Can Culture be Managed? Working with “Raw” Material: The Case of the English Slaughtermen
| Published date | 01 May 1990 |
| Date | 01 May 1990 |
| Pages | 3-13 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483489010142655 |
| Author | Stephen Ackroyd,Philip A. Crowdy |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Can Culture
be Managed?
Working with
"Raw" Material:
The Case of the
English Slaughtermen
Stephen Ackroyd and Philip A. Crowdy
CAN CULTURE BE MANAGED? WORKING WITH "RAW" MATERIAL 3
W
ork behaviour, and even the basic
conception that workers have of
themselves, is shaped by factors
external to the workplace.
Introduction
It
is
a commonplace
in
both the literature on "excellent"
companies[l,2,3,4] and that on Human Resource
Management[5,6,7] that managing
a
corporate culture, in
a manner appropriate to business strategy, is the key to
corporate success. Indeed, as Legge[8] has pointed out,
a common theme in the majority of normative definitions
of HRM are the following:
• that human resource policies should be integrated
with strategic business planning and used to
reinforce an appropriate (or used to change an
inappropriate) organisational culture;
• that human resources are valuable and a source of
competitive advantage;
• that human resources may be tapped most
effectively by mutually consistent policies that
promote commitment, and which, as a
consequence;
• foster
a
willingness in employees to act flexibly and
in
the interests of
the
adaptive organisation's pursuit
of excellence.
These ideas seem logical enough but they do raise a
considerable problem. This is that they contradict what
many researchers have found about the realities of
organisational belief systems and their relationship to
behaviour.
To
the present time there are only some widely
publicised accounts of companies attempting to change
— or claiming to have succeeded in changing — their
organisational
culture.
Well-known examples here are the
attempt by British Airways to alter its culture from an
emphasis on flying routes to an emphasis on company
service, or the claim by Nissan that they have achieved
an entirely new sentiment and identification from their
labour force. The
findings
of a good deal of case study
work
in
industry,
and particularly that with an ethnographic
or an anthropological focus, have suggested that work
cultures are highly distinctive, resilient and resistant to
change (see, for example[9,10]). As has been suggested
by
Smircich[11],
in a
much cited
paper,
"managing culture"
is only possible if it is regarded as something an
organisation "has"
—
that
is
a variable (or variables) that
can be manipulated. In other words, that culture is
accessible to control through the ability to change such
things as payment and information
systems;
or
even,
more
superficially, through the use of such things as mission
statements and corporate image. If, on the other hand,
following Smircich, an organisational culture is what an
organisation "is", that
is,
the common values and beliefs
which have emerged from people's shared experiences,
then it is much less obvious that organisational cultures
are amenable to control. People act out their work roles
in a manner that is highly dependent on their customary
definitions and understandings of their task and its
meaning. These meanings are themselves embedded in
quite distinctive class, regional and national
cultures.
Each
occupation can be analysed into
a
quite distinctive pattern
that is connected in unique ways to external meaning
systems. These distinctive patterns and connections may
render the cultures of many occupations effectively beyond
managerial capacity to influence, let alone to control.
The purpose of
this
article is to raise questions about the
extent to which the objective of HRM, to manage
organisational culture, is actually feasible. The case study
presented here offers an analysis of
a
group of employees
which reflects all the values typified as characteristic of
excellent companies and espoused
by
the soft normative
model of
HRM[8].
We see in the analysis a work group
that is highly motivated and committed to its task. It is
a group that displays flexible specialisation and responsible
autonomy. It is, to use an older terminology, an
autonomous work group. Yet, as the case reveals, this
is not the result of deliberate management action and is
in many
ways
in opposition to management. Autonomous
working
is
"unofficial" and "excellent" work performance
is clearly for the group and not for the bosses; hence,
much of their culture cannot be explained by (and is in
fact highly resistant to) management action. It is argued
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