The False Promise of Organizational Culture Change: A Case Study of Middle Managers in Grocery Retailing*

ABSTRACT The strategic importance of managing organizational culture has been a central theme in organizational literature over the past two decades. But relatively little attention has been given to the impact of culture change initiatives on managers. This paper reports on the impact of a programme of culture change on managers at one of Britain's leading grocery retail chains. Based on a series of detailed interviews with managers together with examination of company documents and an understanding of trends in grocery retailing, we explain the purpose and content of change, and document and analyse the reactions of those managers who are expected to change their own cultural orientations as well as persuade their subordinates to change. We conclude that in this case at least changes in managerial behaviour, as with previously documented changes in the behaviour of shopfloor workers, are related more to surveillance, direct control and the threat of sanction than any transformation of managerial values. Indeed, the situation and experiences of managers – one of reduced autonomy, close monitoring and control, and perceived career insecurity – are explained less in relation to ‘organizational culture’, more in relation to organizational (re‐)structuring intended to create a more centralized form of organizational control.     

‘Intended’ and ‘implemented’ HRM: the missing linchpin in strategic human resource management research

We argue that inconclusive findings in the SHRM literature regarding the relationship between HRM systems and organizational performance may result primarily from methodological weaknesses and a failure of researchers to distinguish between HR practices intended by the organizations and those actually implemented. Rather than relying upon a single respondent per organization as is the norm, we contrast reports of both managers and non-managers from inside and outside HR departments to highlight differences between intended and implemented HRM. The findings, arrived at with the help of 195 interviews, 508 questionnaire responses and several company documents, support our expectation: implemented HRM may be substantially different from intended HRM; consistent implementation increases employee satisfaction with HRM, which is positively related to organizational performance. The current study thus highlights new factors that require attention in developing HR–performance analyses and also suggests that a mere imitation of HRM in the hopes of improving organizational performance creates no value. It is crucial that HR departments and managers remain committed and supportive to the development of effective HRM systems by focusing upon actual ‘implementation’ within their organizations.     

Managerial telework allowance decisions – a vignette study among German managers

Managers play an important role in the implementation of telework in organizations since they frequently have final approval over employees' requests for telework arrangements. Drawing upon March's (1994) dual-logic theory of decision making, the study examines antecedents of managers' responses to employees' requests for telework. Using a vignette study with a balanced experimental design, we investigated the impact of person-related, task-related and organizational context factors on managerial telework allowance decisions in German organizations. Several person- and task-related factors were found to be significantly related to managers' telework allowance decisions. Organizational context factors, such as a family-supportive organizational culture and formal policies were found to either directly or indirectly influence managers' responses to employees' requests for telework. More specifically, formal telework policies were important in stimulating favorable managerial telework allowance decisions when applicant criticality was low and the organizational culture was family-unsupportive. In line with March's (1994) theory of decision making, the study shows that utility maximization is only one perspective of decision making which managers apply to telework allowance decisions. Rule following and considerations of appropriateness are also taken into account by managers when deciding upon employees' telework requests.     

Farewell to the salaryman? The changing roles and work of middle managers in Japan

The 1990s and 2000s witnessed significant organizational change in Japanese firms and accompanying readjustments to the employment system. Such changes potentially have major implications for middle managers, or salarymen, in Japanese corporations. A survey of human resource managers and middle managers in eight medium sized Japanese organizations pointed to fairly significant, if not radical, change. This did, indeed, impact upon middle managers in those organizations. While the middle managers felt reasonably secure in their jobs, the nature of their jobs had reportedly changed, with a greater range of tasks, work intensification, longer hours, greater stress, more accountability, and a worsening work–life balance.     

Managers' Perceptions of Criteria of Organizational Effectiveness

This research explores managerial perceptions of organizational effectiveness and whether they have similarities with perceptions of academics, and with the competing values model of organizational effectiveness (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983). The results suggest that the same values organize the patterning of effectiveness criteria in a cohesion-based solution for managers and academics. Yet, this cohesion model has inadequate explanatory power for managers' perceptions and shows no relationship with either their experience or organizational preferences. In contrast, a conflict-based solution provides adequate explanatory power for managers and relates to their experience and to organizational preferences. If managers play any part in influencing effectiveness in organizations, then incorporating their views into models of organizational effectiveness is therefore likely to improve our understanding of organizational functioning.     

HR managers as toxin handlers: The buffering effect of formalizing toxin handling responsibilities

Toxin handlers are organizational members who help colleagues manage negative emotions in the workplace. Although toxin handling activities help distressed employees remain productive, they put the toxin handler at risk of emotional exhaustion. In this research, more than 400 HR managers described their experience managing emotionally charged employee problems. We found that formalizing toxin handling responsibilities provided a buffering effect: HR managers whose organizations had made handling emotionally charged employee problems a formal part of HR responsibilities experienced lower levels of emotional exhaustion and perceived HR as more effective, even when they engaged in high levels of toxin handling. Formalizing toxin handling responsibilities may protect HR managers from harm and ensure that they maintain the toxin handling function in their organizations. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF STRATEGIC DECISIONS

This study examines the process of upward influence in a variety of strategic decisions. The study provides a list of categories and supporting data for the agents, methods, perceived outcomes, and perceived causes of success and failure of upward influence interactions that impact upon the strategic decision-making process in organizations. The results suggest that: (a) middle-level managers (MLMs) deal directly with their superiors and use rational or persuasive arguments in their upward influence interactions in strategic decisions; (2) MLMs are very successful in their influence interactions and attribute their successes to internal causes; (3) MLMs and their superiors view the influence episode similarly; and (4) upward influence activity in strategic decisions is quite similar to upward influence activity in non-strategic decisions. The study also examines individual and organizational factors that are associated with success and failure in influence activity in strategic decision-making.     

Facilitating sustainable development decisions: measuring stakeholder reactions

Sustainable development is an issue of increasing importance, in which organizations must engage multiple stakeholders and consider their objectives when deciding on organizational actions, but research provides little guidance regarding how managers can measure stakeholder reactions and use information to facilitate decision‐making. The broad objective of this study is to provide insights useful for decision‐making. In this study, we investigate in its natural and complex environment a real‐world sustainable development conflict – whether to expand energy development in Wyoming. The primary issue is the impact that expanding energy development will have on wildlife and the environment. We collect data from both the local community and a broader national population for use in a quantitative analysis. We use contingent valuation methods to capture the social impact ascribed by the stakeholders. We conclude with a discussion of how this information can be used ex ante to inform decision‐making for sustainable development. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Language and the Circuits of Power in a Merging Multinational Corporation

abstract    We argue in this paper that corporate language policies have significant power implications that are easily overlooked. By drawing on previous work on power in organizations ( Clegg, 1989 ), we examine the complex power implications of language policy decisions by looking at three levels of analysis: episodic social interaction, identity/subjectivity construction, and reconstruction of structures of domination. In our empirical analysis, we focus on the power implications of the choice of Swedish as the corporate language in the case of the recent banking sector merger between the Finnish Merita and the Swedish Nordbanken. Our findings show how language skills become empowering or disempowering resources in organizational communication, how these skills are associated with professional competence, and how this leads to the creation of new social networks. The case also illustrates how language skills are an essential element in the construction of international confrontation, lead to a construction of superiority and inferiority, and also reproduce post-colonial identities in the merging bank. Finally, we also point out how such policies ultimately lead to the reification of post-colonial and neo-colonial structures of domination in multinational corporations.     

Career attitudes and success of managers: the impact of chance event,protean, and traditional careers

We propose a career model that focuses on the antecedents of career success for managers and professionals within organizations. The model includes constructs rarely represented in the literature, and is based on conservation of resources theory. Testing our model with a sample of 545 managers, we found significant effect of positive and negative social capital, perception of organizational politics, professional vitality, and protean career attitude on internal and external career success, mediated by organizational commitment and met expectations, and moderated by chance event effect. This original contribution includes incorporating new constructs and concentrates upon factors enabling support for successful careers.     

The Peripheral Halo Effect: Do Academic Spinoffs Influence Universities' Research Income?

Extant literature has drawn attention to the ‘halo effect’ of the good reputation of a core organizational activity on the outcome of a peripheral activity. We contribute to the literature on organizational reputation by illustrating a halo effect in the opposite direction – from the periphery to the core. We show that developing a reputation for a peripheral activity (in our context, universities' social impact via spinoffs) may have positive spillovers for core organizational activities (in our context, university research), a phenomenon we term the ‘peripheral halo effect'. We also show that this effect is more prominent for high‐status than for low‐status organizations. Our research also contributes to the academic‐entrepreneurship literature by revealing that spinoff portfolios can generate income for universities not only directly via equity positions but also indirectly via reputational benefits.     

Staffing marketing positions during global hyper-competitiveness: a market-based perspective

As organizations globalize their operations, there appears to be an imperceptible shift in focus from internal tangible resources to those of external intangible relational resources; in other words, economies of scale appear to being replaced by economies of global scope. The strategic implications of this swing in the importance of resource bases can also have a significant impact on the international human resource management area. Identifying managers with local market knowledge and contacts becomes a critical consideration in the selection process. Maintaining on-going personal relations in foreign markets also helps to cement inter-organizational relationships such as strategic alliances. In the ‘think global, act local’ relational networks of global business, inpatriate managers appear to have the necessary characteristics of both organizational trust and local tacit knowledge to be effective global managers.     

Capabilities in Motion: New Organizational Forms and the Reshaping of the Hollywood Movie Industry*

abstract This paper looks at the evolution of capabilities in the Hollywood movie industry in the aftermath of the transition from a studio era dominated by integrated hierarchies to a post‐studio era dominated by flexible hub organizations supplied by networks of resource providers. Adopting a dynamic capabilities perspective we argue that two industry capabilities – mobilizing and transforming capabilities – play a crucial role in assembling and transforming resource bundles into feature films. We further argue that the transition to new organizational forms shifts the co‐evolutionary process, with practices and routines that make up mobilizing capabilities changing faster and becoming more important to box office success than practices and routines that make up transforming capabilities. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 400 films split between the studio and post‐studio eras. The results support our hypotheses, pointing to the influence of centralized control versus dispersed access to resources. The strategy of integrated hierarchical organizations depends on ownership of resources that reduces incentives to develop mobilizing capabilities, and increases incentives to develop transforming capabilities. The advent of new organizational forms, by contrast, increases returns to new practices and routines that mobilize resources at the expense of returns on exploring practices and routines that make up transforming capabilities.     

Managing Change,or Changing Managers? The role of middle managers in UK public service reform

Abstract

Drawing upon interview data from three case study organizations, we examine the role of middle managers in UK public service reform. Using theory fragments from organizational ecology and role theory, we develop three role archetypes that middle managers might be enacting. We find that rather than wholesale enactment of a ‘change agent’ role, middle managers are balancing three predominant, but often conflicting, change-related roles: as ‘government agent’, ‘diplomat administrator’ and, less convincingly, ‘entrepreneurial leader’. Central government targets are becoming the main preoccupation for middle managers across many public services and they represent a dominant constraint on allowing ‘managers to manage’.     

'Citibankers' at Citigroup: A Study of the Loss of Institutional Trust after a Merger

abstract    In this paper, we present the results of a study of the loss of institutional trust following a merger. Specifically, we focus on how issues of organizational identity and identification processes contributed to the loss of institutional trust among a group of employees of Citigroup after its creation through the merger of Citicorp and Travelers. Our study makes two important contributions. First, we propose and demonstrate empirically that institutional trust, like interpersonal trust, can be identity-based. Second, adopting a narrative approach to organizational identity, we explore institutional trust in a post-merger context, highlighting how institutional trust is initially undermined after a merger by the ambiguity of the new organization's identity; and how later, once the identity of the new organization becomes less ambiguous, institutional trust can continue to be undermined by the absence of employees' identification with the new organization, especially among those who were highly-identified with their legacy organizations.     

Women abroad: getting the best results from women managers

Abstract This study explores the work environment of expatriate women managers in American corporations and investigates the determinants of their job satisfaction. The strategic importance of global assignments has increased over the years. The real cost of unsuccessful expatriates extends beyond the monetary expenses. As the number of women managers working overseas increases, so does the importance of this topic. Additionally, because women in expatriate positions are relatively new, their needs for job satisfaction and career aspirations are not known to most organizations. This research intends to fill this gap. The study concentrates on four major areas that are considered important for obtaining job satisfaction: (1) the way in which organizations design their overseas jobs, (2) women's skills and characteristics, (3) international human resource policies of companies and (4) the cultural environment of host countries. The applied research covers two phases: a study of expatriate managers during their assignments overseas and the evaluation of overseas experience upon their return. The results indicate that women in overseas assignments are satisfied overall with their jobs. However, organizational variables are more strongly related to job satisfaction. The nature of job design in overseas postings has the greatest impact on women's job satisfaction. When the jobs are enriched, women gain intrinsic rewards and have high job satisfaction. Organizational support also contributes to the satisfaction of women expatriates. Training, mentoring and repatriation preparations have high impact on women's success and satisfaction. Women expatriates are more concerned with their repatriation and future advancement than their present assignments. The findings are important for theoretical and practical reasons. Theoretically, the achievement and satisfaction of women managers overseas cannot be simplified without taking into account organizational, personal and cultural factors. Practically, companies need to respond to the individual needs of expatriate women managers and then decide on their assignments and their repatriation accordingly.     

ENVIRONMENT, ORGANIZATION AND EFFECTIVENESS: A BIOGRAPHICAL APPROACH[1]

Answers to the question of what makes an organization effective have proved elusive despite more than 20 years of intensive theorizing and research. Yet the search for answers, which gained momentum with Lawrence and Lorsch's (1969) Organization and Environment, clearly has had salutary effects on students of organizations and their work. This paper offers an approach to analysing organizations explicitly based on two of those benefits. The first is the shift toward a more dynamic orientation for explaining organizational configurations and outcomes. The second is the identification of strategic decisionmaking as the key link between organizational environment, structures, and effectiveness. By merging these two, we construct a biographical approach to the study of organizations. This approach sees organizations as evolving through time in response to, or in anticipation of, both external and internal forces. We view effectiveness as the outcome of a variety of decisions taken by one or more groups of organizational actors - elites or coalitions - in the context of bounded rationalities and environmental and structural constraints. So decision processes underpin observed configurations of environmental and structural features and link these configurations to effectiveness. An organization's biography - the pattern of its evolution - can be conceptualized as a succession of decisions and their consequences, with some decisions having a major long-term influence on the direction taken by the organization and its effectiveness, while others have but an incremental influence. This article is an initial effort to make concrete our ideas. The opening section discusses organizational decision-making and organizational effectiveness. This is the core of our approach: a basis for categorizing organizational decisions and in particular for singling out those which can be regarded as strategic. It is our contention that significant decisions vary across organizations and that it will embrace rather than ignore history and context. And ultimately, it will enhance our understanding of organizational effectiveness.     

Skills,core capabilities,and the choice between merging,allying, and trading assets

We analyze two firms’ choice between merging, allying, and trading assets. We consider a setting in which firms have assets, skills, and core capabilities; skills are the component of organizational capital that increases in the course of joint operations, core capabilities the component that does not. We find that the two firms trade assets for them to operate separately in case the two firms have high initial skills; the two firms merge in case they have similar core capabilities; they ally where there is little equilibrium double moral hazard. We compare the times to dissolution in the alliance with those to divesture or post-merger integration in the merger; for all but the last jointly operated asset, we find that joint operations cease earlier in the alliance than in the merger.     

Horizontal alliances and the merger paradox

Mergers and alliances are two organizational forms which allow firms to combine complementary capabilities to realize strategic goals; they are, in many cases, strategic substitutes. Managerial decision‐makers, therefore, require a framework for choosing between the two strategies. This paper contributes to this decision‐making process by highlighting one advantage of alliances over mergers. Specifically, while the profitability of a cost‐reducing horizontal merger is diminished by the resulting expansion of non‐merging competitor(s), an alliance, where partners collaborate to reduce costs but sell their product independently, enables its partners to realize the benefits of merging but avoid the problem of strengthening competitors. A model is developed which demonstrates the profitability of establishing such an alliance compared to a merger. The implications of this strategy for antitrust review are briefly discussed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What is the joint effect of employee satisfaction and customer orientation on the organizational culture in metalworking manufacturing?

It is a known fact that culture is an important element for the organizations. In this context, a research has been carried out in which the main subject is about to investigate the organizational culture depending on the factors of employee satisfaction and customer orientation in metalworking manufacturing firms. To perform the study, we constructed an original model and conducted research with 578 employees of metalworking organizations. After the data analysis, we determined that organizational culture has positive-significant correlation with employee satisfaction and customer orientation (at the 0.000 level). Additionally, the total explained variance of organizational culture – depending on employee satisfaction and customer orientation – has come out as a satisfying value (0.53). According to the results of our research, we are able to conclude that employee satisfaction and customer orientation has a mid-level effect on creating a substantial organizational culture.