Once an organizational culture is started and begins to develop, there are a number of prac-tices that can help solidify the acceptance of core values and ensure that the culture maintains itself. These practices can be described in terms of several socialization steps. Figure 3.4 illus-trates what Richard Pascale has identified as the sequence of these steps.69
Chapter 3 Organizational Context: Design and Culture 77
Selection of Entry-Level Personnel
The first step is the careful selection of entry-level candidates. Using standardized proce-dures and seeking specific traits that tie to effective performance, trained recruiters inter-view candidates and attempt to screen out those whose personal styles and values do not make a “fit” with the organization’s culture. There is research indicating that newcomers’
and their supervisors’ perceptions of organization culture fit are related to organizational commitment and intention to leave the organization.70There is also accumulating evidence that those who have a realistic preview (called realistic job preview, or RJP) of the culture will turn out better.71An example of effective selection for cultural fit is North Shore Bank, a community bank in Wisconsin. One approach that they have implemented in order to maximize the “fit” as well as productivity is through recruitment and selection in neigh-borhoods closest to its branches. This helps customers and employees alike identify with the unique differences between their local bank and their large national bank competitors.
Placement on the Job
The second step occurs on the job itself, after the person with a fit is hired. New personnel are subjected to a carefully orchestrated series of different experiences whose purpose is to cause them to question the organization’s norms and values and to decide whether or not they can accept them. For example, many organizations with strong cultures make it a point to give newly hired personnel more work than they can handle. Sometimes these assign-ments are beneath the individual’s abilities. At Procter & Gamble, for example, new per-sonnel may be required to color in a sales territory map. The experience is designed to convey the message, “Although you’re smart in some ways, you’re in kindergarten as far as what you know about this organization.” The objective is also to teach the new entrant into the culture the importance of humility. These experiences are designed to make newly hired personnel vulnerable and to cause them to move emotionally closer to their colleagues, thus FIGURE 3.4
Pascale’s Steps of Organizational Culture Socialization.
Source: Richard Pascale, “The Paradox of Corporate Culture:
Reconciling Ourselves to Socialization.” Copyright © by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted from the California Management Review, Vol. 27, No. 2, Winter 1985, p. 38. By permission of the Regents.
Careful selection of entry-level
candidates DESELECT
Consistent role models
Humility-inducing experiences
promote openness toward accepting
organization’s norms and values
Rewards and control systems are meticulously refined to reinforce
behavior that is deemed pivotal to
success in the marketplace In-the-trenches training leads to mastery of a core discipline Reinforcing
folklore
Adherence to values enables the
reconciliation of personal
sacrifices START
78 Part One Environmental and Organizational Context
intensifying group cohesiveness. Campus fraternities and the military have practiced this approach for years.
Job Mastery
Once the initial “cultural shock” is over, the next step is mastery of one’s job. This is typi-cally done via extensive and carefully reinforced field experience. For example, Japanese firms typically put new employees through a training program for several years. As person-nel move along their career path, their performance is evaluated, and additional responsi-bilities are assigned on the basis of progress. Quite often companies establish a step-by-step approach to this career plan, which helps reduce efforts by the personnel to use political power or to take shortcuts in order to get ahead at a faster pace. Highly successful
“Coca-Cola slowly steeps its new employees in the company culture—in this case, an understanding of the trademark’s image. The people system then ensures that only Coke managers who have been thoroughly socialized into worrying about the company as a whole get to make decisions affecting the company.”72
Measuring and Rewarding Performance
The next step of the socialization process consists of meticulous attention to measuring operational results and to rewarding individual performance. These systems are compre-hensive and consistent, and they focus on those aspects of the business that are most cru-cial to competitive success and to corporate values. For example, at Procter & Gamble there are three factors that are considered most important: building volume, building profit, and making changes that increase effectiveness or add satisfaction to the job. Operational mea-sures are used to track these three factors, and performance appraisals are tied to milestones.
Promotions and merit pay are determined by success in each of these critical areas.
Motorola personnel are taught to adhere to the core cultural values through careful moni-toring of team performance and through continual training programs. Typically, in compa-nies with a strong culture, those who violate cultural norms, such as overzealousness against the competition or harsh handling of a subordinate, are sent to the “penalty box.”
This typically involves a lateral move to a less-desirous location. For example, a branch manager in Chicago might be given a nebulous staff position at headquarters in Newark.
This individual is now off-track, which can slow his or her career progress.
Adherence to Important Values
The next step involves careful adherence to the firm’s most important values. Identification with these values helps employees reconcile personal sacrifices brought about by their membership in the organization. They learn to accept these values and to trust the organi-zation not to do anything that would hurt them. As Pascale observes: “Placing one’s self ‘at the mercy’ of an organization imposes real costs. There are long hours of work, missed weekends, bosses one has to endure, criticism that seems unfair, job assignments and rota-tions that are inconvenient or undesirable.”73However, the organization attempts to over-come these costs by connecting the sacrifices to higher human values such as serving society with better products and/or services. Today’s firms in the global economy must give special attention to cultural differences around the globe, but maintain the core values. For example, when Wal-Mart Stores entered the German market a few years ago, it took along the “cheer”—Give me a W! Give me an A!, etc. Who’s Number One? The customer!—
which went over as well with the German associates as it did with their counterparts in the United States. However, the cultural value of greeting any customer within a 10-foot radius did not. German employees and shoppers were not comfortable with this Wal-Mart custom, and it was dropped from the German stores.
Chapter 3 Organizational Context: Design and Culture 79
Reinforcing the Stories and Folklore
The next step involves reinforcing organizational folklore. This entails keeping alive stories that validate the organization’s culture and way of doing things. The folklore helps explain why the organization does things a particular way. One of the most common forms of folk-lore is stories with morals the enterprise wants to reinforce. For example, Leonard Riggio, the CEO of Barnes & Noble, often tells stories about his childhood experiences in Brooklyn and in particular his father’s stint as a boxer. These often-told stories have been a great help to communicate a populist culture that needed to shed its elitist past. Also, Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard is known for the often-told story of him using a bolt cutter to remove a lock that he encountered on the supply room. He left a note behind instructing that the door never be locked again to forever communicate the important cultural value of trust at H-P. 3M is probably the best known firm to use stories and sagas to emphasize cul-tural values. The famous Post-it Notes legacy is a great example.
The idea originated with Art Fry, a 3M employee who used bits of paper to mark hymns when he sang in his church choir. But these markers kept falling out of the hymnals. He decided that he needed an adhesive-backed paper that would stick as long as necessary but could be removed easily, and soon found what he wanted in a 3M laboratory. Fry saw the market potential of his invention, but others did not. Market survey results were negative;
major office supply distributors were skeptical. Undeterred, because he had heard stories about other 3M employees that conveyed the importance of perseverance, Fry began giving samples to 3M executives and their secretaries. Once they actually used the little notepads, they were hooked. Having sold 3M on the project, Fry used the same approach with the sec-retaries of other companies’ executives throughout the United States.74
The rest is history. Post-it Notes became a huge financial success for 3M, and retelling the story reinforces cultural values of innovation that can come from anywhere, perseverance, and championing of your good ideas.
Recognition and Promotion
The final step is the recognition and promotion of individuals who have done their jobs well and who can serve as role models to new people in the organization. By pointing out these people as winners, the organization encourages others to follow their example. Role mod-els in strong-culture firms are regarded as the most powerful ongoing training program of all. Morgan Stanley, the financial services firm, chooses role models on the basis of energy, aggressiveness, and team play. Procter & Gamble looks for people who exhibit extraordi-nary consistency in such areas as tough-mindedness, motivational skills, energy, and the ability to get things done through others. There is considerable research evidence that recognition can serve as a powerful reinforcer,75and thus those exhibiting cultural values that are given either formal recognition or even one-on-one social attention/recognition from relevant others can build and sustain the organizational culture.76