Embedding Culture and Quality for High Performing Organizations

Norhayati Zakaria,Flevy Lasrado

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351055048
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médecine
• Subtopic: Santé publique, administration et soins

Embedding Culture and Quality for High Performing Organizations (978-1-138-48338-5, K349105)

Shelving Guide:

The aim of this book is to bridge two different core disciplines: quality management and cross-cultural management, based on how multinational corporations work, and how culture determines individual practices and values. Understanding these previously separate fields is essential to keeping multinational cultures innovative and sustainable. The authors' research blends corporate and cultural perspectives to promote quality management practices that build organizational excellence. Whereas most books currently on the market are based on corporate culture and quality management, this book uniquely considers cross-cultural impacts on organizational effectiveness and global human resource management.

This book provides opportunities for business practitioners and researchers to learn practices that are effective in building sustainable organizational excellence. It offers a practice guide to building a quality management program that emphasizes culturally-diverse work environments, cross-cultural management, and organizational excellence.

1

The Unison between Culture and Quality to Promote High Performing Organizations: How Is It Significant?

Norhayati Zakaria and Flevy Lasrado

CONTENTS

Cultural Materialization in Organizations

Quality is Significant: So is Culture!

The Agenda of This Book

Overview of Contributing Chapters

References

Cultural Materialization in Organizations

Imagine the following cultural turbulence as you initially enter a new workplace. You observe a manager bestow precipitous instructions to his or her team members, goods and services are not delivered on time, meetings are not punctual and are carried out with unsystematic agendas, people perform chaotic tasks without proper planning, desks are cluttered and unorganized, and teams fail to collaborate in a reciprocal manner, refusing to share knowledge among themselves. You might begin to contemplate the culture of this organization. You might even reflect further: Why do things happen in such a way? Who causes such destruction? Why do the quality of the practices, processes, and procedures seem inefficient and ineffective? To understand culture means to identify an abundance of questions that arise from employees’ minds, vulnerable feelings, and destructive behaviors. Additionally, the power of culture is magnified to the extent that it can influence people’s behaviors and interactions in the workplace and thus provide forward directions to take.

In terms of organizational culture, it is both explicit and implicit. In that regard, culture can be illustrated using the metaphor of an iceberg introduced by Hall (1976), which signifies the level of implicitness and explicitness of cultural meanings. This metaphor also allows us to understand the intricacy of culture, all depending on the layers; some are visible and observable, while some are not visible and non-observable. Hall describes three main layers which are: (1) stories, rituals, language; (2) shared values; and (3) shared assumptions. In a similar vein, Zakaria (2019) introduces culture from three different layers of complexity based on the Onion Model (adopted from Hofstede, 1980), which she classifies as the observation level, the manifestation level, and the indoctrination level (refer to Figure 1.1). The outer layer is visible and signifies certain artifacts and symbols. Nonetheless, its meaning can only be gauged at a superficial level unless you peel the onion, layer by layer, to discover the uniqueness of the observed patterns of behaviors. Let us detail out the Onion Model to further explain about how a person can engage in cultural sensemaking.

FIGURE 1.1
Using the Onion Model to make sense of culture. (From Zakaria, 2019.)

First, the observation layer of culture is noticeable and evident yet often difficult to make sense of and interpret. Misunderstanding usually takes place as people misconstrue or misinterpret the practices, signs, and gestures observable in a workplace during the initial stage of acculturation. The explicitness of culture at this level lies in the eye of the observer. People can see what is happening, but the logic behind why and how it is happening requires entrenched cultural understanding and interpretations. In the abovementioned scenarios, we can only observe culture in the form of symbols, outcomes, and artifacts, which are all easily identifiable at a first glance and are amenable to creating one’s first impression of the workplace. For example, a person may enter a new workplace, observe the aforementioned characteristics, and then sigh, “What a culture!” He or she may then quickly formulate a mental image based on impulsive emotions without wanting to clarify their observations with anyone. In short, the outer layer of the onion explicitly shows people’s reactions to the symbols, signs, or artifacts they observe, and all observation is made at a superficial level. It contains implicit meanings, which are unexplainable to some extent. At this level, a person cannot fully grasp or comprehend the observed behaviors since he or she is newly acculturated to the work environment and learning the ropes of the system, practices, and procedures. The learning process is simply at the surface level, and people usually fail to make sense of either what is happening or why it is happening.

Second, the manifestation layer requires one to go into a deeper layer of cultural understanding. This level illustrates values, norms, and behaviors. Thus, making sense of culture becomes more intense because one’s curiosity about what they observe requires further explanation. At this level, people also need to discover the meaning of culture that was indescribable or unexplainable at the earlier level. Once people observe a situation in the workplace, they need to not only think deeper but also reason out its causes and consequences. Culture needs to be unpacked at this layer. Let us refer to the earlier scenarios. A person will begin to formulate in his or her mind many pertinent questions: Why do people receive unclear instructions to carry out their tasks? Is it due to ineffective communication between the leader and his team members? Why are goods and services delayed in their deliveries? Is it caused by miscalculation and mishandling by affected parties like suppliers and manufacturers? Why do meetings run late, and why are they not carried out based on bulleted and established agendas? Is it because the leader is unfocused and inclined to engage in multitasking? Why do people create office spaces that are not neat and hence form disorganized structures? Is it because people are not trained to organize things systematically, which leads to waste and quality dysfunctionality? Why do teams refuse to exchange and share knowledge to achieve targeted goals together? Is it because of a fear of insecurity and betrayal, a threat to position in terms of role and power, or anxiety about information being disclosed to competitors? In those situations, culture introduces an inconceivable presence in an organization without one’s realization.

Culture can introduce its power and presence in an organization in a subtle way yet produce a powerful impact on its workers and management team. At this layer, people will begin to unpack the reasoning for why things exist as they do, and culture becomes evident through norms, values, and practices and rituals. Culture can thus transfer its elements through both explicit and tacit knowledge in an organization. In essence, organizational culture is clearly defined as a way of doing things and is established through many layers of complexities. In the second layer, people become knowledgeable about why things happen the way they happen. People begin to understand the effects and forces of culture on the way people do things. In addition, at the second layer, people begin to appreciate and feel a culture.

Last, at the inner layer of the onion lies the basic, underlying assumptions that are shared among members in an organization. It is the core understanding of how culture transpires. Zakaria (2019) signifies this as a level of indoctrination, where the rules of a culture can be prescribed with the use of a theoretical lens. Hofstede (1980) asserts that culture is the software of the mind, where people’s behaviors are programmed, thus leading to the display of behaviors. People can make accurate interpretations of organizational behaviors’ manifestations through the interpretation of various theoretical, cultural lenses. With sound theories, basic assumptions provide a foundation that spells out why, when, and how people illustrate culture as a set of attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviors that can be emulated and shaped by the owner of such a culture, for example, a leader in an organization. Schein (2004) defines culture as shared behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, and values that prescribe specific practices and certain ways of doing things in an organization. In this respect, we could explain culture concretely through empirical evidence by applying theories. Applying theoretical frameworks to measure and interpret observable behaviors, perceived thoughts, and expressed feelings facilitates the attainment of a deeper understanding of culture. Consequently, cultural sensemaking allows a person to unbundle the unknowns and avoid unrealistic assumptions of what was initially observed at a workplace. In fact, SERVQUAL dimensions are correlated with Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (Furrer et al., 2000).

Coming back to the earlier scenarios, let us pick the example of lack of punctuality and justify the reasoning based on Trompenaar and Hampden-Turner’s (1994) cultural theory of time orientation. For example, why does a manager start a meeting late? If we look at a culture where time is polychronic, time is considered elastic and non-urgent. People will take their time to schedule tasks because they are, by nature, multitaskers. Many things can be scheduled to operate at one time, thus making it inefficient for people to be delivering tasks on time. Polychronic-oriented people also have the tendency to take things in a laid-back manner: they procrastinate and are relaxed, and punctuality is not one of their best qualities. This clashes with monochronic cultures wherein time is considered linear: one thing happens at one time, and every task must be organized in an orderly manner to ensure efficiency. The key cultural questions here are as follows: How do you work with a manager who has different cultural values when quality needs to be prioritized, engaged, and followed through with to achieve sustainability? Is quality not equally as important as culture to be incorporated into organizations? Does quality itself not have its own values, characteristics, beliefs, and norms to be inculcated in team members? What if quality and culture are incongruent? Although the cultural factors underpinning different elements of total quality management (TQM) are dissimilar, even antagonistic, organizations can implement them in harmony (Prajogo and McDermott, 2005). In essence, this book is strongly emphasizing the premise that culture and quality need to be integrated; these two concepts need to be addressed as the main agenda in moving toward high performing organizations.

Quality is Significant: So is Culture!

“Culture” has around 160 varied definitions that have evolved over the decades based on different cultural theorists and scholars (Adler, 1997; Hall, 1976; Kluckhorn and Strodbeck, 1961; Hofstede, 1980; Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 2000; Zakaria, 2017), and the definition of quality has also evolved immensely over time (Juran, 1995; Deming, 1986; Crosby, 1995). In fact, the definitions of quality are still evolving. In the early period of the TQM field, the father of quality evolution, Edward Deming, introduced the concept of “continuous improvement” in manufacturing firms to show that a quality-oriented process needs to be incorporated if firms want to achieve a high level of efficiency and effectiveness. He famously and succinctly illustrated the principle of continuous improvement: “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing!” This quote represents a realistic way of operating in the manufacturing industry. Indeed, it sets the tone for the American history of developing a culture of quality, as Deming aptly asserts, “If the Japanese can do it, we can do it too!” Deming clearly realized and understood that culture can pave the way to make bold changes in the operating systems of any organization; culture sets the tone, and culture can make things happen. Culture can also enforce and reinforce quality to ensure that continuous improvement takes place at all levels of management (Lasrado, 2017).

Other scholars offer similar perspectives and argue that quality characterizes the efficiency and effectiveness of a process based on the management elements such as planning, implementation, and improvements (Cosby, 1980). As the field evolves, Deming affirms that quality is essentially about people, not product. Other scholars are supportive of this view and have begun to define quality as an assured process of making customers feel happy and satisfied with products and services (Juran, 1995). Contemporary organizations employ different mechanisms, systems, tools, and processes to achieve quality through their strategies and tasks, such as Quality Circle, Six Sigma, Kaizen, and Pareto Analysis, to ensure that employees in organizations adopt total quality management values as a way of doing things.

Given the meanings of both culture and quality, we argue that a high performing organization cannot formulate a sustainable vision, mission, and goal that incorporates the culturally oriented behaviors and actions of organizational members who practice quality values. Similarly, organizational culture is imperative to develop in any high performing organization because culture can support quality ideologies when it is well trained and inculcated in members. Powell (1985) strongly argues that total quality management tools singlehandedly are unable to provide competitive advantages. Instead, it is the organizational resources that produce certain tacit behaviors that are difficult to replicate and are hence unique to the organizations that practice them, such as open culture, employee empowerment, and executive commitment. Over time, such tacit behaviors become the norms of the members in organizations and become the accepted way of doing things which is to implement quality standards. However, without a strong quality culture embedded in the members in an organization, quality cannot be sustained over time. Hence, internalization of culture needs to be materialized in the effort of promoting quality in the pursuits of sustainability and organizational excellence (Lasrado and Zakaria, 2019).

If we argue that culture is the construction of an organization, in which a leader co-creates its values with its teams and develops standards of behavior, then what about quality management? What is quality in the context of organizational culture? Is it a process, is it state or a con...