Is it Just Me? Exploring Perceptions of Organizational Culture Change
| Author | Linda Duxbury,Michael Halinski,Laura Gover |
| Published date | 01 July 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12117 |
| Date | 01 July 2016 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 27, 567–582 (2016)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12117
Is it Just Me? Exploring Perceptions of
Organizational Culture Change
Laura Gover, Michael Halinski and Linda Duxbury
Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 5B6, Canada
Corresponding author email: laura_gover@carleton.ca
A review of the literature on organizational culture change suggests that the field might
benefit from studies combining both etic (researcher) and emic (employee)perspectives to
examine individuals’ views regardinghow and why their culture has changed. This paper
seeks to deepen researchers’ knowledge of how individuals perceive organizational cul-
ture change by undertaking a two-part study within an organization that has undergone
planned cultural change initiatives. More specifically survey (i.e. etic view) data and in-
terview (i.e. emic view) data are used to explore: (1) factors associated with (a) whether
an individual will perceive that culturechange has occurred, and (b) whether they catego-
rize this change as for the better, fort he worseor one that could not be categorized using
these two labels; and (2) individuals’ rationales forwhy the culture has changed. The find-
ings are mixed regarding the extent to which they support or refute existing research on
organizational culture change.
Introduction
Organizational culture refers to the normative be-
liefs, values and shared behavioral expectations in
an organization that are created through member
interactions via collective sense-making activities
(Denison, 1996; James et al., 2008; Martin, 2002).1
In the last several decades, there has been a resur-
gence of interest towards the notion of organiza-
tional culture in both academic and practitioner
literatures. This interest has been heightened by
This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of
Health Research (CIHR grant number:KAL-114089).
1Defining organizational culture has led to many de-
bates over the years, primarily related to how particu-
lar definitions address the level of consensus and/or frag-
mentation that can exist within one culture. For more
thorough discussions on this topic, see Alvesson (1987),
Martin (2002) and Ogbonna and Harris (2002b). The
definition provided in this paper was designed to reflect
some of the overarching themes in existing definitions
of the concept, our view recognizes that culture is an
organizational-levelconstruct, but that it indeed may vary
in terms of its consistency across organizationalmembers.
anecdotal and empirical evidence suggesting that
an organization’s culture can increase firm eec-
tiveness (Gregory et al., 2009) and performance
(Kotrba et al., 2012; Ogbonna and Harris, 2002a)
in a manner that is dicult for competitors to du-
plicate (Barney, 1986). Organizational culture has
also been found to aect important outcomes such
as recruitment (Catanzaro, Moore and Marshall,
2010), job satisfaction (Bellou, 2010) and turnover
intentions (MacIntosh and Doherty, 2010). Fi-
nally, organizational culture is also important to
those who study and/or seek to implement organi-
zational change, because culture can serve as both
a target for and a barrier to planned change eorts
(Ogbonna and Harris, 2014; Smollan, 2006).
It is no surprise, therefore, that, in today’s
competitive business environment, many orga-
nizations are motivated to engage in planned
cultural change initiatives as a way either to
improve key business outcomes or to overcome
cultural barriers to other organizational change
eorts. Unfortunately, the extant research in the
area indicates that most planned culture change
eorts fail and that success depends heavily on
© 2015 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
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568 L. Gover, M. Halinski and L. Duxbury
whether or not the organization is able to gain
support from its employees forthe cultural change
(Smith, 2003). The research study featured in
this paper uses both emic (i.e. individual em-
ployee) and etic (i.e. researcher) methodologies
to examine employees’ perceptions of cultural
change – a strategy that should allow for a more
comprehensive understanding of this process.
The terms ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ were first used by
those studying culture (e.g. anthropologists and
social scientists) to distinguish between two very
dierent approaches to the study of human beliefs
and behaviour (Morris et al., 1999). Researchers
who use an emic approach to study culture focus
on the individual, and investigate how ‘natives’
(Denison, 1996) perceive and categorize the world
(i.e. their rules for behavior, what has meaning
for them). Those who use an etic approach, in
contrast, assume that members of a culture are
‘too involved in what they are doing to interpret
their cultures impartially’ (Kottak, 2006, p. 47)
and that culture can best be studied by relying on
the ‘scientist’s’ perspective of what is and is not
important (Denison, 1996; Kottak, 2006; Morris
et al., 1999). To date, a number of studies have
examined planned cultural change from either
an emic (i.e. individual employee) or an etic (i.e.
researcher) stance.
From a research perspective, the decision of
whether to take an emic or etic perspective when
studying organizational culturecan have a number
of important implications with respect to choice
of methods (qualitative vs quantitative) and un-
derlying research paradigms (social constructivist
vs positivist) (Morris et al., 1999). Research in
the area of organizational culture change tends
to be either exclusively etic or emic in nature. The
etic studies on culture change tend to assume
that planned cultural change will have a positive
impact on employees, and uses positivist and
post-positivist approaches that often involve
quantitative instruments for measuring organiza-
tional culture (Jung et al., 2009). The emic studies
on culture change, in contrast, recognize that
culture change occurs on a continuum (Ogbonna
and Harris, 2002b) and tend to adhere to social
constructivist approaches that focus on under-
standing perceptions of planned change initiatives
from multiple positions within the organizations
(Harris and Crane, 2002; Harris and Metallinos,
2002; Harris and Ogbonna, 2000; Ogbonna and
Harris, 1998, 2002b, 2007, 2014).
The existing etic and emic bodies of work on
cultural change have examined how individual
employees perceive planned organizational cul-
ture change. More specifically, these studies have
explored organizational members’ perceptions of
change impacts (Harris and Metallinos, 2002),
their responses to the change (Harris and Og-
bonna, 2000; Morgan and Ogbonna, 2008; Og-
bonna and Wilkinson, 2003) and what these indi-
viduals perceive as the rationale forthe change ini-
tiative (Harris and Metallinos, 2002). While these
studies have been useful in advancing knowledge
with respect to how individuals experienceplanned
cultural change, their focus tends to be on the re-
sponses to and impacts of planned change initia-
tives, and much remains unknown regarding how
and why individuals within an organization may
perceive cultural change dierently. For instance,
after a planned culture change initiative: Do indi-
vidual employees feel the culture has changed? If
so, do these individuals feel the change is for the
better, for the worse or neither? And what do indi-
vidual employees actually attribute these changes
to – the planned culture change initiative or some-
thing else?
This paper reports on key findings from a study
designed to deepen researchers’ awareness of how
individuals perceive organizationalculture change.
Although the use of emic and etic research perspec-
tives are often considered to be mutually exclu-
sive (Walshet al., 2007), Xia (2011) points out that
they are in fact complementary,especially when re-
search relates to the form and function of human
social systems. Accordingly, this paper describes
a mixed-methods case study designed to explore
(1) factors associated with (a) whether an indi-
vidual employee will perceive that culture change
has occurred within their organization, and (b)
whether they will categorize this change in orga-
nizational culture as an improvement (i.e. change
for the better), a deterioration (i.e. change for the
worse) or one that could not be categorized using
one of these two labels (i.e. ambiguous change),
and (2) individuals’ rationales for why the culture
has changed. Survey (etic approach) dataspeaking
to the first research question and interview (emic
approach) data speaking to the second research
question were collected and analyzed.
The study was undertaken within a hospital
that had been trying for the previous five years to
change their organizational culture.Over this time
period, the hospital had implemented a number of
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