Chapter 11: Organizations as Political Arenas( ) and Political

Agents
Walmart:
Sam Walton started his merchant career in 1945 as proprietor of the
second-best variety store in a small rural Arkansas town.
Walmart is the worlds largest employer and, for both better and
worse, one of the most powerful companies on the globe.
Walmart effect- an umbrella term for multiple ways Wal-Mart
influences consumers, vendors, employees, communities, and the
environment.
Wal-Mart has struggled in recent years with a budding assortment of
critics and image problems.
Wal-Mart is both an arena for internal conflict and a political agent
or player operating on a field crammed with competitors pursuing
their own interests.
Wal-Mart has historically resisted any efforts to unionize its workers,
but in the fall of 2012, the company had its first experience with
strikes by workers in multiple cities.
As arenas, organizations house an ongoing interplay of players
and agendas.
As an agent, organizations are powerful tools for achieving the
purposes of whoever calls the shot.
Viewing organizations as political arenas is a way to reframe
many organizational processes.
Organization also as a political embodiment of contending
claims.
As political agents, organizations operate in complex ecosystems
inter-dependent networks of organizations engaged in related activities
and occupying particular niches.
Organizations as Arenas
o Barbarians at the Gate, Ross Johnson, has explain the
Organization constantly change and yet never change.
o Ross Johnson headed RJR Nabisco; moved RJRs headquarters
from Winston-Salem, to Atlanta.
Political Dimensions of Organizational processes:
As arenas, Organizations house contest and set the
stakes, the rules of the game, and the parameter for
players.
Political dimension: Every organization process; task
of shaping and structuring an organization.
The critical question becomes not how organizations
should be designed to maximize effectiveness, but
rather, whose preferences and interests are to be
served by the organization.

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 Structures are the resolution, at a given time, of the
contending claims of control, subject to the
constraint that the structures permit the organization
to survive.
Sources of Political Initiative
Gamsons distinction between authorities and
partisans implies two major sources of political
initiative.
Bottom up: relying on mobilization of groups to
assert their interests; the impetus for change was a
significant disruption in old patterns; In every case,
despite intense opposition, grassroots groups fought
to have their rights embodied in law, policy or
political change.
o Examples: American Civil rights movement;
the antiwar movement in 1970s, environmental
activism Green activism; Arab Spring;
o In each case, changing conditions intensified
dissatisfaction for disenfranchised groups. Each
reflected a classic script for revolutions: a
period of rising expectations followed by
widespread disappointment.
Top Down: relying on authorities capacity to
influence subordinates.
o Examples: Deal and Nutt (1980), conducted a
revealing analysis of local school districts that
received generous, long-term federal funding
to develop experimental programs for
comprehensive changes in rural education.
The new program became a political
football.
o The program studied by Deal and Nutt
represented examples of top-down change
efforts under comparatively favorable
circumstances.
o The usual mistake is assuming that the right
idea and legitimated authority ensure success.
o The assumption neglects the agendas and
power of the lowerarchy- partisans and
groups in midlevel and lower-level
positions, who devise creative and
maddening ways to resist, divert,
undermine, ignore, or overthrow
innovative plans.
Organizations as Political Agents

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 o Organizations are lively arenas for internal politics.
o ecosystems: because organizations depend on their
environment for resources they need to survive, they are
inevitably enmeshed with external constituents whose
expectations or demands must be heeded.
o As political actors, organizations need to master many of
the basic skills of individual managers as politician;
develop an agenda, map the environment, manage
relationships with both allies and enemies, and negotiate
compacts, accords, and alliances.
o Moore (1993) illustrates this with two ecosystems in the
personal computer business, one pioneered by Apple Computer
and other by IBM.
Political Dynamics of Ecosystems
o Organizations have parochial interest and compete for scarce
resource.
o Johnson made a fateful decision to engage in a management
craze of the time- a leveraged buyout (LBO)
o Johnson and his allies pursed their private interests more than
the corporations.
o An organizations role in an ecosystem affects how it can balance
pursuit of its own interests with the overall well-being of the
ecosystem.
Wal-Mart is successful because it figured out how to
create, manage, and evolve an incredibly powerful
business ecosystem.
o LBO is to find an undervalued company, buy up shares with
someone elses money, fix it up or break it up, and sell it at a
profit. Its a high-risk venture.
o Wal-Mart has limited ability to exclude other players- including
the firms many competitors and critics- who choose to spend
time in its neighborhood, even if uninvited.
o Organizational ecosystems come in many forms and sizes. Some,
like Wal-Marts, are huge and global. Others are small and local
(like the ecosystem of laundries in Oslo or policing in Omaha).
Public Policy Ecosystems:
o In the public sector, policy arenas form around virtually every
government activity.
o In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration has
been a troubled key player for decades.
o Marion C Blakey used to the president of the FAA, however, failed
to fix an air travel system battered by terrorism.
o Much of the fault lay in its ecosystem: Nobody is in charge.
o The various players in the system, including big airlines, small
aircraft owners, labor unions, politicians, airplane manufacturers,

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 and executives with their corporate jets, are locked in permanent
warfare as they fight to protect their own interests.
o Education is another illustration of a complex policy ecosystem.
One popular remedy, enshrined in federal law in the No child
Left Behind Act, emphasizes tests and incentives: measure how
well schools are doing, reward the winners, and penalize the
losers.
No child left behind has been even more controversial;
research evidence is equivocal, and strenuous opposition in
many states has led the federal Department of Education
into state-by-state negotiations to modify the
requirements, making valid assessment of success even
more difficult.
Business-Government Ecosystems:
o Government and business inevitably intersect in a multitude of
ecosystems.
o Perrow discusses one example: pharmaceutical companies,
physicians, and government.
o Example: drug companies
o Politically active firms use a range of strategies for influencing
government agencies. Example such as FedEx.
o If you dont use politicians, you cant expand business these
days in Japan-thats basic.
o Businessmen provide politicians with funds, politician provide
businessmen with information.
o Relationships are critical, because guanxi often matters
more than laws and regulations.
o Negotiating the ethical terrain is treacherous in a country where
bribes are technically illegal but the exchange of cash-filled
red envelopes is deeply rooted in a culture that sees gift-
giving as basic to building relationships.
Society as Ecosystem
o On a still grander scale, we find society; the massive, swirling
ecosystem in which business, government, and the public are
embedded.
o If governments cant set the rules, who will? The corporations?
But theyre the players. Whos the referee?
o We dont often talk about the concentration of corporate power,
but it is almost unfathomable that the men and women who run
just 20 companies make decisions every day that steer one-fifth
of the U.S economy
Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald Salancik, The External Control of
Organization ( New York: HarperCollins, 1978)
o Pffer and Salancik emphasize that organizations depend on their
environment for inputs that they need to survive.

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 Organizations understanding of their environment is often
distorted or imperfect (because organizations act on only
the information theyre geared to collect and know how to
interpret)
Organization confront multiple constituents whose
demands are often inconsistent.
o Pfeffer and Salancik describe three roles for managers, two
political and one symbolic:
A responsive role in which managers adjust the
organizations activities to comply with pressures from the
environment
A discretionary role in which they seek to alter the
organizations relationship with its environment
A symbolic role arising from the widely accepted myth that
managers make a difference.
o The marketing concept of management is based on the
premise that over the longer term all businesses are born
and survive or die because people either want them or
dont want them.
o The marketing concept emphasizes that the creative aspect of
marketing is discovering, defining, and fulfilling what people
want or need or what solves their lift-style problems.
o Large multinational companies have enormous power but must
also cope with the demands of other powerful players:
governments, labor unions, investors, and consumers.
Conclusion
o Organizations are both arenas for internal politics and political
agents with their own agendas, resources, and strategies.
o As arenas, they house competition and offer a setting for
the ongoing interplay of divergent interests and agendas.
o As agent, organizations are tools, often very powerful tools, for
achieving the purpose of whoever controls them.
Part Five: The Symbolic Frame:
Chapter 12: Organizational Symbols and Culture
Palio:
For eight hundred years, neighborhoods in Siena, Italy, have
competed twice each summer in a horse race known as the
palio.
A crowd of more than a hundred thousand gathers to witness a
seventy-five-second event that people live for throughout the
year.
Twenty-two-year-old Giovanni Atzeni won in a photo finish.
Palio is a drug that makes you a God. And then crucifies
you.

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 Unless you were born in Siena, they insist, you will never
understand the palio.
Rooted in a time when Siena was a proud and powerful
republic, the occasion embodies the towns unique
identity.
Building distinctive identity or community around a brand name
in business updates ancient traditions based on tribe and
homeland, like those surrounding the palio.

Carnival-like zaniness.
Zappos:
Welcome to Zappos, Tony Hsiehs Culture of Happiness
Zappos placed #11 on Fortunes list of the Best 100 companies to work
for.
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh credits the companys phenomenal success to
its distinctive culture with carnival-like zaniness that bears some
resemblance to Sienas palio
Zappos and the palio are two examples of how symbols permeate every
fiber of society and organizations.
1. A symbol is something that stands for or suggests something
else; it conveys socially constructed meanings beyond its
intrinsic or obvious functional use.
2. We create symbols to sustain hope and faith.
3. Symbols and symbolic actions are part of everyday life and are
particularly perceptible at weekly, monthly, or seasonal high points.
4. The symbolic frame interprets and illuminates the basic issues of
meaning and belief that make symbols so powerful.
Members of congress sang God Bless America on the capitol steps.
Memorials of white angels appeared at places across the country. President
Obama shed a tear in his nationally televised speech- a sign that he was
personally saddened by the tragedy.
Symbolic Assumptions
o The symbolic frame forms an umbrella for ideas from several
disciplines, including organization theory and sociology, political
science, and neurolinguistics programming.
o Freud and Jung relied heavily on symbolic concepts to
probe the human psyche and unconscious archetypes.
1. Anthropologist have traditionally focused on symbols and
their place in the lives of human.
2. In the early 1980s, business books began to apply cultural
ideas to corporations, health care, and non-profit
enterprises.
3. The symbolic frame distills ideas from diverse
sources into five suppositions:
1. What is most important is not what happens but what it means.

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2. Activity and meaning are loosely coupled; events and actions have
multiple interpretations as people experience situations differently.
3. Facing uncertainty and ambiguity, people create symbols to resolve
confusion, find direction, and anchor hope and faith.
4. Events and processes are often more important for what is expressed
than for what is produced. Their emblematic form weaves a tapestry of
secular myths, heroes and heroines, rituals, ceremonies, and stories to
help people find purpose and passion.
5. Culture forms the superglue that bonds an organization, unites people,
and helps an enterprise to accomplish desired ends.
The symbolic frame sees life as allegorical, more
serendipitous than linear.
Organizational Symbols
o An organizations culture is revealed and communicated
through its symbols: Geicos gecko, Targets bulls-eye, or
Aflacs duck.
o Symbols take many forms in organizations.
o Myth, vision, and values imbue an organization with deep
purpose and resolve.
Myths, vision, and values:
o They communicate unconscious wishes and conflicts, mediate
contradictions, and offer a narrative anchoring the present in the
past.
o All organizations rely on myths or sagas of varying strength and
intensity.
o The original plan for Southwest Airlines, for example, was
sketched on a cocktail napkin in a San Antonio Bar.
o Myths undergird an organizations values.
o Values characterize what an organization stands for,
qualities worthy of esteem or commitment.
o The Edina School District, following the suicide of a
superintendent, involved staff, parents, and students in
formally articulating values in document: We care, we
share, we Dare.
o The values and assumptions that shape its members. Are all the
Marines have?
o Vision turns an organizations core ideology, or sense of
purpose, into a image of the future.
1. Martin Luther kings I have a dream speech, for example,
articulated potentially a new future for race relations
rooted in the ideals of American founding fathers.
o Ritual: A symbolic act, ritual is routine that usually has a stable
purpose, but one that invariably alludes to more it says, and has
many meanings at once.

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 o Ceremonies serve four roles: The socialize, stabilize, reassure,
and convey messages to external constituencies.
Organizations as Cultures
o We describe how two distinctive companies-BMW and Nordstrom
department stores- have successfully applied symbolic ideas.
o Culture: What is it? What is its role in an organization?
o Schein offers a formal definition: a pattern of shared basic
assumptions that a group learned as it solved its problems of
external adaption and integration
o Over time, an organization develops distinctive beliefs,
values, and customs.
o To be sure, culture can become a negative force, as it did at
Enron.
BMWs Dream Factory:
o In 1959, BMW was in a financial hole as deep as the one General
Motors and Ford have experienced in past years.
o The memory of this close call is part of BMWs lore: Near death
experience are healthy for companies.
o BMW shucked off its top-down mentality in 1959 and cultivated a
new cultural mind-set to guard against making the same mistake
again.
o The plants modern, artsy, open-air feeling reflects the
companys cultural values and demonstrates its commitment to
breaking down barriers among workers, designers, engineers and
managers.
o Much of BMWs success stems from an entrepreneurial culture
thats rare in corporate Germany, where management is usually
top-down and the gulf between workers and management is
vast.
1. Openness encourages chance encounters and a free
heeling exchange of ideas.
2. Commitment to its workers is another core value of
BMW.
3. Rituals are a way of life at BMW- building bonds
among diverse groups, connecting employees heart
with the companys soul, and pooling far-flung ideas
for better products.
o Everyones efforts are aimed at building a distinctive automobile
that an owner will be proud to drive.
o The vitality and cohesiveness of the idea-driven BMW culture is
reflected in the companys bottom line.
Geert Hofstede, Cultures consequences: International
Differences in Work-related Values:

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 o Defining culture as the collective programming of the mind that
distinguishes the members of one human group from another.
Hofstede focused particularly on work-related values.
o The heart of his book is a survey of a large U.S. multinational
companys employees.
o 117,000 surveys.
o He ultimately settled on four dimensions of national culture:
1. Power distance: a measure of power inequality
between bosses and subordinates.
High power-distance countries: Philippines,
Mexico, and Venezuela; Display more autocratic
relationships between bosses and subordinates.
Low power distance countries: Denmark, Israel,
Austria. More democratic and decentralized patterns.
2. Uncertainty avoidance- the level of comfort with
uncertainty and ambiguity.
High uncertainty avoidance: Greece, Portgal,
Belgium, and Japan Tend to make heavy use of
structure, rules, and specialist to maintain control.
Low uncertainty avoidance: Hongkong, Denmark,
Sweden, and Singapore; Put less emphasis on
structure and are more tolerant of risk taking.
3. Individualism- the importance of the individual
versus the collective
Highest on individualism: USA, Australia, Great
Britain, and Canada; Put emphasis on autonomous,
self-reliant individuals who care for themselves.
Lowest on individualism: Peru, Pakistan,
Colombia, and Venezuela; Emphasized mutual
loyalty.
4. Masculinity-femininity- the degree to which a
culture emphasizes ambition and achievement
versus caring and nurture.
Highest on masculinity: Japan, Austria, Venezuela,
Italy; Men tend to feel strong pressures for success,
relatively few women hold high level positions, and
job stress is high.
Low in masculinity: Denmark, Norway, the
Netherlands, and Sweden.
Nordstroms Rooted Culture:
o Nordstrom department stores are renowned for customer service
and employee satisfaction.

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 o Customers rave about its no-hassle, no questions asked
commitment to high-quality service: not service the way it used
to be, but service that never was
o Collectively, they anchored the firm in an enduring philosophical
principle: the customer is always right.
o The following generations of Nordstroms expanded the business
while maintaining a close connection with historical roots.
o Nordstroms unique commitment to customer service is heralded
in its heroics-tales of heroes and heroines going out of
their way.
o Nordstroms commitment to customer service is reinforced in
storewide rituals.
o Use your sound judgment in all situations. -5*8 CARD
o Periodic ceremonies reinforce the companys cherished values.
o The delicate balance of competition, cooperation, and
customer service has served Nordstrom well.
o Starbucks
o His memo called for stopping the cultural drift: Its time to get
back to the core and make the changes that are necessary to
evoke the heritage, the tradition, and passion we all have for the
Starbucks experience.
o Nordstroms, like Starbucks, has stumbled in the past. But its
steadfast historical loyalty to proven values and ways keeps the
company headed in the right direction.
Conclusion
o In contrast to traditional views emphasizing rationality, the
symbolic frame highlights the tribal aspects of contemporary
organizations.
o Myths, values, and vision bring cohesiveness, clarity, and
direction in the presence of confusion and mystery.
o Symbolic forms and activities are the basic elements of culture,
accumulated over time to shape an organizations unique
identity and character.
o Our links to yesterday and tomorrow depend also on the
aesthetic, emotional, and symbolic aspects of human life- on
saga, play, and celebration.

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