symbols of change in organizational culture

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Symbols of change in organisational culture

Author: Beverley R. Lord

Address: Department of Accountancy, Finance & Information Systems

University of Canterbury

Private Bag 4800

Christchurch, New Zealand

Phone: +64-3-364 2620

Fax: +64-3-364 2727

Email: [email protected]

Acknowledgments:

The author acknowledges with gratitude both the encouragement and theconstructive criticisms offered by her colleague, Yvonne Shanahan. The author also

appreciated questions and feedback from participants in the Third Annual StudentResearch Conference, University of Waikato, New Zealand, October 1996, at whichan earlier version of this paper was presented.

Special thanks must go to the change agent in this case study, who allowedthe author virtually unlimited access to people and places in both of the firms, overperiods of several months.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.194.2845&rep=rep1&type=pdf (accessed July 24,2013)



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Symbols of change in organisational culture

ABSTRACT

Changing to total quality management (TQM) involves changing thewhole culture of the firm. In trying to effect change in the organisationalculture, change agents need to do more than just change processes andstructure. The change agent may make use of symbols to reinforce thechanges that are being implemented.

This paper reports on the use of symbols by a change agent in twofirms implementing TQM. In one firm the symbols were in evidence whenresearch was carried out several years after the implementation of TQM.The researcher then observed the same change agent using many of thesame symbols in attempting to introduce TQM in the second firm.

However, reactions to these symbols and the changes theyrepresented were not always as expected. Sometimes people read the

symbols as negative. In one firm the accounting people had their ownsymbols — of resistance to change.

Keywords:

total quality management, organisational change, change agent, symbols.



Symbolsofchangeinorganisationalculture 2

ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE

In order to remain competitive in global markets, firms world-wide arefocussing attention on issues of quality. Many firms claim to be using total qualitymanagement (TQM) techniques. Although there are no standardised definitions ofTQM, adoption of TQM includes participation of everyone in the organisation in thedrive for continuous improvement, elimination of waste, and a focus on customers,both external and internal. It has been suggested that "TQM may be viewed as aprogramme to change an organization's corporate culture" (Wilkinson & Witcher,1993, p. 52).

Cultural change

This paper will treat the concept of organisational culture from the interpretiveperspective, which "views culture as something that an organization is that graduallyemerges and takes shape as a consequence of the social interactions among itsmembers" (Fischer & Dirsmith, 1995, p. 384). Culture arises from shared symbols,language, ideology, beliefs, rituals, myths, stories and dominant metaphors (Fischer& Dirsmith, 1995; Pettigrew, 1979; Meek, 1988; Bartunek & Moch, 1987).

Bartunek & Moch (1987) present three orders of cultural change. First orderchanges are incremental changes within the existing cultural framework. In secondorder change, a change agent attempts to effect cultural change by changing theshared symbols, meanings, etc., of the existing culture, thus replacing one culture

with another. Third order change involves the members of a culture seeing the needfor second order change and implementing it themselves. For most firms, TQM is amajor change in strategy, involving an attempt at making second (or perhaps third)order change to the organisational culture.

Attempts to change the culture of an organisation may meet with differinglevels of success. Greenwood & Hinings (1988) classify the results of proposedchange into four categories: inertia (no attempt to change), aborted excursions(unsuccessful attempts to change), unresolved excursions (neither successfulchange nor a return to the original state), or re-orientations (successful change).Gagliardi (1986) categorise the results of attempted cultural change as: apparent(that is, superficial) cultural change, cultural revolution (which "is always extremely

costly and necessitates the large-scale defection of old and an influx of newpersonnel, financial and emotional disinvestments, corresponding new investments,the destruction of old symbols and the creation of new ones" p. 130), or culturalincrementalism, which depends on "a success which can be attributed, directly orindirectly, to the leader's beliefs" (p. 131).




The role of the change agent

The literature on TQM highlights the importance of top management beinginvolved as change agent in the introduction and establishment of TQM in theirorganisation (see, for example, Bossink et al., 1992, Wilkinson & Witcher, 1993,Porter & Parker, 1993, Duffin, 1992). However, even if the change agent is a"powerful leader", the success of the attempted change of culture is not guaranteed,because any organisational change involves individuals and groups who may be inconflict

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Fischer & Dirsmith (1995) warn that "because culture is produced by socialinteraction, it cannot unilaterally be created and manipulated by management" (p.384). Change is the outcome of "the complex exchanges between individuals

pursuing a diversity of goals" (Georgiou, 1973, p. 308). Dermer (1988, 1990) andDermer and Lucas (1986) develop this idea, reminding us that in any organisationthere are a number of stakeholders. As Dermer (1990) puts it, "an organization is aregulated, but not necessarily unified or controlled, ecosystem wherein a good manyagendae exist" (p. 67). Greenwood & Hinings (1988) cite the dominance of particularinterest groups within the organisation as being one determinant of the "track" anorganisation takes when faced with change. In other words, proposed changes maynot be realised because of resistance by sub-cultures and attempts by them "toserve their own ends" (Fischer & Dirsmith, 1995, p. 390).

However, several writers have suggested that the use of symbols by thechange agent is an important ingredient in successfully effecting cultural change

(see, for example, Smircich, 1983; Peters, 1978; Pettigrew, 1979; Johnson, 1990).

The use of symbols by the change agent

Symbols are

objects, acts, relationships, or linguistic formations that stand ambiguously for a multiplicity of meanings, evoke emotions, and impel men to action. (Cohen,1974, p. 23)

New symbols show members of the culture what the proposed new culture willbe like — a prerequisite for the success of Bartunek & Moch's (1987) second-order

change; a necessity for Gagliardi's (1986) "cultural revolution" (p. 130). As well aschanging processes and structure, leaders should use symbols to signal to others inthe organisation what the leader's vision is for the firm (Bower & Weinberg, 1988).Pfeffer (1981, p. 37), summarising Peters' (1978) arguments, claims that

The symbolic actions taken by management ... can have consequences for the mobilization and motivation of support, for cooling off or placating opposition either inside or external to the organization, and for focusing and organizing activity within the organization to implement change.




Peters (1978) himself believes that "symbols are the very stuff ofmanagement behavior" (p. 10), whether the manager is using them consciously or

unconsciously. Westbrook (1993), however, advocates that managers make aconscious effort

to replace negative cultural components with positive ones. Positive systems must get positive reinforcement. ... Negative symbols must be ceremoniously decommissioned. ... Positive symbols must be evident (p. 3).

The relationship between symbols and successful or unsuccessful change isthe subject of this research.

Necessary research

Dermer and Lucas (1986) encourage researchers to look at the nature ofinternal opposition to change (p. 479). Meek (1988) also suggests that "symbolsneed to be analysed in terms of a 'dialogue' between actors' sets of meanings andother social organizational aspects of the institution" (p. 467). Gagliardi (1986) callsfor research and analysis in order to understand "to what extent and in whichcircumstances symbolic management can promote or produce cultural change andcreate new values in the organization" (p. 119).

The following examples from two manufacturing firms changing to TQM focuson these research issues.

METHOD

The researcher used an ethnographic approach, in order to observeinteractions involving symbols over a period of time. Various data gatheringtechniques were employed, including formal and informal interviews of managersand employees, observation in the factories and at many types of meeting, andperusal of newspaper and journal articles and company documents. Data werecollected during regular visits to the two firms. The researcher visited each siteweekly for four months, and also visited at other times to sit in on various meetings.There were also opportunities to chat informally to people, for example, at drinksafter work, at social events, and sitting in the staff cafeteria at meal breaks.

THE CASE STUDY FIRMS

Firm A has been practising TQM since 1991. Before the introduction of TQM,the working environment was described as "a dictatorship", and "a Dickensianworkshop — monochrome, dingy, dark." The change agent, Peter, was employed asplant manager specifically to effect the change to TQM, as he had already beeninvolved with TQM implementation in several other firms including Toyota. Hisassessment on arrival included these criticisms: "prone to error ... slow ... no formalcommunication system ... conflict style management." In 1994, when the researchwas carried out, there was evidence of many symbols being used by Peter which hadprobably contributed to the successful introduction of change into the firm.

In 1995, Peter took the opportunity to move to Firm B. The owner of Firm Bwas looking for somebody with experience in implementing TQM in several




industries. As change agent, Peter used many of the symbols that he had usedsuccessfully in Firm A. However, reactions to them were negative as well as

positive. Peter left the firm after seven months, convinced that the culture of Firm Bwould never allow TQM to be accepted there.

The next section gives several examples of symbols used by Peter toreinforce the change that was taking place in structure and processes, as well asrecording some negative reactions to them.

SYMBOLS OF CHANGE

Making change visible

The first symbols of change introduced in both firms concerned theappearance of the working environment. In Firm A, the factory floors were cleanedup, aisles were painted on the floors, and walls, ceilings and machines were painted.The very obvious change in appearance signalled that other changes were alsobeginning to take place in the structure and processes of the firm.

Although some cleaning up and painting was carried out at Firm B, it wasalready fairly orderly, so the change was not as obvious. Machines were painted inthe firm's colours, and new rubbish bins provided, also in the firm's colours.However, the latter symbol of change had a mixed reception, not because of thecolours, but because the rubbish bins were too small. Instead of being seen as asymbol of change, some people saw them as a symbol of lack of communication: "it

would have been more logical for them to have come and asked us what sort ofrubbish bin would have been appropriate". This impression was quickly rectified.Someone must have told Peter, because within three weeks some large plastic bins(in the firm's colours) appeared — a symbol of improved communication.

Other symbols of change appeared in the cafeteria. All factory staff (about 30people) have morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea breaks at the same time. BeforePeter arrived, everyone helped themselves to drinks. A woman from the factory setout the cups, tea, coffee, etc. beforehand and cleaned up afterwards. Some foodwas ordered and brought in at lunch time. Peter immediately arranged theemployment of a woman to provide food and manage the cafeteria. He hadtablecloths made for the cafeteria tables. As well as instituting a staff newsletter, he

had the idea of making several copies and putting them in plastic stands (like theones that hold menus in some restaurants) on the cafeteria tables. The newsletters,which aid communication, are thus easy to read.




Making performance visible

As well as making change visible, Peter uses the TQM philosophy of makingperformance visible in his method of training people to use TQM techniques. Beforestarting at Firm B, he arranged for all their staff to come to Firm A and see TQM inpractice. Follow up, once he started at Firm B, included showing slides and videosof successful New Zealand TQM implementations.

Symbols of making performance visible are evident everywhere on bothpremises. At Firm A there are a lot of displays on the walls, both in the factory and inthe administration area. These include definitions of TQM, cartoons, slogans,drawings of new models, and examples of good quality parts and parts with variousdefects, as well as white boards recording production, defects, scrap and rework

numbers, delays, improvements, multiskilling, etc., and notice boards withperformance graphs and weekly staff notices.

On moving to Firm B, Peter duplicated many of these wall displays. One ofthe staff commented on these symbols of change:

I've noticed that the first types of things that he's done — he's very heavy on generalities, and visual reminders and vision and stuff like that. He doesn't start by giving them texts of TQM philosophies, but he starts by putting some of these little things round, which individually take very little, but [which become] building blocks.

However, use of the whiteboards at Firm B differed between teams. One of

the teams, whose leader had worked overseas for a Japanese company alsopractising TQM, was very quick at adopting everything introduced by Peter. Eventhough they could not remember how Firm A used the board displaying the skills ofthe team, they made their own version of it. Everyone in that team immediatelyworked on learning everyone else's skills, and displaying this on the board. Inanother area, on the other hand, the boards were unused for weeks, after initiallyrecording some defects in the first week. Only one person in that area recorded onthe multi-skill board that he was willing to learn a new skill. However, that personseemed to have been making fun of the display of skills, saying that really he wastoo busy to train.

Flexible workforce

Peter wanted to change the employment contract at Firm B to introducecompetency and skill-based compensation. He presented it as more pay for multi-skilling — a symbol of the benefits of the changing structure and emphasis.However, it was not accepted as a positive offer by some of the staff, who felt, "theremust be some ulterior motive." The employees' representatives came with a "longwish list" which was costed out by the accountant, and would have cost the firm$400000. From the employees' perspective, some felt that "management took ourlist away, read it, and then basically went ahead and did what they said they weregoing to do before they met with the employees."




Team work

At both firms, the whole work force is divided up into "process improvementteams". The new team structure is a symbol of the TQM principles of employeeempowerment and team work. Instead of supervisors, each team has a team leader.Team members are empowered to offer and implement suggestions for continuousimprovements. Each week each team has a meeting at which they discussimprovement suggestions and the success or otherwise of earlier improvementsbeing implemented.

The effectiveness of these team meetings at Firm B varied. Some teams veryquickly caught on to the idea of having one improvement effort in process at once.However, when the researcher observed team meetings five months after theintroduction of the team concept, some teams were still spending their meetings

discussing large numbers of changes, many of which were not within their control. Atone team meeting half the members were looking at magazines during the wholemeeting, and one was listening to his Walkman.

As a symbol of the TQM attitude towards employees, team leader vacanciesare advertised internally (in Firm A they are also advertised externally). Internalapplicants must apply in writing as if they were external applicants. Each applicant isinterviewed, looking at "leadership skills, communication skills, attention to detail,adaptability, delegation type skills ...[and] job knowledge".

However, the process did not have the expected positive reading at Firm B.One of the team members of the first team to have a team leader vacancy said,

"I think it's just an excuse for management to get the workers to do some of

management's work.... One person is applying for the job, because he wants more money. I don't want the job. It would just give me something to worry about. Some things are more important than money."

After one person had been selected, Peter said that those who missed out didnot know how to handle not getting the job, even though he counselled thembeforehand, and let them know gently that they did not have it. One person whomissed out promptly resigned, and rumours started to go around that managementhad already decided who was to have the job.

No hierarchy

Peter used many symbols to demonstrate that there was no hierarchy in theTQM system. When he began at Firm B, he spent the first week working beside theemployees in the factory, familiarising himself with all processes. This reallyimpressed some of the employees. Even when in a leadership role as chair ofmeetings, Peter uses symbols of being equals, such as not sitting at the head of thetable, wearing casual clothes, and sitting in a relaxed posture (for example, with hisfoot up on a chair). He always has meal breaks in the cafeteria with the factory staff.It was noticeable that not many of the administrative staff did this.




A learning environment

Peter said, "The aim of TQM is: don't tell them everything they should do —let them see the sort of thing and let them learn by making mistakes and thenlearning ways of continuous improvement." His own philosophy is one of continuouslearning, and he communicated this to his employees by recommending books tothem (and to the researcher!).

At Firm A, one of the staff read The Goal (Goldratt & Cox, 1986). Peter gaveit to several managers, and discussed with them what changes they needed to maketo incorporate the principles in the book. At Firm B he gave all the new team leadersa copy of The One Minute Manager (Blanchard & Johnson, 1983) to read. If theywrote him a one page summary of it, giving their impressions, he gave them the bookto keep. Another symbol of this attitude to learning was introduced at Firm B:

business periodicals were placed in the cafeteria so that all staff were able to readthem.Peter's attitude to learning and teaching was evident when he chaired team

leaders meetings. He always commented on something good or gave praise beforeasking questions and talking about changes. He used humour:

Team leader:My team want us to discuss overtime hours

Peter: Magic wand broken down, has it?

and understandable analogies:

"There are two languages in a business: the language of things which you use

in the factory, and the language of money which management use. We want you to try to be bilingual, try to talk in management language as well. When you get to the end of an improvement project, ask the accountant to help you to put your improvement into money terms. If you are improving the profitability of the company it is going to make our jobs more secure";

and

"Introducing a change like TQM is like bull-rush. To start off with you're like the person standing in the middle and everyone's standing at one end or the other, but as they run past you catch one or catch two until after a while you've got a few people in the middle with you who are also keen on the idea.

Then eventually you have so many people in the middle that the few who are left at the end either drop out of the game or can't help but get caught as well."

However, staff did not always perceive Peter as "practising what he waspreaching". Even at Firm A, where TQM was well established, staff said:

"Peter wouldn't let us do TQM unless we did it his way. Maybe he had seen our suggested ways tried and maybe he knew that they wouldn't work, but we perceived it as him imposing his way of doing TQM."

Another employee thought that this was because

"the company was in such a bad way that change had to be immediate and accomplished within 12 months. Therefore Peter often had to say, 'Do it my




way! It will work — you wait and see.' Although this is not the TQM way,Peter had to be 'bossy' because of the time frame for change."

Meetings

Changing structures are indicated by several symbols associated withmeetings: who attends them, where they are held, and how performance measuresare presented at them.

On arrival at Firm A, Peter announced that the whole factory would stop for ameeting every day for ten minutes. The managing director asked, "Do you knowwhat that's going to cost us?" Peter retorted, "No, but I have an idea what it's goingto save us!" At Firm A there is a short meeting of all team leaders 30 minutes afterwork starts every morning. Production for the day and any problems that couldhinder it are discussed and solved. Before morning tea break, each team leaderthen communicates that information to their team.

As soon as he started at Firm B, Peter instituted the same meetings, a symbolof work force involvement. These meetings were received positively:

"Before people took it for granted that you knew what was going on in other departments, so they didn't think to tell you. Now everyone knows."

"I find out what production I'm expected to do today, rather than them coming about five minutes before they want it saying, 'Oh, by the way, we need such and such!'"

"The morning meeting is the best we have."

The venue of these meetings is also a symbol. A former employee of Firm Asaid, "The factory staff and the office staff never really saw each other." Now thefactory team leaders are in the office daily, at the meeting in the board room. Theyalso prepare their own reports on the computers and photocopier in the office.

How information is reported at Firm A has also changed. Instead of pages oftypewritten financial figures, team leaders report monthly with overheads and papercopies of coloured graphs. These indicate visually whether or not continuousimprovement is occurring.

Rewards

At both firms employees were rewarded for employee involvement. Forexample, at both venues, there was a free barbecue lunch for all staff after thebusyness of introducing a new model. At Firm A ten employees were selected, by adraw, to attend a major rugby game. Free lunch was provided at the factory (on aSaturday), and they were transported to and from the game by bus.

After a couple of months at Firm B, Peter held a "Hat Party" at his place onthe day of the Melbourne Cup horse races. He invited people from both firms, mostlyat management and team leader level, who had been particularly helpful to him inimplementing TQM. However, this symbol of reward for involvement was seennegatively at Firm B. At one of the process improvement team meetings, someone




brought up the fact that they were "still unhappy about the 'them and us' feeling withmanagement because not everyone was invited to the Hat Party."

Symbols of resistance to change

As Dermer (1990) states, "organizations are made up of a variety ofstakeholders attempting to satisfy their individual wants amidst a host of conflicts andconstraints.... [We see] management as attempting to control conflict and maintainorder but as being unable to do so completely" (p. 68). This was evident in thediffering rates of adapting to change in Firm B.

Even in Firm A, where TQM was well established, some employees had theirown symbols — of resistance to change. For example, some areas of the factory arestill called by their old names (e.g., "B" shop for the press shop) even though no-one

can remember why the names were given in the first place.The accounting area had a number of symbols of their resistance to change.

Mason & Mitroff (1973) compare impersonalistic and personalistic modes ofpresentation of information. Impersonalistic displays include "formal models,computer printouts and displays and company reports" (p. 484), that is, the usualoutput of the accounting area. Personalistic modes include "stories, drama, roleplays, art, graphics, one-to-one contact and group discussions [using] technologiesfor presentation [such as ] television, radio, films and telephones" (p. 484). Dermer(1990, p. 73) describes the ways in which successful change entrepreneurs sensitisethemselves to the organisational climate: "Such techniques as 'management bywalking around' (Peters & Waterman, 1982), open door policies, behavioural surveys

and the management of culture". He concludes that "one of accounting'sweaknesses lies in its inability to deal with this important component of organizationallife".

Although Peter used many of Mason & Mitroff's (1973) "personalistic" modesof information display, and exhibited many of the techniques listed by Dermer, hehad difficulty trying to induce the financial controller at Firm A to use differentmethods. For example, Peter asked the financial controller to provide summarygraphs, instead of the long written reports prepared for management meetings. As asymbol of his resistance to change, the financial controller did not discontinue thelong, written report, but simply attached one page of graphs to the front of it.

There are many published examples of accounting change in TQMenvironments (see, for example, Seglund & Ibarreche, 1984; Neumann & Jaouen,1986; Lammert & Ehrsam, 1987; Patell, 1987; Turk, 1990; Turney & Anderson, 1989;Woods, 1989a,b). Documented changes to accounting include: using non-monetarymeasures of performance, simplification of reporting, reduced paperwork related topurchasing, simplified accounting for work-in-process, simplified labour recording,changes in bases for allocation of overhead, different classification of costs,automation of manual accounting procedures, and simplification and continuousimprovement of the accounting systems.

Few changes had been made to accounting reports and procedures at Firm A.Another symbol of the accounting area's resistance to change is the continued use of

manual accounting procedures, such as a manual cash book, even though there is acomputerised accounting system. Also, instead of updating standards as continuous




improvement takes place, the standards have not been reviewed for more than tenyears.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Some of the symbols, such as painting the factory and advertising for teamleaders internally, were used by Peter in both firms, although with differing success.Some symbols were only tried in one firm or the other, such as graphical displays ofperformance measures at Firm A, and tablecloths, newsletters and magazines in thecafeteria at Firm B. This is because Peter noted, from his experience in many TQMimplementations, that "TQM isn't a generic system, even within the same country.You have to adjust to the culture of the firm as well."

Although Peter used many of the symbols of change that he had used

successfully in Firm A, he was not successful in implementing TQM in Firm B. Hisopinion was that TQM was not succeeding in Firm B because of the strong, dominantpersonality of the owner. The owner's way of managing "is to assign blame andpunish those blamed, in some cases for things that he has caused." Otherscorroborated this assessment: "In the past you would get into hot water if youcriticised anything"; and, "[The owner] didn't give his managers a large degree ofautonomy to make their own decisions. Anything that was at all big — 'Oh, you'dbetter check with T___.'" Another person said, "They've talked about TQM before[Peter came] and it hasn't happened. I think that management actually didn't want itto happen."

Resistance from the sub-cultures in the organisation may have been another

reason for the lack of success in changing the organisational culture. For example,one team at Firm B was without a team leader for weeks. It was a member of thisteam that thought that the team leader's extra remuneration was not worth the extrawork. This was also the team that did not use their whiteboard displays, and whosemembers read and listened to the radio during team meetings.

Firm B also lacked a "success which [could] be attributed ... to the leader'sbeliefs" (Gagliardi, 1986, p. 131), a prerequisite for cultural incrementalism, the sortof change that was required in Firm B. According to Gagliardi (1986, p. 132), it is notenough for the leader to "manipulate the symbolic field" — success needs to bevisible and attributable to the changes that the change agent has introduced.

One wonders whether Peter stayed long enough to allow change in the cultureto take place. Dermer (1990, p. 72) reminds us that

Successful change entrepreneurs are aware that ... a sustained process of persuasion is needed to overcome resistance.... Various techniques are used, some direct, some indirect: suggestions may be made or articles circulated; visits arranged and seminars recommended; data marshalled and arguments put forward. The essential thing, however, appears to be perseverance.

Maybe cultural change could have been effected if Peter had persevered, continuingto use symbols and demonstrate that the change to the culture was both permanentand successful.

This paper has examined the relationship between symbolic actions by achange agent and the cultures that he was attempting to change. One organisation




was successfully re-oriented, while the other made an aborted or unresolvedexcursion (Greenwood & Hinings, 1988). This paper has also attempted to provide

some understanding of the extent to which "symbolic management can promote orproduce cultural change" (Gagliardi, 1986, p. 119). However, there is scope formany more empirical investigations of this relationship.

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NOTES

1Fischer & Dirsmith (1995) refer to these conflicting elements within anorganisational culture as "subcultures"; Meek (1988) "multi-cultures", and Dermer(1988, 1990) and Dermer & Lucas (1986) "stakeholders".

symbols of change in organizational culture

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