We have argued in this chapter that our understanding and mastery
of organizational change may be enhanced:
. if we conceive change as a true transformation process
. if we conceive organizations primarily as social inventions
. if we refrain from attributing to organizations properties of
individuals and societies
. if we accept the evidence that, as transaction fields,
organizations have a high capacity for change
. if we view the so-called resistance to change not as an inner
property of organizations but as a natural reaction of the minds
and hearts of social actors subjected to cultural engineering
. if we recognize that organizational change requires a
transformation of the actors' view of the organization that
cannot be managed but only inspired by the compelling vision of
spirited leaders
. if we consider organizational change as a particular example of
cultural change
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. if we locate this process of cultural change at the crossroad of
broader cultural context like civilizations and nations and the
more transient cultural history of organizations
. if we operate a clearer conceptual differentiation between these
two cultural universes by locating the roots of national
cultures in the very basic and stable assumptions of social
actors and the core of organizational cultures in the more
changeable representations, images and associated behavioral
norms of organizational members
. if we develop our awareness and understanding of the shaping
effects of both national and organizational cultures
. if we can go beyond the limitation of cultural determinism by
developing a higher capacity to build on the specific and unique
insight of our own culture (national and organizational) while
minimizing the negative impact created by the Blind spots of
such cultures
. if we can manage to develop organizations that can learn from
the insights and wisdom of other cultures (both national and
organizational).
Once we will have achieved all of this, the concept of culture
will not be needed anymore to understand and master change in
organizations and we will be searching for a newer concept.
The state-of-the-art in organizational change will have changed
again.
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FAUCHEUX, C., AMADO, G. and LAURENT, A. Organization Development and Change. Annual Review of Psychology. 1982, 33, 343-370.
FROST, P.J., MOORE, L.F., LOUIS, M.R., LUNDBERG, C.C., and MARTIN, J. Organizational Culture. Beverly Hiils, Calif.: Sage , 1985.
GEERTZ, C. The Interpretation of Cultures : Selected Essays. New-York : Basic Books, 1973.
GREENFIELD, T.B. Organizations as Social Inventions : Rethinking Assumptions about Change. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 1973, IX(5), 551-574.
26
HALL, E.T. The Dance of Life : The Other Dimension of Time. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1983.
HEDLUND, G. The Hypermodern MNC. A Heterarchy? Human Resource Management, 1986,25(1), 9-35.
HOFSTEDE, G. Culture's Consequences. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1980 a.
HOFSTEDE, G. Motivation, Leadership and Organization : Do American Theories Apply Abroad ? Organizational Dynamics, Summer 1980 b, 42-63.
HOFSTEDE, G. Thc Interaction between National and Organizational Value Systems. Journal of Management Studies, 1985,22(4),347-357.
INZERILLI G., and LAURENT, A. Managerial Views of Organization Structure in France and the USA. International Studies of Management and Organization. 1983, XIII (1/2), 97-118.
KILMANN, R.H., SAXTON, M.J., SERRA, R. and associates (Eds). Gaining Control of the Corporate Culture. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass, 1985.
KREACIC, V. and MARSH, P. Organisation Development and National Culture in Four Countries, Public Enterprise, 1986, 6(2), 131-134.
LAURENT, A. Matrix Organizations and Latin Cultures. A Note on the Use of Comparative Data in Management Education. International Studies of Management and Organization, 1981,X(4), 101-114.
LAURENT, A. The Cultural Diversity of Western Conceptions of Management. International Studies of Management and Organization, 1983, XIII (1/2), 75-96.
LAURENT, A. The Cross-Cultural Puzzle of International, Human Resource Management. Human Resource Management, 1986, 25(1), 91-102.
27
MAURICE, M. SORGE, A., and WARNER, M. Societal Differences in Organizing Manufacturing Units : A Comparison of France, West Germany and Great-Britain. Organization Studies, 1980, 1(1), 59-86.
OUCHI, W.G. Theory Z. Reading, Mass.: Addison- Wesley, 1981.
PASCALE, R.T., and ATHOS, A.G. The Art of Japanese Management. New-York: Simon & Schuster, 1nR1.
PETERS, T.J., and WATERMAN, R.H., Jr. In Search of Excellence. New-York: Harper & Row, 1982.
PETTIGREW, A.M. The Awakening Giant : Continuity and Change in Imperial Chemical Industries. New-York, NY: Blackwell, 1985.
SATHE, V. Managerial Action and Corporate Culture. Homewood, 111.: Irwin, 1985.
SCHEIN, E.H. Does Japanese Management Style Have a Message for American Managers ? Sloan Management Review, 1981, 23, 55-68.
SCHEIN, E.H. Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture. Sloan Management Review, 1984,25,3-16.
SCHEIN, E.H. Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985.
1984 85/04 Philippe A. NAERT and Marcel WEVERBERGH
"A technological life-cycle to the organisational factors determiniag gatekeeper activities" , November 1983.
84/01 Arnoud DE MEYER
"Market share specification, estimation and validation: tovards reconciling seemingly divergent vievs" .
85/05 Ahmet AYKAC, Marcel CORSTJENS, David GAUTSCHI and Ira HOROWITZ
"Estimation uncertainty and optimal advertising decisions", Second draft, April 1985. "La politique budgétaire et le taux de change
réel", November 1983. 84/02 Jeffrey SACHS and
Charles A. WYPLOSZ
"Real exchange rate effects of fiscal policy", December 1983.
"European equity markets: a reviev of the evidence on price behavior and efficiency", February 1984.
85/06 Kasra FERDOWS "The shifting paradigms of manufacturing: inventory, quality and nov versatility", March 1985.
84/03 Jeffrey SACHS and Charles A. VYPLOSZ
84/04 Gabriel A. HAWAWINI "Evolving manufacturing strategies in Europe, Japan and North-America"
"Capital controls and balance of payments crises", February 1984.
85/07 Kasra FERDOWS, Jeffrey G. MILLER, Jinchiro NAKANE and Thomas E.VOLLMANN.
"An uncertainty model of the professional partnership", November 1983.
"The geometry of risk aversion", October 1983.
84/05 Charles A. WYPLOSZ
84/06 Gabriel A. HAWAWINI
84/07 Gabriel A. HAWAWINI
85/08 Spyros MAKRIDAKIS and Robert CARBONE
85/09 Spyros MAKRIDAKIS and Robert CARBONE
85/10 Jean DERMINE "Risk, Return and equilibrium of the NYSE: update, robustness of results and extensions" December 1983.
"Forecasting vhen pattern changes occur beyond the historical data" , April 1985.
"Sampling distribution of post-sample forecasting errors" , February 1985.
"Portfolio optimization by financial intermediaries in an asset pricing model".
85/11 Antonio M. BORGES and Alfredo M. PEREIRA
84/08 Gabriel A. HAWAWINI, Pierre MICHEL and Claude J. VIALLET "Energy demand in Portuguese manufacturing: a
tvo-stage model". "Industry influence on firm's investment in vorking capital: theory and evidence", January 1984.
85/12 Arnoud DE MEYER "Defining a manufacturing strategy - a survey of European manufacturera".
84/09 Gabriel A. HAWAWINI, Claude J. VIALLET and Ashok VORA
"Impact of the Belgian Financial Reporting Act of 1976 on the systematic risk of common stocks", January 1984.
85/13 Arnoud DE MEYER "Large European manufacturera and the management of R & D".
84/10 Gabriel A. HAWAWINI and Pierre A. MICHEL
"On the measurement of the market value of a bank", April 1984.
84/11 Jean DERMINE 85/14 Ahmet AYKAC,
Marcel CORSTJENS, David GAUTSCHI and Douglas L. MacLACHLAN
"The advertising-sales relationship in the U.S. cigarette industry: a comparison of correlational and causality testing approaches".
"Tax reform in Portugal: a general equilibrium analysis of the introduction of a value added tax", December 1984.
84/12 Antonio M. BORGES 85/15 Arnoud DE MEYER and
Roland VAN DIERDONCK "Organizing a technology jump or overcoming the technological hurdle".
"Integration of information systems in manufacturing", December 1984.
84/13 Arnoud DE MEYER and Kasra FERDOWS
85/16 Herwig M. LANGOHR and Antony M. SANTOMERO
85/17 Manfred F.R. KETS DE VRIES and Danny MILLER
"Commercial bank refinancing and economic stability: an analysis of European features".
"Personality, culture and organization".
"The darker aide of entrepreneurship".
1985
85/01 Jean DERMINE 85/18 Manfred F.R. KETS DE VRIES
"The measurement of interest rate risk by financial intermediaries", December 1983, Revised December 1984.
"Diffusion model for nev product introduction in existing markets" .
85/19 Manfred F.R. KETS DE VRIES and Dany MILLER
"Narcissism and leadership: an object relations perspective". 85/02 Philippe A. NAERT
and Els GIJSBRECHTS "Interpreting organizational texts".
85/03 Philippe A. NAERT and Els GIJSBRECHTS
"Tovards a decision support system for hierarchically allocating marketing resources across and vithin product groupa" .
85/20 Manfred F.R. KETS DE VRIES and Dany MILLER
85/21 Herwig M. LANGOHR and Claude J. VIALLET
85/22 Herwig M. LANGOHR and B. Espen ECKBO
"Spatial competition à la Cournot".
85/23 Manfred F.R. KETS DE VRIES and Dany MILLER
85/24 Spyros MAKRIDAKIS
"Comparaison internationale des marges brutes du commerce", June 1985. 85/25 Gabriel HAWAWINI
"Hov the managerial attitudes of fins vith ENS differ froc other manufacturing firms: survey results", June 1986.
85/26 Karel 0. COOL and Dan E. SCHENDEL
"Les primes des offres publiques, la note d'information et le marché des transferts de contrôle des sociétés". 85/27 Arnoud DE MEYER
"Strategic capability transfer in acquisition integration", May 1986.
"Tovards an operational definition of services", 1986.
1986
86/01 Arnoud DE MEYER
"Nostradamus: a knovledge-based forecasting advisor".
86/02 Philippe A. NAERT Marcel WEVERBERGH and Guido VERSWIJVEL
"The pricing of equity on the London stock exchange: seasonality and size premium", June 1986.
86/03 Michael BRIMM
"Risk-premia seasonality in U.S. and European equity markets", February 1986.
86/04 Spyros MAKRIDAKIS and Michèle HIBON
"Seasonality in the risk-return relationships some international evidence", July 1986.
86/05 Charles A. WYPLOSZ
"An exploratory study on the integration of information systems in manufacturing", July 1986.
86/06 Francesco GIAVAZZI, Jeff R. SHEEN and Charles A. WYPLOSZ
"A methodology for specification and aggregation in product concept testing", July 1986.
86/07 Douglas L. MacLACHLAN and Spyros MAKRIDAKIS
86/08 José de la TORRE and David H. NECKAR
"Protection", August 1986.
86/09 Philippe C. HASPESLAGH
"Nationalisation, compensation and vealth transfers: France 1981-1982" 1, Final version July 1985.
"Takeover premiums, disclosure regulations, and the market for corporate control. A comparative analysis of public tender of fers, controlling-block trades and minority buyout in France", July 1985.
"Barriers to adaptation: personal, cultural and organizational perspectives".
"The art and science of forecasting: an assessment and future directions".
"Financial innovation and recent developments in the French capital markets", October 1985.
"Patterns of competition, strategic group formation and the performance case of the US pharmaceutical industry, 1963-1982", October 1985.
"European manufacturing: a comparative study (1985)".
"Subjective estimation in integrating communication budget and allocation decisions: a case study", January 1986.
"Sponsorship and the diffusion of organizational innovation: a preliminary viev".
"The R & D/Production interface".
"Confidence intervals: an empirical investigation for the series in the N-Competition" .
"A note on the reduction of the vorkveek", July 1985.
"The real exchange rate and the fiscal aspects of a natural resource discovery", Revised version: February 1986.
"Judgmental bisses in sales forecasting", February 1986.
"Forecasting political risks for international operations", Second Draft: March 3, 1986.
86/10 R. MOENART, Arnoud DE MEYER, J. BARBE and D. DESCHOOLMEESTER.
86/11 Philippe A. NAERT and Alain BULTEZ
86/12 Roger BETANCOURT and David GAUTSCHI
86/13 S.P. ANDERSON and Damien J. NEVEN
86/14 Charles WALDMAN
86/15 Mihkel TOMBAK and Arnoud DE MEYER
86/16 B. Espen ECKBO and Herwig M. LANGOHR
86/17 David B. JEMISON
86/18 James TEBOUL and V. MALLERET
86/19 Rob R. WEITZ
86/20 Albert CORHAY, Gabriel HAWAWINI and Pierre A. MICHEL
86/26 Barry EICHENGREEN and Charles WYPLOSZ
86/21 Albert CORHAY, Gabriel A. HAWAWINI and Pierre A. MICHEL
86/22 Albert CORHAY, Gabriel A. HAWAWINI and Pierre A. MICHEL
86/23 Arnoud DE MEYER
86/24 David GAUTSCHI and Vithala R. RAO
86/25 H. Peter GRAY and Ingo WALTER
"Froc "Lydiametry" to "Pinkhamization": misspecifying advertising dynamics rarely affects profitability".
"The economics of retail firms", Revised April 1986.
"Analysing the issues concerning technological de-maturity".
"The economic consequences of the Franc Poincare", September 1986.
"Conceptualizing the strategic process in diversified firms: the role and nature of the corporate influence process", February 1986.
"Negative risk-return relationships in business strategy: paradox or truism?", October 1986.
"Interpreting organizational texts.
"Vhy follow the leader?".
"The succession gaine: the real story.
"Flexibility: the next competitive battle".
Performance differences among strategic group members", October 1986.
"The role of public policy in insuring financial stability: a cross-country, comparative perspective", August 1986, Revised November 1986.
1987
87/01 Manfred KETS DE VRIES "Prisoners of leadership".
87/02 Claude VIALLET
"An empirical investigation of international asset pricing", November 1986.
87/03 David GAUTSCHI
"A methodology for specification and and Vithala RAO
aggregation in product concept testing", Revised Version: January 1987.
87/04 Sumantra GHOSHAL and "Organizing for innovations: case of the Christopher BARTLETT multinational corporation", February 1987.
87/05 Arnoud DE MEYER
"Managerial focal points in manufacturing and Kasra FRDOWS
strategy", February 1987.
87/06 Arun K. JAN, "Customer loyalty as a construct in the Christian PINSON and
marketing of banking services", July 1986. Naresh K. MALHOTRA
86/27 Karel COOL and Ingemar DIERICKX
86/28 Manfred KETS DE VRIES and Danny MILLER
86/29 Manfred KETS DE VRIES
86/30 Manfred KETS DE VRIES
86/31 Arnoud DE MEYER
86/32 Karel COOL and Dan SCHENDEL
86/33 Ernst BALTENSPERGER and Jean DERMINE
86/34 Philippe HASPESLAGH "Acquisitions: myths and reality", and David JEMISON July 1986.
87/07 Rolf BANZ and Gabriel HAWAWINI
"Equity pricing and stock market anomalies", February 1987.
86/35 Jean DERMINE
86/36 Albert CORHAY and Gabriel HAWAWINI
"Measuring the market value of a bank, a primer", November 1986.
"Seasonality in the risk-return relationship: some international evidence", July 1986.
87/08 Manfred KETS DE VRIES "Leaders vho can't manage", February 1987.
87/09 Lister VICKERY, "Entrepreneurial activities of European MBAs",
Mark PILKINGTON
March 1987. and Paul READ
86/37 David GAUTSCHI and "The evolution of retailing: a suggested Roger BETANCOURT economic interpretation".
86/38 Gabriel HAWAWINI
86/39 Gabriel HAWAWINI Pierre MICHEL and Albert CORHAY
86/40 Charles WYPLOSZ
86/41 Kasra FERDOWS and Wickham SKINNER
86/42 Kasra FERDOWS and Per LINDBERG
86/43 Damien NEVEN
86/44 Ingemar DIERICKX Carmen MATUTES and Damien NEVEN
"Financial innovation and recent developments in the French capital markets", Updated: September 1986.
"The pricing of common stocks on the Brussels stock exchange: a re-examination of the evidence", November 1986.
"Capital flous liberalization and the EMS, a French perspective", December 1986.
"Manufacturing in a nev perspective", July 1986.
"FMS as indicator of manufacturing strategy", December 1986.
"On the existence of equilibrium in hotelling's model", November 1986.
"Value added tax and competition", December 1986.
A M
.r 'ont. Oraelà
103MI %mg' nNgee'
Boulevard de Constance 77309 Fontainebleau Cedex, France Telephone (I) 60 72 40 40 Telecopy (1) 60 72 40 49 Telex 690389
EAC RESEARCH PAPERS
EAC RESEARCH PAPERS
(Academic papers based on the research of EAC Faculty and research staff)
1. LASSERRE Philippe (Research Paper n° 1) A contribution to the study of entrepreneurship development in Indonesia. 1980.
2. BOISOT Max and LASSERRE Philippe (Research Paper n° 2) The transfer of technology from European to ASEAN entreprises: strategies and practices in the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors. 1980.
3. AMAKO Tetsuo (Research Paper n° 3) Possibilité d'un transfert à l'étranger des techniques japonaises de gestion du personnel: le cas français. 1982.
4. SCHUTTE Hellmut (Research Paper n° 8) Wirtschaftliche Kooperation zwischen den ASEAN - Lândern und Nordrhein-Westfalen - Hemmungsfaktoren und Chancen für die deutsche Wirtschaft. 1983.
5. ISHIYAMA Yoshihide (Research Paper n° 14) The political economy of liberalisation of the financial system in Japan. 1984.
6. LASSERRE Philippe (Research Paper n° 17) Singapour comme centre régional. L'expérience d'entreprises françaises. 1985.
7. Von KIRCHBACH Friedrich (Research Paper n° 18) Patterns of export channels to developing Asia. 1984.
8. MITTER Rajan (Research Paper n° 19) A survey of European business in India. 1984.
9. CHAPON Marie-Claude (Research Paper n° 22) Stratégies des entreprises japonaises en Afrique. 1985.