16.

Does Culture Management increase “the scope and penetration of

management control” (Willmott, 1993: 522)?

Define culture.

Culture refers to the underlying values, beliefs & codes of procedure that makes a
community.

Culture is unifying, it binds the organization together.

Define culture management.

Culture management is the desire to shape people’s beliefs.

Culture management imagines a world in which shared values are directed towards the
goal of productivity.

Shared values meant that everyone in the organization is committed on common goals
such as high quality output and customer service. As a result, there will be less internal
conflict, more efficient production and a high degree of motivation and commitment from
everyone in the work place.

Culture is the key to employee commitment.

A strong culture creates powerful behavioral expectations and constraints, more so than
any formal structure of procedures and rules.

The stronger the corporate culture, the less there is for detailed procedures and rules,
because culture itself guides action.

Does Culture Management increase “the scope and penetration of management control”
(Willmott, 1993: 522)?

Critics have argued that managerialist views of culture are really about control and
manipulation.

Managers can influence the evolution of culture and by being aware of the symbolic
consequences of there actions and by attempting to foster desired values, but they can
never control culture.
Culture as a ‘critical variable’

Culture management assumed that culture could be indeed managed – that it was
amendable to intervention, control and definition, that it was a critical variable.

Culture as a ‘root metaphor’

Culture as a root metaphor means something the organization is rather than something it
has.

Conclusion

Organization culture is apparently unifying, and this strongly appeals to management’s

concern with projecting an image of the organization as a community of interest.

An organization may appear to have a unifying or organic culture, but this may merely be
the view from the top.

Example: supermarket staffs were encouraged to embrace a corporate culture of

‘customer service’, which entailed smiling at customers and being friendly so as to make
them feel valued.

The staff did not did not embrace the culture management programme, but did conform
superficially to its demands. They ‘smiled but did not mean it’ and did so because they
were aware that cameras and mystery shoppers were checking on them.