Organizational Behavior 652.H.Y Quiz #2 Study Guide

1. Organizational Culture

Sources: Schein, “Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture,” Sloan Management Review, 1984; Robbins & Judge, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, Ch. 16 course slides

Definition of Organizational Culture (textbook version)

Per your Ch. 16 slides: organizational culture is a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations. This is a simpler, textbook-friendly companion to Schein's formal definition below — be ready to give either version depending on how the question is phrased.

Culture is a descriptive term, not an evaluative one: organizational culture is about how employees perceive the organization's culture (descriptive), which differs from job satisfaction, which measures how employees feel about the work environment (evaluative).

Seven Characteristics of Organizational Culture (Ch. 16)

1. Innovation and risk taking

2. Attention to detail

3. Outcome orientation

4. People orientation

5. Team orientation

6. Aggressiveness

7. Stability

Definition of Organizational Culture

Schein's formal definition: organizational culture is the pattern of basic assumptions that 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 well enough to be considered valid — and are therefore taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.

Key elements to be able to unpack from this definition: - A pattern of basic assumptions — not just values or behaviors, but deeper, often unconscious beliefs - Learned in response to external adaptation (survival in the environment) and internal integration (functioning as a group) - Must have worked well enough to be seen as valid - Must be taught to new members

Levels of Culture (Schein's Model)

1. Artifacts & Creations — visible but often not decipherable (technology, art, visible/audible behavior patterns, dress, office layout)

2. Values — greater level of awareness; the espoused reasons people give for their behavior (but may not reflect the true underlying assumptions)

3. Basic Assumptions — taken for granted, invisible, preconscious; the real “why” behind group behavior (relationship to environment, nature of reality/truth/time/space, nature of human nature, human activity, human relationships)

How Organizational Culture Is Formed

- Cultural elements are learned solutions to problems

• Two types of learning situations:

- Positive problem-solving situations — group tries responses until something works; continues as long as it works

- Anxiety-avoidance situations — once a response successfully avoids anxiety, it tends to be repeated indefinitely, even after the original cause is gone (this is why anxiety-based cultural elements are more stable/resistant to change than pure problem-solving ones)

- Most cultural solutions originate from the founders and early leaders of an organization; ideas are proposed, tried, and either adopted or rejected based on how well they work

- As the group ages, solution-finding becomes more collective ("group") rather than founder-driven

How Organizational Culture Is Sustained

- Culture solves two types of problems, both of which must be repeatedly addressed:

- External adaptation: strategy, goals, means for accomplishing goals, measuring performance, correction/remedial strategies

- Internal integration: common language, group boundaries, allocation of power & status, criteria for intimacy/relationships, rewards & punishments, ideology

- Culture is taught to new members — it must be perceived as correct/valid or it won't serve its stabilizing function

- New members can also introduce culture change, especially if they enter at high levels

Dominant Culture versus Subcultures

- Dominant culture: expresses the core values shared by a majority of the organization's members (Ch. 16)

• Subcultures: tend to develop in large organizations, often along functional, divisional, geographic, or rank-based lines, to reflect the common problems, situations, or experiences of a subgroup's members; subcultures generally mirror the dominant culture but may add to or modify its core values

- A total organization (especially a large, diversified one) may consist of stable functional, divisional, geographic, or rank-based subgroups, each potentially developing its own subculture (Schein)

- These subcultures can coexist with — or conflict with — each other and with an overarching corporate culture

- Older/larger organizations may actually be more effective with a weaker total culture and diverse subcultures (allows responsiveness to rapid environmental change), whereas young groups often need strong unified culture to build identity (Schein)

Strong versus Weak Cultures (Ch. 16)

- In a strong culture, the organization's core values are both intensely held and widely shared

- Strong cultures: have greater influence on member behavior, increase cohesiveness, and result in lower employee turnover

- Culture versus formalization: high formalization (rules, written documentation) creates predictability, orderliness, and consistency — a strong culture can achieve that same predictability without needing heavy written documentation

Characteristics of Organizational Culture

• Strength of a culture = function of (1) homogeneity & stability of group membership, and (2) length & intensity of shared group experiences

• A stable group with a long, varied, intense shared history to strong, highly differentiated culture (e.g., I.B.M, Bell System)

- A group with constantly shifting membership or a short shared history to weak culture, even if individuals hold strong personal assumptions

- Culture strength is not the same as effectiveness — the fit between culture content and environmental demands matters more than sheer strength

Advantages of a Strong Culture / Functions of Culture

- Acts as a “glue” — source of identity and strength, especially for young/founder-dominated organizations (Schein)

- Stabilizes the internal and external environment, reducing anxiety and providing a shared cognitive map (Schein)

- Once established, if leadership stays stable, a strong culture can help the organization survive high turnover at lower ranks (strong socialization, for example, elite military units) (Schein)

• Functions of culture (Ch. 16): defines boundaries, conveys a sense of identity, generates commitment beyond one's own self-interest, enhances social stability, and serves as a sense-making/control mechanism

- Culture also creates climate: organizational climate = the shared perceptions members have about their organization/work environment; a positive climate is linked to higher customer satisfaction and financial performance

- Culture can support an ethical work climate (shared concept of right/wrong that shapes ethical decision-making) and can be an asset — innovative companies tend to have open, unconventional, collaborative, vision-driven, and accelerating cultures

How a Culture Begins & Is Kept Alive (Ch. 16)

- The ultimate source of an organization's culture is its founder (s), who create it in three ways: (1) hiring/keeping people who think and feel the way they do, (2) indoctrinating and socializing employees into their way of thinking, and (3) acting as role models

- Culture is then kept alive through: selection (seeking out people who fit), top management (establishing behavioral norms through their own actions), and socialization (helping new employees adapt)

• Socialization model (three stages): pre-arrival (knowledge/expectations before joining) arrow encounter (exposure to the real organization, possibly clashing with expectations) arrow metamorphosis (the new member adjusts to fit the organization)

• Entry socialization options (paired contrasts): formal versus informal; collective versus individual; fixed versus variable timetables; serial (role models used) versus random (on your own); investiture (affirms the newcomer's existing traits) versus divestiture (strips away old traits to build new ones)

- How employees learn culture: through stories (provide explanations/context), rituals (reinforce key values), material symbols (convey importance, egalitarianism, appropriate behavior), and language (identifies and unites/segregates members)

Organizational Culture as a Potential Liability

- Culture can become maladaptive if it no longer fits the external environment — if this happens early in a young company's life, the company may not survive (Schein)

- In organizational “midlife” or maturity/decline, deeply embedded assumptions become very hard to change — they are stable specifically because they reduce anxiety, not because they're still functionally useful (Schein)

• Changing culture at this stage is a “painful process” that “will elicit strong resistance,” and may require replacing large numbers of people who hold onto old assumptions (Schein)

• Four liabilities of culture (Ch. 16):

1. Institutionalization — behaviors/habits go unquestioned, which can stifle innovation

2. Barrier to change — culture is slow to change, even in a dynamic environment

3. Barrier to diversity — culture seeks to minimize diversity and can embed existing bias/prejudice

4. Barrier to acquisitions and mergers — cultural incompatibility between merging organizations can be a major problem

- Key exam angle: be ready to compare/contrast why strong culture is an asset early in a company's life but can become a barrier to innovation/change later on

The Global Context (Ch. 16)

- Organizational culture can both reflect national culture and transcend national boundaries

- Managers need to be culturally sensitive when operating internationally (e.g., adjusting tone, pacing, listening style, topics to avoid)

- Ethical decision-making itself can be culture-bound — what's considered ethical can vary across national/cultural contexts

- (This is a natural bridge to the Working Virtually section below — both topics deal with managing across cultural difference.)

2. Working Virtually

Sources: Neeley & Delong, “Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A) ” H.B.S case); Lee, “Managing International Teams? Embrace Both Differences And Similarities”

Definition of a Global Virtual Team (G.V.T)

A team whose members are geographically distributed across different countries/time zones, typically communicating and collaborating primarily through technology rather than face-to-face contact. In the Sun Microsystems case, Greg James's team of 45 was split across Santa Clara (U.S), India, the U.A.E, and France — recruited for talent/leadership rather than location, and following a “follow the sun” model where teams hand off work as their day ends and another region's day begins.

Common Challenges Faced by G.V.T's

From the Greg James case, the recurring failure points/challenges included: -

Miscommunication and unclear ownership across sites — for example, the mis-programmed support queue that caused the H.S Holdings outage to go unnoticed, because instructions were passed imprecisely between the U.S, India, and Dubai teams - Time zone burden inequities — the India team started work at 06:30 I.S.T and stayed on calls until 22:00, creating excessively long days, while meeting times were set primarily around the U.S team's convenience - Perceived favoritism — the U.S team got more face time and "water cooler" access to the manager, leading other sites to feel like an afterthought (e.g., being copied on decisions after the fact) - Compensation disparities perceived as unfair across countries (e.g., French team learning they earned approximately 30% less than U.S counterparts) despite comparable or greater workload - Unequal work allocation/status — the India team resented being assigned reactive "firefighting"/maintenance work while other teams got the more interesting innovation/customization work - Interpersonal/cultural friction — for example, strained relations between the U.A.E and India team leads (with an undercurrent of nationality-based tension), and cultural differences in relationship-building pace (U.A.E team needing more time for relationship-building before finalizing contracts, clashing with company-driven deadlines) - Lack of face-to-face contact feeding feelings of disconnection and fear that a remote manager doesn't understand local market/cultural context (U.A.E team worried this would hurt their performance reviews) - Breakdowns in escalation/emergency protocols — using weekday contact protocol during a weekend emergency, outdated customer contact information, no single point of accountability

Effective Leadership in Virtual Teams

From the case and the Forbes article: - Build consensus and full engagement across dispersed team members rather than relying on physical presence (Pam Lawry's advice to Greg James) - Manage disparate voices — give real airtime and priority to all subteams' concerns, not just the most physically proximate team - Face-to-face investment still matters — James's team-by-team visits surfaced issues that weekly conference calls had never revealed - From the Forbes/I.E.S.E piece — "dynamic balancing" / duality approach: rather than choosing either pure universalism (one standard way for everyone) or pure relativism (let every group do it their own way), effective global leaders hold both commonality (shared goals, shared identity, universal values like courage/justice/wisdom) and difference (respecting how those values are locally expressed, for example, "respect" looking different in Germany versus Kenya) at the same time - Leaders should be fluid in style — sometimes directive, sometimes collaborative, task-focused or relationship-focused depending on context — rather than applying one uniform approach to every site - Example (Forbes article): Toshihiko Harada — a Japanese executive leading a mostly white American plant in rural Missouri. He earned trust by being personally transparent (town halls sharing his story, learning every worker's name, nightly thank-you notes) while still introducing his own cultural practices (Japanese safety rules). This illustrates "seeking commonality while preserving difference" — validating individual/cultural uniqueness while building a shared "we"

Case Application: Managing a Global Team — Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Part A)

Be ready to discuss: - What went wrong: the H.S Holdings outage was caused by a queue built for the wrong purpose (missing contract numbers, not emergencies), a miscommunication about who was supposed to program it (U.S asked India, it ended up done in Dubai), and no one testing it against the real requirement before go-live - Underlying causes beneath the technical failure: interpersonal grievances (India team feeling disrespected by a U.S teammate), unequal meeting times, compensation resentment, and a lack of face-to-face relationship-building that let small frictions calcify into larger dysfunction - Discussion angle likely to appear on quiz: how do the surface technical/process failures (wrong queue, missed pages) connect to deeper structural and interpersonal issues in a G.V.T? What could Greg James do differently — for example, rethinking meeting times/rotation, more equitable face-time distribution, clarifying escalation protocols, addressing pay/workload equity conversations directly instead of avoiding them?

3. Power and Gaining Influence

Source: Robbins & Judge, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, Ch. 13 course slides ("Power and Politics")

Definition of Power

Power: the capacity that A has to influence the behavior of B so that B acts in accordance with A's wishes. The most important aspect of power is that it is a function of dependence — this is the conceptual thread that ties the whole chapter together.

The Dependence Postulate

General Dependence Postulate: the greater B's dependence on A, the more power A has over B.

What creates dependence? Three factors: - Importance — the resource/outcome must matter to B - Scarcity — the resource must be hard to obtain elsewhere - Non-substitutability — there must be no good alternative source for it

Formal and Personal Bases of Power

Formal power — based on an individual's organizational position: - Coercive power: compliance driven by fear of negative results - Reward power: compliance driven by desire for positive benefits - Legitimate power: stems from formal authority to control and use organizational resources

Personal power — stems from an individual's unique characteristics, not their position: - Expert power: influence from expertise, special skill, or knowledge - Referent power: based on identification with someone who has desirable resources or personal traits (includes charisma)

Which bases are most effective? - Expert and referent power are positively related to performance and commitment - Reward and legitimate power are unrelated to organizational outcomes - Coercive power is negatively related to employee satisfaction and commitment - Exam angle: be ready to explain why personal power bases (expert/referent) tend to outperform formal power bases (reward/legitimate/coercive) in terms of employee outcomes

Nine Influence Tactics and Their Effectiveness

Power tactics translate power bases into specific actions used to influence others. The nine influence tactics: 1. Legitimacy 2. Rational persuasion 3. Inspirational appeals 4. Consultation 5. Exchange 6. Personal appeals 7. Ingratiation 8. Pressure 9. Coalitions

Effectiveness ranking: - Most effective: rational persuasion, inspirational appeals, consultation - Least effective: pressure - Combining tactics increases effectiveness overall - Effectiveness is also modified by direction/sequencing of the tactic, individual skill of the user, and organizational culture - Cultural context matters too: individualistic cultures tend to see power in personalized terms — a legitimate way to advance personal ends, with more self-enhancement behavior — while collectivistic cultures tend to see power in social terms, as a legitimate means of helping others

Cialdini's Science of Persuasion

Referenced directly in your slides as “Cialdini's Science of Persuasion” — be ready to connect Cialdini's classic persuasion principles (reciprocity, commitment/consistency, social proof, liking, authority, scarcity) to the influence tactics above, especially where they overlap (e.g., scarcity ties to the Dependence Postulate; liking/ingratiation ties to referent power; authority ties to legitimate/expert power).

Related concepts likely to show up alongside this material

- Political skill: the ability to influence others to enhance one's own objectives; politically skilled people are more effective users of all influence tactics, this skill matters more when stakes are high, and skilled people can often exert influence without others detecting it

- Organizational politics: activities not required as part of one's formal role, but which attempt to influence the distribution of advantages/disadvantages in the organization. Politics arises from conflicting interests, limited resources, and ambiguity in decision-making

- How power affects people: those with power tend to put their own interests ahead of others, objectify others, react strongly to threats against their competence, and be overconfident — though effects can be positive depending on personality

- Ethics of influence: foundations of ethical influence include being explicit about your goals, being willing to put others'/the organization's interests ahead of your own, treating everyone with respect, staying open to being influenced yourself, and backing requests with honest data

• Implications for managers (from the slides): to build power, increase others' dependence on you; expect others to be building their own power bases too; avoid leaving others feeling powerless; use a political framework to better predict others' behavior and formulate your own strategy; help others become politically savvy

Compare/Contrast angle (per your instructor's prep suggestions)

- Formal power versus personal power: formal power comes from position (and can vanish if you lose the position); personal power comes from who you are/what you know (more durable, generally more effective for performance and commitment)

- Power versus leadership: your slides explicitly ask you to contrast the two — power doesn't require goal compatibility with the target (just dependence), whereas leadership is generally understood to require some shared direction/goals between leader and followers

Supplementary Context: “Managing Your Boss” (Gabarro & Kotter, H.B.R

Not a direct source for the definitions above, but useful for the “how these concepts apply in workplace settings” angle your instructor's prep suggestions call out — it's essentially a case study in the Dependence Postulate playing out in a real boss-subordinate relationship: - The boss-subordinate relationship involves mutual dependence between two fallible people: bosses depend on direct reports for cooperation, reliability, and honesty; subordinates depend on bosses for organizational connections, priority-setting, and critical resources - Two unhealthy patterns of relating to authority: counterdependence (resenting/rebelling against the boss's authority, treating the boss as an adversary) and overdependence (over-complying, treating the boss as an all-knowing parent figure) - Practical levers for managing upward: adapting to the boss's preferred communication style (e.g., Drucker's "listener" versus "reader" distinction), proactively surfacing expectations rather than assuming you know them, keeping the boss informed (including bad news), being dependable/honest, and using the boss's time and influence selectively

Preparation Suggestions (from your instructor)

- Define each key concept from the formal definitions or in your own words

- Compare and contrast related concepts (e.g., dominant culture versus subcultures; formal versus personal power)

- Explain how each concept applies in workplace settings

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