Page 409 - Cultures and Organizations

374 CULTURES IN ORGANIZATIONS

an input to a plan for managing the postmerger integration so as to
minimize friction losses and preserve unique cultural capital.
■ Measuring the development of organizational cultures over time, by
repeating a survey after one of more years. This will show whether
attempted culture changes have, indeed, materialized, as well as iden-
tify the cultural effects of external changes that occurred after the
previous survey.

In practice, what can one do about one’s organization’s culture? First,
it depends on one’s position in, or with regard to, the organization. A clas-
sic study by Eberhard Witte, from Germany, concluded that successful
innovations in organizations required the joint action of two parties: a
Machtpromotor and a Fachpromotor (a power holder and an expert). 37
Witte’s model was developed on German data and may well be entirely
valid only for countries like Germany with small power distance (acces-
sibility of power holders) and fairly strong uncertainty avoidance (belief
in experts). Nevertheless, in any national culture it makes sense to distin-
guish the two roles. Both are crucial for culture innovations. The support
of a power holder—preferably a person with some charisma, not a pure
administrator—is indispensable. However, expertise in making the right
diagnosis and choosing the right therapy is also indispensable. Witte’s
research suggests that, in Germany at least, the Machtpromotor and the
Fachpromotor should be two different persons; trying to combine the roles
compromises one of them.
The Fachpromotor should provide a proper diagnosis of the present
state of the organization’s culture and subcultures. It is dangerous to
assume one knows one’s organization’s present cultural map and how it
should be changed. Organizations can look very different from the top
compared with the middle or bottom where the actual work is done. The

IRIC researchers, when feeding back the interview and survey results to
the units’ management members, always asked them to guess where their
organization stood on the various dimensions, before showing them how
their people had answered the survey questions. Some managers were
uncannily insightful and correct in their guesses, but others were way off.
In the latter case, wishful thinking and unfounded fears often affected their
answers. So, a proper diagnosis is essential.
With sound diagnostic information, the Machtpromotor should then
make cultural considerations part of the organization’s strategy. What
are the strengths and weaknesses of the present cultural map? Can the