The Impact of Culture on Organizational Decision-Making

Theory and Practice in Higher Education

William G. Tierney

• Publisher: Stylus Publishing
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781620364994
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Colleges and universities are currently undergoing the most significant challenges they have faced since World War II. Rising costs, increased competition from for-profit providers, the impact of technology, and the changing desires and needs of consumers have combined to create a dynamic tension for those who work in, and study, postsecondary education. What worked yesterday is unlikely to work tomorrow. The status quo or bromides such as "stay the course" are insufficient responses in a market that demands creativity and innovation if an organization does not simply wish to survive, but thrive.Managerial responses or top-down linear decisions are antithetical to academic organizations and most likely recipes for disaster. In today's "flat world", decision-making for most organizations has become less hierarchical and more decentralized. Understanding this trend is of particular importance for organizations with traditions of shared governance. The message of this book is that understanding organizational culture is critical for those who recognize that academe must change, but are unsure how to make that change happen. Even the most seasoned college and university administrators and professors often ask themselves, "What holds this place together?" The author's answer is that an organization's culture is the glue of academic life. Paradoxically, this "glue" does not make things get stuck, but unstuck. An understanding of culture enables an organization's participants to interpret the institution to themselves and others, and in consequence, to propel the institution forward.An organization's culture is reflected in what is done, how it is done, and who is involved in doing it. It concerns decisions, actions, and communication on an instrumental and symbolic level. This book considers various facets of academic culture, discusses how to study it, how to analyze it, and how to improve it in order to move colleges and universities aggressively into the future while maintaining core academic values. This book presents updated versions of eight key articles on organizational culture in higher education by William G. Tierney. The new introduction that sets them in the context of current and future challenges will add further value to articles that are already in high demand.

I

THE STRANGE CASE OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

His mind . . . was busy in endeavoring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted.

—Doctor Watson, about Sherlock Holmes
(Doyle, 1902, p. 72)

Those who work in, study, and lead colleges and universities undoubtedly identify with the comment Doctor Watson has made about his friend, Sherlock Holmes. A donor berates the president because the football team lost a game and threatens to cancel his gift for a new student center. A speaker comes to campus who denounces the United States and the mayor of the city then denounces the faculty for inviting the speaker; the faculty, in turn, denounces the university president for not supporting academic freedom. The campus library committee dissolves in a dispute between those who want to continue buying paper books and those who want to go digital. A professor shoots a gun out the window as a demonstration of fear and paranoia in her intro to psychology classroom, the campus police arrest her, and the Faculty Senate calls for the resignation of the head of campus security because he has chilled the climate for free speech on campus. A student has a bicycle accident and may be paralyzed for life, and the campus has a candlelight vigil for him where 1,000 people show up. A professor announces her retirement after four decades of teaching in the Writing Program, and her former students return to campus for a celebratory party; one of the participants has just won the Pulitzer Prize.

All of these ‘‘strange and apparently disconnected episodes’’ could happen on any number of campuses. The challenge for those of us who study or work on such a campus is to try to figure out not only what holds the campus together, but how to strengthen the social glue so that the fabric of the institution is stronger tomorrow than it was yesterday. Such a challenge has less to do with facts and figures, bottom lines, or chains of command, and more to do with what I think of as an organization’s culture. The idea of an organization’s culture is not unlike the culture of a particular group.

When I graduated from college and joined the Peace Corps I ended up in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. I was the only foreigner who lived in Tahala, a small Berber village nestled in the foothills and a day’s drive to anything resembling a city. Anyone who has traveled abroad, especially to countries and cultures particularly different from one’s own, undoubtedly has faced the sort of disorientation I encountered as a 21-year-old living abroad for the first time in my life. Social roles were different. The way people interacted with one another varied from what I expected. My sense of right and wrong, good and bad, were often in conflict with how my new neighbors acted. How I communicated with everyone was different; frequently I said or did something that I thought was completely innocuous or innocent only to discover that I had made yet another faux pas.

Culture is best understood when we transgress boundaries because, at those moments, individuals are clear that their cultural sensibility is in conflict with the accepted norms. However, culture is more than simply a list of dos and don’ts about how to act when abroad as if all that is needed is a Miss Manners book on cross-cultural etiquette. Instead, culture is more useful to think of as an interpretation that takes place on a daily basis among the members of a particular group. True, ceremonies, rituals, and traditions pervade a culture, but how members of a group make sense of and interpret those events also in part depends on the individuals currently involved and the current contexts in which they occur. From this perspective culture is neither static nor monolithic. Men and women, for example, may interpret the same event in an entirely different manner. Fifty years ago, men or women may have interpreted the same event differently from their counterparts today. Culture is in constant flux and reinterpretation.

An understanding of an organization’s culture enables individuals to think of the organization more as an interpretive undertaking than a rationalized structure with clear decision-making processes. Anyone who moves from one institution to another knows that differences exist and that the new campus takes some getting used to—whether it be the manner in which the faculty interact with one another; the type of students at the institution; the relationships between the administration and faculty; or any number of microscopic topics, such as what events individuals are supposed to attend or even whether one eats lunch with others or at one’s desk. The ability to think of the organization as a culture also helps individuals consider how seemingly disconnected episodes might actually fit together.

The study of organizational culture was a relatively new topic when I entered the academy in the 1980s. Culture was thought to be the domain of anthropologists who studied ‘‘exotic’’ tribes; at the time, rational decision making was the province of modern organizations and those who studied them. Strategic planning was all the rage, but the manner in which it was done involved an institution’s leaders clarifying lines of authority and deciding which choices to make. In effect, a handful of an institution’s leaders decided the course the institution was to take and everyone else followed. Usually, the institution followed a path that had been set; the status quo was the norm.

Since that time the study of culture has advanced a great deal, and individuals increasingly have moved away from linear and formalized decisionmaking structures and toward flatter, more collaborative undertakings. An understanding of culture has become essential for those who seek to understand how to foment change in the organization. Higher education is undergoing as significant a period of turbulence and innovation as at any time in the last 50 years. The status quo is no longer tenable, and of consequence, individuals have tried to figure out what might enable the campus to move forward rather than remain wedded to the norm. The point is not so much to drop everything that the institution once did, but to communicate to insiders and outsiders what the organization values and how it is different from other institutions. The result is a renewed interest in organizational culture.

This book discusses the various facets of organizational culture in three parts. The first part of the book opens with a discussion of how I define the culture of a postsecondary institution. In ‘‘Facts and Constructs’’ I point out how different an interpretive perspective is from a realist perspective. Proponents of realism believe organizational reality exists, whereas interpreti-vists do not. The chapter points out that a cultural perspective affects not only how researchers study the problems in an organization but also how the organization’s actors act in it. Chapter 3, ‘‘Organizational Culture in Higher Education,’’ offers the reader a way to think about culture in academic organizations. Just as an anthropologist has particular terms he or she uses when studying a traditional culture, I suggest what terms are essential to consider when analyzing a college or university. An anthropologist who conducts an ethnography in a village, for example, undoubtedly will write about some aspects of kinships and ritual. To avoid such a discussion would be an oversight. Similarly, if we study a postsecondary institution and avoid the topic of the institution’s mission, we would be remiss. The point, of course, is not to say that one or another mission is ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘bad,’’ but, instead, to come to terms with how the ‘‘villagers’’—those in the organization—use the term. I call upon data from a yearlong study to highlight the components of culture.

In Part Two we move from definitional terms to specific issues and problems. Chapter 4, ‘‘Academic Work and Institutional Culture,’’ investigates how the institution’s actors make sense of the curriculum in relation to the overarching mission of the organization. The challenge in the text is to come to terms with the manner in which an organization’s participants define knowledge. I challenge the idea that the disciplines—those knowledge-producing units that were beyond the confines of an organization—develop knowledge. I also quarrel with the assumption that a postsecondary institution is merely where knowledge gets transferred to the consumer by way of curricula. Instead, I suggest that a college or university plays a role in defining knowledge based on its own culture and mores. A curriculum is an ideological statement that derives from the organizational participants’ understanding of the curricula. The point is less that each institution is different, or ‘‘to each his own,’’ and rather that knowledge is constantly redefined. One place where these definitions get worked out is at the curricular level in a postsecondary institution.

In chapters 5, 6, and 7, I discuss various aspects of student and faculty life. In ‘‘An Anthropological Analysis of Student Participation in College,’’ I critique college-going models that use cultural terms (such as rites of passage) but fail to view such terms from a cultural perspective. I call upon data from my work with Native American youth to point out how different conceptual models of individuals based on their own unique cultures frequently come into conflict when they arrive on a mainstream campus. The challenge, I suggest, is that cultural models of assimilation create problems for those who are different—frequently students of color. The need for them is to undergo a cultural suicide of sorts, where they need to conform to dominant norms that may be in conflict with their own internalized sense of how to act.

Such an observation sheds light on the idea of organizational socialization. Rather than simply assume that new recruits need to be assimilated to the organization, I consider ways for an organization’s participants to think of culture as multivocal, a place where creativity and differences may flourish. Colleges and universities are best when they are able to organize around the idea of difference, rather than conformity, but such a point seems at odds with the notion of culture where bonds of socialization tie people together. Indeed, the culture of the army may be easier to understand insofar as the norms are clearly articulated and the idea of socialization in large part pertains to figuring out how to get recruits inducted into the ideology of the group. However, in knowledge-creating organizations such as colleges or universities, the challenge is not assimilation but creativity. Creativity and innovation are particularly important in organizations not wedded to the status quo. In the 21st century, postsecondary institutions need to change if they are to succeed. The result is that we need a culture geared toward innovation rather than stasis. In large part, the second part of the book considers what such a culture looks like and how socialization functions to enable what I call ‘‘cultural integrity,’’ where an individual maintains his or her own sense of self but also comes to terms with the culture of the organization.

One key component of culture that advances or retards organizational learning is communication, and in chapter 8, I offer an analysis of communication based on work I conducted with my colleague, James T. Minor, about governance and decision making. Communication, we argue, is not simply the pronouncements a college president makes at highly ceremonial occasions such as graduations, but also how individuals interact with one another on a daily basis. Communication occurs on multiple levels and in multiple forms. To understand the culture of an organization, an analyst needs to come to terms with how the organization’s participants communicate with one another. At a time when e-mail has become ubiquitous and people are as likely to have a teleconference as a face-to-face meeting, communication is changing in both speed and delivery modes. The challenge in the chapter has less to do with stating that one form is better than another and more to do with suggesting that communication is essential for good governance; if we are not more focused on how communication is tied to the organization’s culture, we run the risk of ineffectiveness. Good communication is not a cure-all, we argue, but bad communication is sure to make innovation that much more difficult.

I continue this line of thought in the final chapter. One of the unique characteristics of a college or university is the decision-making apparatus used to reach decisions about big and little issues. The idea of shared governance is both emblematic of organizational culture and ‘‘real’’ in the sense that it suggests the structures individuals employ to reach decisions. At times critics have suggested that shared governance is outmoded and too lethargic in a world where faster decision making needs to take place. Others have observed that the business world is becoming more like academe; businesses are more participative and less hierarchical. Both observations, while correct, miss the point. Shared governance is a cultural artifact of the organization. I do not wish to embalm the idea as something sacred and untouchable, but we are also mistaken when we look on it as nothing more than a decisionmaking structure. ‘‘The way we do things around here’’ goes to the heart of an organization’s culture. The challenge is to consider cultural artifacts in the changing times in which they exist and to think about how to improve them, rather than simply acting in an instrumental manner as if all we are doing is changing the stoplights on a street corner to make them more efficient.

In sum, organizational culture is that ‘‘scheme’’ for the latter-day Sherlock Holmes who studies or works in academic institutions. When we utilize a cultural perspective, we have a better understanding of how seemingly unconnected acts and events fall into place and, more important, how to help the organization’s participants move forward. If the status quo is untenable in a fast-changing environment such as that in which we now find ourselves, then we need an institution’s members to be able to not rely on tired assumptions about ‘‘that’s the way we’ve always done it.’’ Culture is dynamic and ever changing. In this book I surely do not offer a cookbook of recipes to follow, but the chapters afford us the ability to think about the various aspects of culture that enable individuals to come together and then move forward.

Reference

Doyle, A. C. (1902). The hound of the Baskervilles: Another adventure of Sherlock Holmes. New York: Signet Classics.

PART ONE

DEFINING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

2

FACTS AND CONSTRUCTS

Defining Reality in Higher Education Organizations

One subject of current debate among organizational theorists is whether environments are objective or socially constructed phenomena. In this chapter, I consider the implications for researchers and administrators if we interpret the organizational environment of higher education as socially constructed or ‘‘enacted’’ (Smircich & Stubbart, 1985). Although this interpretive perspective has been mentioned in some higher education literature (Cameron, 1984; Chaffee, 1985; Chaffee & Tierney, 1988; Tierney, 1988a; Whetten & Cameron, 1985), the implications for higher education researchers and administrators have not been adequately explored. The supposition that environments are socially constructed implies an alternative orientation to problem solving and raises new research questions.

I first differentiate between objective and enac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1. The Strange Case Of Organizational Culture
• Part One: Defining Organizational Culture
• 2. Facts And Constructs
• 3. Organizational Culture In Higher Education
• Part Two: Examining Academic Life
• 4. Academic Work And Institutional Culture
• 5. An Anthropological Analysis Of Student Participation In College
• 6. Organizational Socialization In Higher Education
• 7. Models Of Minority College Going And Retention
• 8. A Cultural Perspective On Communication And Governance
• Part Three: The Road Ahead
• 9. A Cultural Analysis Of Shared Governance
• Index
• Backcover