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52ORDER TECHNOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE CHANGE: HOW TO FORM “FAMILY” SUBORDER?
Liudmila N. Aksenovskaya
Saratov State University, Saratov, Russia [email protected]
Abstract
Management of the process of organizational culture change with socio-psychological technologies is a perspective direction for applied investigations. The article discusses an experience of using order technology of organizational culture for forming “family” aspect of organizational culture, which is aimed at providing emotional and axiological unity for members of an organization. It shows how the technology can be used at three system levels of an organization, which are: leader's personality, managerial team, and executive personnel level. The article demonstrates advantages and limitations of the order technology, one of which is concentration on personality of an organization's leader. It also views theoretical aspects of order approach to socio-psychological study of organizational culture, which defines organizational culture as a complex socio-psychological order of organizational and managerial interactions, which are constituted and regulated by systems of ethical meanings of interaction participants.
Key Words: organizational culture, order technology, socio-psychological order, suborder, training
Introduction
Russia has been undergoing constant changes in the course of several decades. These changes are very deep and profound. Changes embrace every sphere of human activity and all system levels of the Russian society. During the first period of changes in Russia there was a notion in the public opinion, which claimed that these changes had a clearly formulated goal (“market economy and democracy”), a specific plan (e.g. “500 steps”), and a role model (e.g. “flourishing Europe”). In other words, it seemed that the process of change was
simple and manageable. In the course of specific goals achievement it was discovered that many visions were unrealistic, and that “everything went wrong”, not the way it was planned. Visions of the participants of that large scale natural experiment aimed at changing the country (regarding the degree of goals' coordination, instruments for their achievement) turned out to be erroneous.
Notwithstanding the fact that Russia and its people have changed a lot over the past 30 years, the Russian society today is faced with yet another phase of active changes. Peculiarity of this stage of the Russian society's development is that internal changes are “dipped” into the environment of the “external” changes. It is not only Russia that is changing, it is the whole world, a part of which Russia is, that is changing. All landmarks for the process of change are unstable. Gradually all of us come to understand that it is extremely important to have internal supporting points and be able to choose them independently, as well as in the polylogue with the world around us.
Contemporary history of Russia can be used as a case study for updated versions of textbooks on social psychology. Every person, every organization in Russia, the whole country are participants of natural socio-psychological experiment. Its goal is self-transformation. The criterion of success of this selftransformation is an opportunity to live and develop in the emerging reality.
Russian society is a mega-organization, which learns how to solve its old and new problems. In the process of learning we use every accessible instrument, but not all of them are helpful and convenient. The main method of change is still the “trial and error” method.
Processes, which we observe in Russian business organizations, reflect the processes that we observe at the level of the whole country. Organizations suffer from the same type of deceases as the mega-system that they belong to. They make the same sorts of mistakes, they correct their mistakes, search for and
discover ways for making the process of change more meaningful, predictable, rational, and successful.
Heads of Russian organizations relatively actively study (in theory and practice) opportunities, which psychological science provides them with today.
Russia, in its turn, has accumulated extensive experience of psychologists' participation in changes that are taking place at different levels and are differently oriented. This experience involves both positive and negative aspects. The crucial thing is that this experience takes into consideration peculiarities, which are related to culture and psychology of the Russian society. It is extremely interesting that these cultural and psychological peculiarities can be uncovered in concrete situations that are linked to the necessity to solve new problems, utilize new knowledge and new ways of interaction. What is changing in organization members, when they enter the process of yet another selftransformation? How is it happening? What cannot be changed and why? How is the socio-psychological technology of organizational culture change set up? What opportunities does it provide? What are its limitations?
The goal of this article is to carry out analysis of data, which has been obtained as a result of employment of organizational culture change technology in the course of the project aimed at reorganization of a Russian company. The focus of attention is implementation of the first stage of the project, which took one year (2011-2012).
In order to achieve the goal, we will have to consecutively solve the following problems:
1) characterize order approach to socio-psychological study of organizational culture;
2) characterize order technology of organizational culture change;
3) present a specific case of using order technology of organizational culture change;
4) discuss the obtained results and formulate problems for further investigation.
Order approach to socio-psychological study of organizational culture
Socio-psychological investigations of organizational culture cover a small fraction of the large research environment, which is occupied by professionals in the sphere of management, economics, and other sciences. Among renowned social psychologists that studied organizational culture are G. Hofstede and E. Shain [1]. In Russia among social psychologists that do research on organizational culture we should mention Т Bazarov [2], L. Aksenovskaya [3; 4], S. Lipatov [5], А. Zankovsky [6 ], et.al.
We began to develop order approach to socio-psychological study of organizational culture in the mid 1990s. Major theoretical results were published in Russia in the middle of 2000s [3; 4].
Within the framework of the order approach, culture is understood as an ethically determinated order. Socio-psychological definition of organizational culture states that organizational culture is a complex socio-psychological order of organizational and managerial interactions, which are constituted and regulated by systems of ethical meanings of the interaction participants. Subsystems of ethical meanings compose meaningful systems. Ethical meanings are responsible for cognitive process of sorting information according to the “right-wrong”, “good-bad” criteria. Ethical meanings are the results of this sorting. When interaction participants have coordinated ethical meanings (they understand what “good” or “bad” is in a similar manner, as far as the goals, means, and rules of joint activity are concerned), their interaction turns into cooperation. When ethical meanings are in the state of disagreement and there is no coordination between them, interaction turns into struggle. This is a struggle
for proving one’s position and rightness. This struggle substitutes joint work aimed at achieving the goal that has been set.
In the course of our investigations done in Russian organizations it was shown that organizational culture was born in the processes of organizational and managerial interaction. We also discovered and described three basic models of managerial interaction of Russian top managers, which we formulated metaphorically: 1) “parental” model of managerial interaction; 2) “commander” model of managerial interaction; 3) “pastoral” model of managerial interaction.
Every model of managerial interaction is based on a subsystem of ethical meanings, which define how the top manager understands the concepts of ““right-wrong” and “good-bad”. We discovered that: a) top managers that belong to different types have different expectations as far as the forms and ways of employee’s behavior are concerned; b) Russian top managers use two contrasting models of managerial interaction, which are the “parental” and “commander” models; they use them situationally and often spontaneously. This “contrast shower” creates additional stress load for employees. Another problem is presented by conflicts between members of the managerial team, that use different models of managerial interaction (contradictions between “parents” and “commanders” are especially acute, although in a number of cases the conflict can be of a functional type and is similar to a manipulative game called “good cop, bad cop”).
Top managers that actively use the “parental” model of managerial interaction form organizational culture, which can be marked with a “family” metaphor. The main value of this culture is a human being. An employee is trained, nurtured and developed. His/her mistakes are forgiven. When an employee leaves an organization, he/she can always count on returning and being treated favorably.
Top managers that use actively use the “commander” model of managerial interaction form organizational culture of the “army” type. The main value in
such culture is the goal, the result of activity. A human being is viewed as a tool and renewable resource. Mistakes are severely punished. Employee that quit his/her job is perceived as a “traitor” and cannot return to an organization.
Top managers that are actively using the “pastoral” model of managerial interaction form organizational culture of the “church” type. The major value of this culture is an idea and/or ideal, which a person serves and wants to develop in line with this ideal.
Organizational culture as an integral socio-psychological order contains all three aspects when in normal developed state. In other words, organizational culture, which is correctly formed and developed, performs the function of a “family” (provides emotional integral unity of organization members), performs the function of an “army” (provides purposeful unity of organization members), and performs the function of a “church” (provides meaningful unity of organization members). Lack of maturity or development of one of the three aspects (suborders) of organizational culture is indicative of its weakness (or dysfunction).
In other words, normal, integral development of organizational culture can be provided by a leader, who is capable of consciously using all three models of managerial interaction. Therefore, order approach presupposes sturdy dependence of the state and level of organizational culture development from the state and level of organization leader’s development.
Within the structure of subsystem of ethical meanings we can single out two elements: the surface element, which is composed of a group of functional ethical meanings of the organization’s leader and the interior element, which includes groups of basic ethical meanings (life-death, cooperation-competition, improvement-deterioration, responsibility-irresponsibility).
Order approach to socio-psychological study of organizational culture, apart from the concept of organizational culture and its three part model, contains methodology of socio-psychological study of organizational culture,
which contains a set of ethically-determined methodological principles regulating the study. There is a set of research methods as well. The major research methods are modeling and training.
Order technology of organizational culture change
Order technology of organizational culture change is based on the order model. This technology is a sequence of actions, which includes 5 stages. These stages correspond to stages of forming integral socio-psychological order of organizational culture: 1) syncretic stage of organizational culture development is characterized by undifferentiated state of three major suborders: “family”, “army”, “church”; 2) “family” suborder formation; 3) “army” suborder formation; 4) “church” suborder formation; 5) synthetic stage of organization al culture development, which is characterized by developed, differentiated, balanced state of all three major suborders.
Presently, we have experience of dealing with all technological stages, except for the last one (synthetic stage).
Work, which is aimed at forming three major suborders (“family”, “army”, “church”) takes one year. Thus, organizational culture change within order approach takes 4-5 years.
The work is carried out consecutively in the course of one year at three system levels of an organization: 1) leader’s personality level; 2) managerial team level; 3) organization level.
The main socio-psychological method of intervention into organizational cultural system is the method of training. Effectiveness of this method is shown in series of special investigations. We would like to specifically point out Kurt Kreiger’s work here (5). Stages of order technology application, which are aimed at forming “family”, “army”, and “church” suborders have their key training topics corresponding to stage goal. As a rule, formation of “family”
suborder is linked to the topic “Corporate management standards”, formation of “army” suborder is linked to the topic “Corporate culture”, the key topic for “church” suborder” is linked to sotering (order technology of forming the “inner” personal and group order). Apart from content area mentioned above, an important peculiarity of every stage is utilization of complex tools of group work metaphorization within training programs (according to suborder metaphor). Thus, the “corporate tribe” metaphor is used for the “family” suborder; “managerial special forces” denote the “army” suborder; the “church” suborder is a “zen monastery”.
Five principles have to be observed in order to plan order trainings:
1) Principle of contextual and structural correspondence of trainings to the order model of organizational culture.
The system of trainings is built as a gradual movement from the syncretic suborder, through “family”, “army” and “church” suborders, to the “synthetic” suborder of organizational and cultural order.
2) Principle of distribution of order trainings according to criterion of their attribution to either “external” or “internal” order.
The aspect of “external” order includes trainings of the “family” and “army” levels. The aspect of “internal” order includes trainings of the “church” level.
3) Principle of training programs’ movement from the “external” to the “internal” order.
Oder technology presupposes the following sequence of trainings: “family” suborder (“external” order - “army” suborder (“external” order) -“church” suborder (“internal” order). This logic is reflective of the logic of organizational and cultural order development, as well as the logic of sociopsychological “interiorization”, the logic of transition from the “objective” (obvious) to the “subjective” (unobvious).
4) «1+1» principle.
The order training is set by two foundations: a) basic organizational and cultural metaphor; b) content area, which is currently important for an organization. It means that with the help of a certain socio-psychological technology, we learn or create a concrete professional (industrial) content, which provides for the increase of organization’s effectiveness.
5) Principle of the leading role of an organization’s leader for preparation and running of the training programs.
The essential peculiarity of order trainings is the fact that top manager of an organization together with the consulting psychologist takes part in training planning, and afterwords delivers training and acts as a trainer him/herself. Training proper is preceded by some serious preparation for both organizational transformations and training itself.
According to the order scheme, leader of an organization develops trainings together with a consultant, then he/she delivers it for the managerial team. After that, managerial team members master the training program too and work with their employees as trainers. A psychologist trains an organization’s leader only. Training effectiveness is much higher, when employees are trained by their immediate supervisors. This is happening due to the fact that supervisors then have an opportunity to help their employees to apply their skills and knowledge and evaluate their results in the course of their work.
CASE: Application of order technology of organizational culture
change for
“family” suborder formation at an “ABC” company
Within order approach organizational culture change is not viewed as an independent goal of organizational changes. Organizational culture change is a tool for achieving another goal, which is linked to the desired state of an
organization, which has economic, technological, marketing, and other parameters.
Project description
The organizational changes project was initiated in 2011 by the “ABC” company owners. In the course of diagnostic work, the problem linked to unsatisfactory level of effectiveness in the companies’ departments, which are responsible for earning and support (provision), was singled out. Analysis of problem state reasons allowed to uncover constructive limitations of the organization’s management system (we view management system as a significant element of organizational culture).
The goal of the project was to develop and implement the new business management system, based on the order approach to organization and culture change. The project name is “Business modernization of the “ABC” company”.
Description of the “ABC” company
The “ABC” company is a multi-industry company. It includes several businesses (construction and retail). Business management is executed via unified management center, by one managerial team (35 people).
The company has a long history. It has been on the market over 50 years. At present it is a joint stock company. The control stock belongs to members of one family, who take an immediate part in management of the company. The company employs approximately 1000 people.
Project implementation stages
The goal of the first part of the project was to form the “family” suborder of corporate culture. This work was divided into 6 stages:
1) preliminary diagnostics of business management system and development of the new concept of management system (MS);
2) designing business management system;
3) description and re-engineering of business processes;
4) designing key competences models and normalization of personnel’s actions at all system levels of an organization;
5) implementation of the new management system;
6) support of the new management system.
According to the principles and rules of the order approach, these six stages had the following specific features:
1) stage 1 (preliminary diagnostics of management system and development of the new concept of management system) was performed without organization’s top management involvement. This work was done by two organization leaders, who acted as project ordering customers;
2) stage 2 included the two leaders’ work on the content of the new model of management system, which had been selected earlier, and design of the “Corporate tribe” order training for the managerial team, based on the decisions regarding business changes;
3) stages 3 and 4 (description and re-engineering of business processes, development of key competences, normalization of personnel’s actions, implementation of the designed management system) were joined into one single agenda, which had been implemented in the course of 6 months. At these stages we started to actively use the “corporate university” technology (alongside with order training).
Order trainings _ for _ formation of “family” suborder of corporate culture
The goal of “corporate tribe” order trainings is to form the “family” suborder of corporate culture at the level of organization's leaders, managerial team, and executive personnel.
Traditionally, corporate culture of the “ABC” company had a strongly developed “family” aspect, which was based on the system of life-long staff recruitment. People were working in the organization for long periods of time and knew each other for decades. This caused a great deal of involvement into colleagues' personal life, i.e. collective experiencing of all key events of
colleagues' private and office life. Employees see themselves as “one big family” within this type of organizations. But this kind of “corporate families” are formed spontaneously, “historically”, and, as a rule, gain both stable positive (e.g. team spirit) and negative characteristics (e.g. prevalence of “good” relations over values of professional requirements to one's work, that has been done). Spontaneously formed “family” cultures are hard to manage. Notwithstanding the fact that external conditions of the company's activity had changed long time ago, its culture preserved many “habits” and “rules” that were formed several decades ago.
Therefore, on the one hand, the goal of forming “corporate culture” in the organization seemed to be achieved. On the other hand, this goal could be viewed as an absolutely new one. Why? First of all, the key owners created the new concept of “corporate family”. It rested upon family business ideology (as it was mentioned before, the company belonged to members of one family). The new goal was to substitute an abstract spontaneous “family” culture of the Soviet era with the culture of an individual clan of business owners. Goals, values, interests, and rules of this family had to form the foundation of the new culture of the company, as well as the “family” suborder of the “ABC” company's corporate culture. We had to announce the fact of creation of the new organization to three dozens of the most experienced and loyal managers.
Many managers had a long and close contact with the company's top manager in the “common family” format. All of them had an “equal right” for membership in the organization. All of them came to this organization together as employees. Now they were faced with a new psychological situation, where they had to make a transition from their old “family” to the new “family' , which was the family of business owners. Psychologically, it was very difficult.
Secondly, the novelty of forming the “family” suborder was linked to the necessity for top managers-owners to use rational socio-psychological technology of managing the process of new corporate culture formation. They
had to understand that technology, acquire and apply it. There was a special condition: organization and culture had to be new, while “old” people were invited into that new reality.
At the level of leaders “family” suborder formation included joint work of two top managers-company owners on the content of the new corporate ideology (the “ABC” company history, mission, values, principles, ethical code) and determination of long-term goals for the company. This work demonstrated similarity in the systems of values of both top managers, similarity of their views on many issues dealing with family interests and business development.
We paid attention to a certain similarity in their characters. They were easy-going, optimistic, and ready to try new methods of work.
Apart from developing ideological content, both leaders actively participated in designing chronological framework of the order training. It presupposed distribution of all work, that had been planned, within the framework of two days of training.
The leaders distributed training-related responsibilities and functions between themselves. It should be noted that the younger top manager (and the youngest of the two family members) constantly stressed the leading role of the elder top manager and took charge of the most complicated (from the point of view of preparation) tasks, i.e. teaching classes on “Corporate standards of management”.
This attentive attitude to each other became even more obvious in the course of the training and produced a noticeable impression on the training participants: the two leaders demonstrated that they were a good team. It created a feeling of reliability and specified new standards of attitude to each other. Members of the real family demonstrated new standards of professional behavior in the context of “corporate family”.
Organization leaders planned every small detail of the training. They visited the training venue (in the countryside) a number of times, rehearsed their presentations, actions, and interaction with each other.
Managerial team level. The training program was designed in a way that helped to cause overload in its participants due to combination of physical, intellectual, and emotional load, as well as overload of representative systems (visual, audio, kinesthetic). Major condition of the training was a radical environment, equipment, and form of behavior change.
The training program, which included a variety of events for its participants, incorporated two major tasks:
1) presentation of the new version of the “ABC” company (“Fireside chat”);
2) initiation into managerial team of the new “ABC” company (“Breaking of the bread with the family”).
Successful task solution could herald the beginning of implementation process of management system that had been designed earlier, based on the approved conceptual framework.
Training participants provided feedback twice within the framework of the training: after presentation of the new version of the “ABC” company and before the completion of the training, in the course of training results’ discussion. Alongside with that, the consultant attending the training did observation.
Conclusions based on the observation of training participants were as follows:
1) information regarding the essence and direction of changes was unexpected;
2) due to the fact that information regarding the new company and beginning of the process of changing it was presented systematically (history, former goals and tasks, new conditions and challenges, values, principles, goals,
management system, etc.), the participants could not demonstrate simple reaction by either accepting or not accepting changes;
3) presentation of the new version of the “ABC” company was finished with an invitation for all training participants to continue their work in the renewed company. Unexpectedness and puzzlement were brought to the point where training participants had to react to the invitation to enter the new managerial team of the new “ABC” company. Every training participant thanked the leaders for their invitation and explained why this invitation was important and interesting for them;
4) one third of the training participants (mostly younger members of the managerial team) welcomed the new vision with great enthusiasm and saw many opportunities for themselves within the project of designing the new “ABC” company;
5) two thirds of the participants, that showed moderate emotional reaction, had a different motivation, which was fear of the future. This fear was linked to insufficient understanding of their tasks and lack of confidence in the ability to cope with them.
Nevertheless, the first round of discussion of the new vision of company’s transformation, which took place in the positive atmosphere, proved that employees heard their leaders and considered it possible to evaluate their vision positively.
The training program included: forest walks, organization of “tribal village”, “hunting” and making food, psychological warm-ups, team competitions (training participants were divided into 5 “clans”), mini-lectures, practical tasks related to “Corporate management standards”, night watch of the “tribal fire”, etc.
Psychological turning point in training participants took place after one whole day of life and work in the new “tribal” reality, when at midnight the head of the “corporate family” carried out traditional Russian bread (karavai) and
invited the training participants to share “bread, work, and life” with his family. The younger top manager gave every training participant a notebook and a pen with a new company logo as a present. In their final feedback the training participants expressed high degree of trust in organization leaders and their plan concerning organizational changes.
Therefore, order training 1 solved several important tasks for the new transformation project:
1) the level of managerial team was “turned on”; therefore the new “ABC” company gained its new key players and started its history;
2) foundation of team work technology application was laid (5 working groups were formed, they were ready to fulfill job-related tasks);
3) the “ABC” company gained experience of using order technology for cultural “programming” of the new groups of employees, that had to be transferred from the “old ABC” to the “new ABC”. Second top manager (who was younger than the first top manager) changed his real status within his company for a higher one in the course of his work with the managerial team.
Medium-level and executive personnel level were included into the process of modernization (and transformation) with the help of modified version of “Corporate tribe” order training. Three trainings took place with one month interval between them. These trainings were conducted by organization leaders. Over 100 people took part in trainings. Managerial team members, that underwent the first training, assisted them in the course of further trainings.
Participation of top managers in these trainings showed another training participants that:
а) managerial team supports the company owners' plans;
б) they can “speak the same language” and participate in team game with the “ABC” company owners.
These factors served as an additional argument, which strengthened medium-level management and executive employees’ trust in the new plans of the company leaders.
Modification of the order training for medium-level management and other employees involved shortening of the training length (one day), decrease in physical and intellectual loads, simplification of team tasks content. Major events of this training were presentation of the new version of the “ABC” company and the ritual of transition from the “old” company to the “new” company.
Medium-level management and executive personnel pointed out significance of the fact that the training was conducted by the company’s top managers. Special attention should be given to participants’ (medium-level management and executive personnel) attitude to what was happening during the training. They experienced:
1) feeling of gratitude (for invitation to the training and invitation to the “new” company, opportunity to undergo training, go to the countryside, have informal friendly communication with top managers);
2) inspiration by the presented new vision of the company;
3) trust to the leaders.
Many participants pointed out the fact that they had experienced enthusiasm and joy. Their leaders did manage to create energetic and positive atmosphere and receive support and gratitude in return. As some of the training participants pointed out, it was extremely important for them to hear their supervisors and to be heard by them.
Therefore, “family” suborder formation was happening step by step: at the level of company leaders, at the level of managerial team, and at the level of executive personnel from various departments of the company. The key method for introducing changes was the “Corporate tribe” order training with its topic: “Corporate management standards”. In the course of series of order trainings the
new company’s presentation was made, its strategic goals were clarified, and its employees were initiated to become “corporate family” members. Overall, 130 people took part in series consisting of 4 trainings. All trainings were conducted by organization leaders.
Alongside with training preparation and delivery (for medium-level management and executive personnel), we continued to work with the managerial team. In order to do this job, we used the form of “ABC” company’s corporate university. Within the framework of weekly meetings at corporate university, we discussed and corrected the tasks done by groups of employees regarding stages 3-6 of the project called “Business reorganization”. Upon completion of the order training its participants were enrolled to corporate university of the company and continued to study every week. In the course of “university” classes they developed the topics, which were presented at the training, and analyzed the experience of implementation of changes at workplaces.
Discussion
In this project we came across a situation where an organization believed that its “family suborder” was well developed.
Our experience linked to fulfilling the task of business reorganization showed that depending on business concept, business model and property type (joint stock company or family business), parameters of “family” suborder can vary considerably. The new vision of business organization and its stakeholders brought us to the conclusion that the structure and content of “family” suborder had to be changed.
There is a description of traits within order approach, that mark “family” suborder presence as an aspect of organizational culture. More specifically, the “family” suborder solves the task of establishing emotional and valuable unity
within an organization. The effectiveness criterion for this task's solution is considered to be employees' trust in their organization and its top management, and vice versa.
Therefore, the first condition for determination of the “family” suborder state is the presence of values, which are shared by organization members and their emotional acceptance (“being in love” with their values, deriving pleasure from actions, which manifest these values).
Paraphrasing Kurt Lewine, we can state that the “family” suborder is formed when employees know their values, love them, and act only according to these values. Failures in attempts to coincide with accepted values are possible, but here it is primarily important to preserve high level of motivation, in order to do it.
Organization can quickly inform employees about the new values. But it takes not less than a year for a sufficient individual and collective experience to emerge. This experience persuasively demonstrates that values are not declaratory, they are the foundation of all decisions that are being made in an organization. It is important to have an experience of discussing all cases when organizations and individual employees do not manage to stick to responsibilities that these values impose on every individual employee and organization as a whole.
After one year top managers can expect to see employees' first conscious attempts to treat corporate values as their own. This kind of attitude is indicative of the fact that employees trust their organization.
Implementation of the first stage of order technology of organizational culture change was aimed at creation of a critical mass of change agents within an organization. Out of 1000 employees the program “Order training Corporate university” was completed by slightly over 10%. They were specially selected people, that met two criteria: 1) high level of professionalism in their sphere; 2) ability to cooperate and work in a team.
All program participants were instrumental for emergence of the new “ABC” company. Opening of the new company coincided with the point when the first stage of “Business reorganization” project came to an end with the help of order technology of organizational culture.
From our point of view, the advantage of order technology (and, possibly, its limitation) is the fact that it is centered around organization leader (leaders). Within order technology, changes at the level of a leader equal changes at the level of an organization as a whole. In other words, the source of real and effective organizational changes is the self-changing leader.
If the leader sets the goal of changing him/herself, he/she can have a strong influence on managerial team members, as well as employees of other levels and set an example for them. A leader always has to be at an advantage in terms of work on him/herself, when compared to other organization members. It allows him/her to act as a “donor” of energy, knowledge, and motivation for organization members. In order technology such an advantage is created due to the fact that the leader starts working on a project from its very beginning. The leader prepares to start working with his/her team in the course of 2-3 months. Then he/she stays in shape and increases his/her level by means of individual sotering classes.
The advantage of order technology's centration on leader's work on him/herself (and later on managerial team members and change agents' work on themselves) is obvious and means that real personal, team, and organizational development, which is accompanied by synergetic effects, takes place. Heavy load that an organization's leader, as well as his/her employees, who take active part in the process of changes, have to handle, acts as a limitation. If the top manager is not ready for intensive work on him/herself, technology cannot be used.
The second advantage of order technology (which is its limitation at the same time) is the fact that a big role in creation of organizational culture is
played by personal values, principles, and rules of organization leaders. The essence of this advantage is that the organization leader turns values, principles, and rules of the organization into something that is visible and full of life. He/she objectifies them in his/her personality, which significantly influences the degree of employees' trust in them and readiness to share them. Therefore, there is no possibility of double standards emergence. Double standards deprive culture of energy, employees are expected to correspond to cultural standards, while the top managers have to control this correspondence and constantly declare standards.
Accordingly, limitation of this technology involves a leader's responsibility for the content and form of his/her personal culture, which organizational culture copies. That is why we believe that it is not correct to view organizational culture as a context, where industrial or service system functions. Culture of an organization is a two-sided phenomenon. It exists as an external environment, which joins employees, and as an internal environment (sometimes very large scale) of every individual organization member.
Industrial process or equipment, which enter the force field of these intersecting cultural environments, can experience significant influence, which can be compared to influence of nuclear medicine technologies. The fact that we do not see something does not mean that it does not exist.
Order technology is perfectly suitable for cases where an enterprise is “built to last” according to Jim C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras [8]. Only in this case it makes sense for the leader to take sublime work and life-related responsibilities. In other words, the technology is good, when the meaning of life coincides with the meaning of work.
Another question pending discussion is the term of the full cycle of order technology employment. Are 4-5 years not too long a time for the modern world with its high speeds? We believe that in this case analogy with time in general is rather suitable. We distinguish between “rational” and “emotional” time. We
think fast, but we feel and experience slower. There are technological aspects in culture. They change fast. Culture has psychological aspects as well. They change slower. Experience has to be both comprehended (faster) and felt (slower). That is why we are convinced that if work on culture changes does not take enough time (approximately 5 years), these changes are decorative. They do not exist without costly control.
Conclusion
There are many other issues linked to order technology employment and organizational culture change. They will be discussed in our next publications. One thing is evident: order technology of organizational culture change is based on socio-psychological principles of socium's cultural order formation. It brings modern organization leaders back to “self-care” topic, which acts as a foundation for care for other people [9]. The logic of historical process development proves the necessity of reducing the gap between the level of modern technologies' development and the level of human being's development. In cases when this human being is a leader of an organization, the goal becomes super urgent and vital.
References
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