Page 406 - Cultures and Organizations

The Elephant and the Stork: Organizational Cultures 371

harmful for, say, the manufacturing of standard products in a competitive
price market.
This chapter referred earlier to the controversy about whether an
organization is or has a culture. On the basis of the IRIC research project,
we propose that practices are features an organization has. Because of the
important role of practices in organizational cultures, the latter can be
considered somewhat manageable. We saw that changing collective values

of adult people in an intended direction is extremely difficult, if not impos-
sible. Collective practices, however, depend on organizational character-
istics such as structures and systems, and they can be influenced in more

or less predictable ways by changing these organizational characteristics.
Nevertheless, as argued previously, organization cultures are also in a way
integrated wholes, or gestalts, and a gestalt can be considered something
the organization is. Organizations are sometimes compared to animals;
thus, HGBV could be pictured as an elephant (slow, bulky, self-confi dent)
and the SAS passenger terminal as a stork (reliable, caring, transporting).
The animal metaphor suggests limits to the changeability of the gestalt;
one cannot train an elephant to become a racehorse, let alone to become a
stork.
Changes in practices represent the margin of freedom in infl uencing
these wholes, the kinds of things the animals can learn without losing their
essence. Because they are wholes, an integrating and inspiring type of lead-
ership is needed to give these structural and systems changes a meaning
for the people involved. The outcome should be a new and coherent cultural
pattern, as was illustrated by the SAS case.

Managing (with) Organizational Culture

Back in the 1980s, when Geert tried to sell participation in the organi-

zational culture research project to top managers of organizations, he
claimed that “organizational culture represents the psychological assets
of the organization that predict its material assets in fi ve years’ time.” As
we see it now, the crucial element is not the organizational culture itself,
but what (top) management does with it. Four aspects have to be balanced
(Figure 10.2). 36
The performance of an organization should be measured against its
objectives, and top management’s role is to translate objectives into strat-
egy—even if by default all that emerges is a laissez-faire strategy. Strate-
gies are carried out via the existing structure and control system, and their