This next major chapter section is called "Assessing Organizational Culture." The sub-section that will probably take up this entire post is called "Strength of Culture."
"Sathe (1985) identified three features that determine a culture's strength. The first is thickness of culture, measured by the number of important shared assumptions. Thick cultures have many such assumptions, thin cultures few. The second dimension is extent of sharing. In strong cultures, layers and layers of belief are shared. Clarity of ordering is the third determinant of cultural strength... Strength of culture is significant because strong cultures - that is, thick cultures in which the sharing of clearly ordered beliefs and values is pervasive - are more resistant to change than are weak cultures.
Two factors affect the strength of an organizational culture: the number of employees and geographic dispersion. Small work forces and more localized operations contribute to the development of strong cultures because beliefs and values easily develop and become shared." (p. 130; bold in original)
These concepts, especially the first two features didn't seem all that clear in the text, that is distinguishing them from one another, so I want online to try to see if I could find anything to help explain it better. It seems to me that the "thickness of culture" indicates that sheer quantity of shared values, whereas the "extent of sharing" refers more to how many different spheres or types of values are shared. If I understand this correctly, the fact that the missionaries were a pretty cohesive and uniform lot would demonstrate the thickness of the culture in that organization. But the fact that they shared values in such diverse spheres as religion and theology, cultural origin, educational background, political views, etc. would argue for them having extensive sharing. I think there was also a clarity of ordering in that security was paramount, above just about everything else. Theology and religious background would probably be second, and so forth.
The beliefs and values of the Vienna mission, especially those regarding security, were very pervasive. A certain amount of diversity might be allowed in the other areas, but less so regarding security, which was pretty much a nonnegotiable element.
In addition to the text's claim that small and localized organizations tend to have stronger cultures, the fact that the mission was pretty insular would have almost magnified the smallness and locality of the organization.
Also, just as the text claims, the Vienna mission was practically impervious to change.
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"Strong cultures are not always desirable. There appear to be organizational conditions that do not necessarily warrant them (Wilkins and Ouchi, 1983). If one looks at organizations as mechanisms for governing transaction costs (the organization requires something of the employee, who in tern benefits from the organization), there are three ways to manage those transaction costs. Whichever method is used to mediate costs, it must be viewed as equitable to everyone.
The first two mechanisms, the marketplace and bureaucracy, are used under conditions of fairly low uncertainty and complexity. The market form, appropriate in competitive situations, manages transaction costs with a price mechanism. Contracts are made and kept between parties at a 'fair' price so that competitors won't take over the business. Bureaucracy creates the appearance of equity by creating an employment contract, whereby employees contract to receive wages and in turn submit to supervision, which is designed to reduce uncertainty and monitor employee performance. A hallmark of bureaucracy is the simplification of complex tasks into discrete, easily monitored activities. The bureaucracy uses the mechanism of rules or standards of behavior; as long as uncertainty is low, the rules in place can guide behavior.
When uncertainty or complexity increases, these mechanisms do not work. A third mechanism, a clan or culture, then becomes viable. The clan is a culturally homogeneous organization in which members share a common set of values, objectives, and beliefs; this common core empowers them to act with greater flexibility in a fluid situation. This approach addresses the social exchange problem quite differently than either the marketplace or bureaucracy method; it socializes parties to the exchange in such a way that all participants see their objectives in the exchange as congruent. Clans require a tremendous amount of group process activity." (p. 131)
This is a fairly lengthy text, but I included the first 2 paragraphs just for background purposes, so you could see the different options and how the appropriate one (for the Vienna mission) is in fact the best fit. I'm referring to the fact that the uncertainty and complexity (that I just described in my last post and have also described in certain earlier posts) of the environment of the Vienna mission argues very strongly for the need for the use of culture as an organizational control mechanism. The need for flexibility would come in primarily in potential security risk situations, such as travel in Eastern Europe, but also potentially with interactions outside the mission in Austria. In such situations, the individual would be expected to know how to act and to make quick decisions regarding how to handle crises (however large or small) of this nature. This text also, I think describes the need for internalization of the group norms, which I've also described elsewhere as existing in Vienna, and being a hallmark of having been properly socialized. Finally, just as the text suggests, there was, indeed a lot of "group process activity," which I've also described already at some length.
The usefulness of this text is mainly in its bringing together of different concepts I've already discussed. The clan or culture mechanism of organizational management definitely fit the Vienna mission as I experienced it.
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That's all for now. I'll pick up next time by discussing some questions in the text to use in helping to identify an organization's culture. Some of the questions are interesting and will bring out new information I might not have dealt with yet.
