Page 393 - Cultures and Organizations

358 CULTURES IN ORGANIZATIONS

equals tight, SAS with its uniformed personnel scored extremely tight
(96), and HGBV scored once more halfway (52); halfway, though, was quite
loose for a product ion unit, as a comparison with other production units
showed.

Dimension 6, finally, deals with the popular notion of customer orien-
tation. Pragmatic units were market driven; normative units perceived their
task in relation to the outside world as the implementation of inviolable
rules. The key items show that in the normative units, the major emphasis
was on correctly following organizational procedures, which were more
important than results; in matters of business ethics and honesty, the unit’s
standards were felt to be high. In the pragmatic units, there was a major
emphasis on meeting the customer’s needs; results were more important
than correct procedures; and in matters of business ethics, a pragmatic
rather than a dogmatic attitude prevailed. The SAS passenger terminal
was the top-scoring unit on the pragmatic side (100), which shows that Jan
Carlzon’s message had come across. HGBV scored 68, also on the prag-
matic side. In the past as it was described in the HGBV case study, the
company might have been more normative toward its customers, but it
seemed to have adapted to its new competitive situation.

The Scope for Competitive Advantages in
Cultural Matters

Inspection of the scoring profiles of the twenty units on the six dimensions
shows that dimensions 1, 3, 5, and 6 (process versus results, parochial versus
professional, loose versus tight, and normative versus pragmatic) relate to
the type of work the organization does and to the type of market in which

it operates. These four dimensions part ly reflect the industry (or business)

culture according to Figure 10.1. On dimension 1, most manufacturing and
large office units scored process oriented; research and development units

and service units scored more results oriented. On dimension 3, units with
a traditional technology scored parochial; high-tech units scored profes-
sional. On dimension 5, units delivering precision or risky products or ser-
vices (such as pharmaceuticals or money transactions) scored tight; those
with innovative or unpredictable activities scored loose. To the researchers’
surprise, the two city police forces studied scored on the loose side (16 and
41): the work of a police officer, however, is highly unpredictable, and police

personnel have considerable discretion in the way they want to carry out