Page 411 - Cultures and Organizations

376 CULTURES IN ORGANIZATIONS

a man with an earring be promoted? Training programs, often the fi rst
thing managers think of when wanting to change cultures, are functional
only after the need for retraining has been established by structural, pro-
cess, and personnel changes (as in the SAS case). Training programs with-
out the support of hard changes usually remain at the level of lip service
and are a waste of money. In general, one should always be suspicious about
suggestions to train someone else. Training is effective only if the trainee
wants to be trained.
In attempted culture changes, new symbols often receive a lot of atten-
tion. They are easily visible: new name, logo, uniforms, slogans, and por-
traits on the wall—all that belongs to the fashionable area of corporate

identity. But symbols are only the most superficial level of culture. New
symbols without the support of more fundamental changes at the deeper
levels of heroes, rituals, and the values of key leaders just mean a lot of
hoopla, the effects of which wear off quickly.
This includes formulating corporate values, which, as of the 1990s,
represents a fad in which many international corporations seem to have
believed. The word values in this case means something entirely different

from our definition in Chapter 1. Corporate values are written statements
of desirable principles for corporate behavior; they belong to ideology
and are not empirically based on people’s feelings or preferences. In our
opinion, most corporate values statements are no more than pious wishful
thinking, corresponding to one or more top executives’ hobbies. Corporate
cultures are moved not by what top managers say or write, but by who they
are and what they do. The corporate values of the infamous U.S.-based
Enron Corporation, which went bankrupt in 2001, included professionalism

and integrity. Unless they are confirmed by the corporation’s behavioral
records, and maintained by sanctions against those not respecting them,

corporate values are worth less than the paper they are written on. Hypoc-
risy is worse than silence. 38
Culture change in an organization asks for persistence, as well as sus-
tained attention by the Machtpromotor. If the process was started by a cul-
ture diagnosis, it is evidently useful to repeat this diagnosis after suffi cient
time has passed for the planned changes to become noticeable. In this way,
a process of monitoring is started in which changes actually found are com-
pared with intended changes and further corrections can be applied. If orga-
nizational culture is somewhat manageable, this is the way to go about it.
In Table 10.2 the main steps in managing (with) culture have been
summarized as a practical checklist.