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The Role of Organizational Culture 231

Box 7.1
A vignette: Imagine the following situation (adapted from Kotter 1996 ):

Four groups of about ten individuals are all in the same park at the same lunch hour.
Soon, ominous rain clouds loom, threatening a serious downpour. In the fi rst group, one
person gets up and says, “ It is going to rain, follow me, this is what we will do. . . . ” In a
second group, someone says, “ I have a plan: each one of us will stand up, we will walk in
pairs of two towards the covered tent, we will maintain a distance of two feet from the
person in front and the person behind us. . . . ” In a third group, a few people start con-
versing, each putting out a different idea, “ why don ’ t we go over to that big tree there?
But what if there is lightning, it wouldn ’ t be safe. How about the tent? That makes more
sense plus there are picnic tables where we could continue our picnic lunch. ” In the last
group, someone stands up and says: “ This reminds me of the adventure we had during
the last rainstorm. Let me tell you that story. . . . ”
The above illustrates four different types of microculture in evidence:
Group 1: Authoritarian doctrine
Group 2: Micromanagement
Group 3: Grassroots brainstorming, collaborative, consensus-driven
Group 4: Storytelling to share knowledge of lessons learned and best practices.

the surface. He uses the classic three-step approach to discuss change — unfreezing,
cognitive restructuring, and refreezing. The key issue for leaders is that they must
become marginal in their own culture to a suffi cient degree to recognize what may be
its maladaptive assumptions and to learn some new ways of thinking themselves as a
prelude to unfreezing and changing their organization.
A number of instruments exist that can help diagnose organizational culture (e.g.,
Harrison and Stokes 1992 ). These are typically surveys or questionnaires that help to
identify the critical aspects of an existing culture and will provide a profi le of your
organization ’ s culture, typically in the form of an orientation.
The most important dimensions of an organizational culture are that culture pro-
motes an ideal that mobilizes learning institutions in achieving it and that culture
can bring uniformity and unity, as well as diversity. Culture is customs and rights and
the organization ’ s “ own way, ” its norms, values, behavior patterns, rituals, and tradi-
tions. Culture implies structural stability, patterning, and integration. It arises from
shared history, and adaptation and change are not possible without making changes
that affect the culture. It is not always rational. For large organizations, there are issues
around the development of subcultures and the integration of newcomers. Organiza-
tional learning, development, and planned change cannot be understood without