Cultural perspectives

The question as to whether subcultures exist in organisations is somewhat contested and a number of perspectives have been suggested in relation to the composition of organisational culture. According to the unitarist perspective, there is an essential unity of the organisation that allows the classification of organisation culture as with Handy (1993) and the four culture types: task, power, people and role-oriented cultures or Hofstede (1980) with an organisation having a role, achievement, power or support culture. This perspective also assumes top-down cultural leadership, which requires unity to be effective and the culture is seen as homogeneous. Martin (1992) referred to this perspective as the integration perspective and Deal and Kennedy (1982) see it as the ‘normative glue’, holding all areas of the organisation together through shared values and beliefs as reflected in the expression ‘the way we do things round here’ coined by Deal and Kennedy (1982), rather than ‘the way some of us…’ or

‘the way most of us do things around here’. However, Kuh and Whitt (1988; 27) point out that

“the ‘small homogenous society’ analogue … is surely strained when applied to many contemporary institutions of higher education”. Martin and Siehl (1983) advise HEIs should be seen in a multicultural context, where subgroups with their own traditions and values are tolerated and perhaps even encouraged regardless of whether or not these subcultures adhere to the institution’s norms, values and beliefs.

The pluralist perspective recognises the existence of diverse subcultures in organisations (i.e.

culture is heterogeneous). Ogbonna & Wilkinson’s (1990) study of the effects of a supermarket cultural change program supports the existence of subcultures in smaller organisations. Martin (1992) refers to this perspective as the differentiation perspective and highlights the diversity and inconsistency of subcultures, as conformity towards a single

26 monolithic organisational culture is replaced by cultural diversity and the potential conflict between these subcultures is tolerated.

The anarchist perspective indicates an even greater level of fragmentation, with organisational culture being made up of individuals with their own values and norms and as such neither a single dominant culture nor any subcultures are said to exist. Hofstede et al. (1990) found this in twenty case studies and as such, managing cultural change is impossible on an individual basis and the focus shifts towards communication and diversity management. Martin (1992) refers to this perspective as the fragmentation perspective with fragmented groups being issue-specific and no shared meaning between members of the organisation or members of part of the organisation. In adopting such a perspective, the outcome of such deeply fragmented groups is a series of contradictions and confusion on the part of the members (Martin and Frost, 1995) and Martin (1992) characterises this perspective of organisational culture as displaying a lack of consistency, consensus and ambiguity. Seevers (2000) claims values are neither completely stable nor unstable but rather change according to the environment of individuals and groups. Rokeach (1973) attributes this state of flux to the continual interaction between cognitive, behavioural and affective components.

It seems reasonable for managers to assume the integration / unitarist perspective as this reinforces their desire for all staff to ‘tow the line’ and ties in with the concepts of vision and mission as an integrative force encouraging improved staff performance and increased unity of direction. Metzger (1987) claims that in studies of organisational culture in higher education, two of the three perspectives are referred to: unitarist and pluralist. Despite writing a number of detailed works on the subcultures and even sub-subcultures found in higher education institutions, Becher (1987) indicates the unitarist perspective may be applicable when referring to the academic profession as a ‘single homogenous profession’, as it has many more similarities than differences and is based on the assumption that all faculty members share of common view of the world and scholarship.

Beyond these three perspectives, Schein (1988) suggests that subcultures may exist alongside a dominant culture. The concept is that each subculture has members with a combination of pivotal and peripheral values. Pivotal values may be considered as the core values of an organisation and members are expected to uphold these values, with those that do not being rejected (Chatman, 1991; O'Reilly & Chatman, 1996). On the other hand, peripheral values

27 refer to those values not considered as core values but the organisation may encourage members to adopt them. Failure to take on the peripheral values, however, does not result in rejection in the same way as when failing to uphold the pivotal values. Bloor and Dawson (1994) observed a combination of pivotal and peripheral values in their study of social workers with the peripheral values being different to those of the organisation but this did not adversely affect the organization. According to Boisnier and Chatman (2002), the “members' degree of conformity to peripheral norms can vary considerably”. Furthermore, Poskiene (2002) found that there were overlapping values among the subcultures in the university culture, which highlighted certain pivotal values held throughout the organisation. It has been argued that in some organisations, such as prisons, pivotal values are so widely adopted that they restrict the emergence of peripheral values and thereby, the emergence of subcultures (O-Reilly and Chatman, 1996; Van Maanen and Barley, 1984). However, Boisnier and Chatman (2002) contest this as unlikely in strong culture organisations. The question for higher education is what may be considered as subcultural pivotal values and if there is any overlap of subcultures between, for example, occupation, department and location based subcultures (see later section on occupational subcultures) or in the case when teaching staff have a number of influences upon them, such as the discipline (prestige, publications, reputation), profession, and the organisation.

In higher education, Kuh and Whitt (1988) claim the shared (and strongly held) values of this profession are: the main responsibility is to be learned and convey this learning (through teaching, inquiry and publication); autonomy in the conduct of work; and collegiality (e.g.

mutual support). This does not necessarily mean that within HEIs there is a single strong homogenous culture and a unitarist perspective is required. These common values through the profession can thus be seen as pivotal values with subcultures existing with a combination of these pivotal values and other peripheral values shared in the subculture itself. These differences in peripheral values may go towards explaining the fragmentation and complexity in HEIs. Bess (1982) described the academic profession as a ‘complex of subprofessions’.

Becher (1987) points out that the differences in the academic profession may be more significant than the similarities. Studies such as that of Bowen and Schuster (1986) which found that members of different disciplines showed different values, attitudes and personal characteristics seem to indicate the need to adopt a pluralist perspective. Becher (1987: 292) even refers to subcultures within disciplines, which is a subculture in itself: “to affiliate with a particular specialism is to become, except in a few heavily populated areas, a member of a

28 small and close-knit community”. Thus, it could be said that despite the common and strongly held values of the academic profession, within each institution subcultures have been found to exist. When considering the implications of the perspective taken in any study, Toarniczky and Primecz (2006) highlight the studies to date according to perspective and approach as can be seen in the following table:

Table 2: Studies of organisational culture by perspective and approach

Integrationist Differentiation Fragmentation

Managerial Non -

Source: Toarniczky and Primecz (2006; 8)

The above table hinges on the three perspectives put forward by Martin et al. (2004) as well as the non-managerial or managerial perspectives and the four approaches to organisations:

29 functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist and radical structuralist (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). In order so assess subcultures in the organisation, a differentiation perspective has been taken in this study, with both managerial and non-managerial perspectives. The aim is not to consider the best fit of the organisation or effective strategies to manage diversity (functionalist), or to interpret artefacts and superficial manifestations of organisational culture (interpretive), but rather to consider and identify the divisions of value sets within the organisation. Thus it could be said that this study adopts a radical humanist approach with a differentiation perspective (in that the existence of subcultures is a basic assumption) and is both a managerial and non-managerial study. This includes the possibility that the organisational culture of the HEI may have some form of overall dominant culture, subcultures and ambiguous fragmented areas simultaneously, which would indicate the need for a multi-paradigm approach (Toarniczky and Primecz, 2006; 9). No assumption is made in this study that subcultures have to differ in pivotal and peripheral values since initially the study is explorative in nature. The research questions are based upon the mapping of the organisational culture, and from this resulting map, the required perspective will become apparent, be it integrated, differentiated, fragmented or a combination of these perspectives.

As a final note for this section, the Competing Value Framework, which is the basis for the research instrument in this study (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983), has been used to assess organisations with a multi-perspective approach rather than merely a unitary perspective.

Thus allowing for competing values, simultaneously existing culture types as well as areas of ambiguity and uncertainty, as can be seen in the following figure which shows how values which are unclear or counteractive affect the operation of the organisation in contrast to values such as those concerning openness and participation which in turn may affect the organisation positively (Quinn et al., 1996; 21):

30 Figure 3: Contrasting values and behaviour and their impact upon the organisation

Source: Quinn et al. (1996; 21)