The article that is exposed next approaches the Organizational Culture concept from several perspectives, to arrive at a definition that takes into account the influence of this in the management processes and in the achievement of efficiency, effectiveness and competitiveness. From this point of view the possibility of cultural change is valued from the transformation that has taken place in Cuban companies as a result of the implementation of Business Improvement and in this sense old and new paradigms that have characterized our organizational reality are exposed. Finally, the new challenges facing companies and the results obtained by those capable of constantly renewing their culture are addressed.
* MSc., Ing. Yesmín Alabart Pino. Consultant Conavana S, A. Adjunct Professor at the Center for Business Management Studies (CEGEM). University of Holguín and Dr CT, MSc., Ing. Angel Luis Portuondo Vélez. Associate Professor. Higher Polytechnic Institute "José A. Echeverría". Management Techniques Studies Center. CETDIR. Centro Internacional de La Habana SA Consulting and Auditing House.
Organizational culture.
A definition.
Just as society has a cultural heritage, organizations have distinctive patterns of collective feelings and beliefs that are passed on to new group members. This is the sense in which in the last decades of business life it is known as business culture or organizational culture.
The concept Culture, in its broadest sense, is a term used by Social Sciences such as, Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, Anthropology, Ethnography. Thus, for example, in contemporary Marxist literature there are different definitions of the concept of culture, which are the result of the investigations that have been carried out around this problem in the last 15 or 20 years.
In Cuba, the theoretical problems related to the essence, function, elements, and features of culture have always had a special dedication in the tradition of Marxist thought. From the first representatives who paid attention to these issues Mella, Villena, Marinello, to our current top leaders have reflected in this regard.
Thus, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez has defined that "culture is above all a way of life" or has subscribed to the idea that "culture is everything that is not nature", but rather than summarizing concepts, he has offered profound reflections on the content and forms of culture, their functions, ideological projection, etc. (Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, 1990)
From this point of view we can expand saying that the concept of culture fixes above all, not the quantitative aspect, but the qualitative aspect of social life; culture is the quality of history at a given moment in its development.
The culture of an organization is a concept derived from the intersection of two theories: that of culture and that of organization. (Smirchich, 1983)
Indeed:
- If culture is, from the anthropological or functionalist perspective, an instrument required to satisfy needs or values, the organization is understood as a basic principle for achieving objectives (…). In both cases, the consequences pursued are the causes of culture and organization as a crystallization of the environment. If culture is, from the more relativistic and dialectical perspective, an adoptive mechanism, a complex of elements, organization is understood as flexible design. In both cases the object is focused on the system, that is, its optimization is contingent or dependent on various options, adjustments between parts.If culture focuses as a shared set of beliefs and symbols, the organization is treated as a network of meanings and Images more or less shared by staff.
Another of the meanings of the concept of business culture is the result of the work of some theorists in business science, who in the last twenty years have dealt with the subject, such as:
Pettigrew (1979), argues that the culture of a company is manifested by symbols, languages, rites, myths, which are created and disseminated by certain managers to influence the behavior of company members.
Ansoff (1985) called a group's culture the set of norms and values of that social group that determine their preferences for a specific type of strategic behavior.
Barnertt (1990), takes as a company culture the set of ways of behaving, that is, of behaving and thinking, which are necessary in a given group.
Katz and Khan (1970) define “every organization creates its own culture or climate, with its own taboos, customs and styles. The climate or culture of the system reflects both the norms and values of the formal system and its reinterpretation in the informal system (…), as well as reflects the internal and external pressures of the types of people that the organization attracts, its work processes and physical distribution, communication modalities and the exercise of authority within the system ”.
There are other definitions that analyze the culture of a company such as the norms that are developed in the work groups (Homans, 1950); or the dominant values accepted by a company (Deal and Kennedy, 1982); the philosophy that guides the policy of a company regarding its employees and / or clients (Ouchi, Pascale and Athos, 1981); the rules of the game to progress in the company (Scheín 1978, Vanmaanen 1976, Ritti and Funkhouser 1982); the environment or climate that is established in a company by the physical distribution of its members and the way in which they relate to customers or other third parties (Taquiri and Litwin, 1968).
According to Schein (1985), considered a classic on the subject, all these definitions manage to reflect some element of the company culture but none of them is the essence of it.
On that basis, it states:
“I will call culture: A model of basic assumptions - invented, discovered or developed by a given group as they learn to cope with their problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that have exerted enough influence to be considered valid and consequently be taught new members how to perceive, think, and feel those problems. "
Thévenet (1993), exposes two aspects that structure the definition of culture:
- it is a describable content, specific to the company that distinguishes it from the others. It is a way of describing the organization, a reading card of this particular "human society".
Three levels can be distinguished in this definition:
- a set of references, shared in the organization, established throughout its history to respond to the problems facing the company.
Cruz Cordero (2000), defines it as a learned way of doing in the organization, which is shared by its members, consists of a system of values and basic beliefs that are manifested in norms, attitudes, behaviors, behaviors, the way of communicating, interpersonal relationships, leadership style, shared history, the way of fulfilling the mission and the materialization of the vision, in its interaction with the environment, at a given time.
The concepts discussed so far recognize organizational culture as:
- a means of satisfying needs within the organization, a reflection of the culture of the macrosystem (society), the result of a shared history of the world, a system of knowledge, the result of organizational learning, a system of symbols and meanings, an institution.
However, none of the definitions has demonstrated, at least explicitly, the relationship between the variables that make up the culture and that have been recognized by the majority of the authors (values, beliefs, attitudes, paradigms), that from now on From now on we will call soft variables, and the variables that we will call hard (structures, strategies, systems, processes, trade, and others), which are linked to Business Management, as well as that of both sets of variables and the environment.
To this end, Alabart and Portuondo formulate the following definition:
Organizational culture is a set of paradigms, which are formed throughout the life of the organization as a result of interactions between its members, these with the structures, strategies, systems, skills, styles and processes, and the organization with its environment, from which a set of references are formed, which will be valid to the extent that they guarantee the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization.
This concept recognizes:
- cultural variables (soft) management system variables (hard) environment variables variables associated with the final result (efficiency, effectiveness)
In other words, it can also be conceived as the 7S Model linked to the environment and processes, as shown in Figure No. 1
General Interactions of Organizational Culture seen through the 7S Model
Figure No. 1: General Interactions of Organizational Culture seen through the 7S Model
We can argue that the concept of Business Culture arises from the need to search for an interpretive paradigm that allows broadening the understanding of organizational reality, the bases of this paradigm are in the studies, May 1 and Barnard (1930), and then Peters, Waterman (1982) and Schein (1985), the latter somewhat motivated by phenomena such as the Japanese miracle and the economic and industrial growth of other Asian countries and the successes of some North American companies, which made evident the insufficiency of traditional paradigms to understand organizations, which at the same time made it necessary to be able to better distinguish variables in this field to explain the difference between excellence and mediocrity.
Culture constitutes the basis of organizational functioning, it is the invisible source where strategy, structure and systems acquire their energy. The success of transformation projects depend on the talent and aptitude of management to bring about change in the company's driving culture, on time, and in accordance with strategies, structures and formal management systems.
In the course of these notes, the unquestionable role that business culture plays in the face of the survival, adaptation and growth phenomena of an organization has been founded.
It can be concluded that Management systems must be based on those references that work and at the same time they must be learned from those effective management systems.
Business Improvement: The New Approach to Management
Now, is the culture susceptible of being changed?
In the business world, change is a constant today. There is no administration book that does not talk about the permanence, need, depth and breadth of the change, its cost, advantages and disadvantages, while there are a group of factors that influence that the change is normal and above all necessary.. For example, with the globalization of the economy, companies are faced with a greater number of competitors, each of whom can introduce unexpected product and service innovations to the market.
The speed of technological change also promotes innovation, product life cycles have gone from years to months, and the time to develop new products and introduce them has also decreased.
All of which demands a new way of doing things and with it changes the culture developed by each group within the organization.
In Cuba, with the profound economic affectations that occurred with the disappearance of socialism in Eastern Europe, the disintegration of the USSR, the impulse to the neoliberal globalization of world capitalism in the 1990s, and the intensification of the economic blockade of the States. Together, they made it necessary to initiate a set of economic transformations to stop the fall of the national economy and begin a recovery process, which based on its results and in conditions of economic efficiency and competitiveness, made possible the country's insertion into the world economy, maintaining the essence of socialist economy.
Taking as premise the favorable results that BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT obtained in the Revolutionary Armed Forces, it was taken as an agreement in the V Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba to extend it to all sectors of the economy, which constitutes the continuation of the economic reform of the special period at a qualitatively higher level.
The main objective of this system is to increase efficiency and competitiveness as much as possible, on the basis of granting the faculties to the company, and establishing the policies, principles and procedures that promote the development of initiative, creativity and responsibility of all bosses and workers.
In a meeting held with Directors of companies in the process of Business Improvement, the Secretary of the Council of Ministers Carlos Lage, stated:
“It is a change in the mentality of the bosses, who have to understand that the success or failure of their company depends fundamentally on him, his management team and his group of workers. Without this transformation there will be no progress. ”(1).
We are then in the presence of the most profound and transcendental change that is taking place in Cuba at the business level, a change that encompasses all levels of the company, including above all the organizational culture and therefore the paradigms that until now had prevailed in the minds of employers and workers.
What are some of the old paradigms that exist in business reality?
What paradigms should Business Improvement bring with it?
| OLD PARADIGMS | NEW PARADIGMS |
| Authoritarianism | Participatory management. |
| Unskilled leaders | Tables prepared politically and technically |
| Rigid and centralized steering | Distribution of powers, decentralization in decision making. |
| Operational management | Strategic Direction. |
| Produce at all costs and at all costs. | Effective and efficient accounting. Business Self-financing, Business Plan, obtaining Profits. |
| We did not think about the client, quality, or competitiveness | Development of technological innovation and R&D to promote efficiency and effectiveness. The customer comes first. Quality is respect for the people |
| Stimulation based on moral stimuli. | Moral and material stimulation based on results. |
Therefore, the Business Improvement process is helping to form in our businessmen a set of valid references " Paradigms", which have been formed as a result of putting into practice an effective management system. Therefore, although the main theorists of Business Management have not reached a consensus on whether the culture is susceptible to being changed or not, we think that there are dynamic elements, such as values, that evolve at each stage of development. But in addition, making a radical change in a company is a very difficult task, it is the supreme test of the skills of its managers and characteristics such as intuition, experience and attitudes are useful attributes but they will not reach their maximum development if they do not rely on a thorough understanding of the subtle mechanisms put into play in the transformation of a social organizational system.
A PRIZE for a single company: THE EXCELLENT.
There are many changes that the Cuban company is facing in the search for efficiency, effectiveness and competitiveness. Among them, the most important are associated with the implementation of Quality Systems based on ISO 9000 Standards and Environmental Management Systems based on ISO 14000.
Today, four years after this system was extended to the entire national economy, the companies where it has been established exhibit results such as:
- Increase in sales volumes. Increase in productivity. Decrease in expenses. Increase in profits. Increase in the motivation of workers, stabilization of the workforce and a greater sense of belonging. Development of R&D with the consequent design of more competitive services and products.
Many of the companies are also preparing to opt for the National Quality Award and the Business Excellence Award.
What conditions must companies meet to opt for these awards?
Companies must have a constant concern for the client, participation of senior management, together with clients and suppliers, to know their needs, develop all the competitive advantages that can be exploited, develop plans for quality improvement in the short and long term. deadlines that respond to the needs of customers, etc., in short, you must have strong leadership in the sector, a participatory environment at all levels, teamwork, organizational development, saving energy carriers, efficiency and effectiveness, everything that should result in higher quality productions, increased sales volume and therefore profit.
Undoubtedly, all these processes linked to business life are inserted into the Cuban Business Culture, which is why a very favorable paradigm shift is brewing in order to implement management systems according to the current demands of the environment, so it can be concluded by proposing than:
- Each organization develops its own culture, which is neither good nor bad on its own, but must be based on paradigms that promote efficiency and effectiveness. A series of processes and changes are taking place in Cuban organizational life that involve a new way of thinking, doing and facing the problems of the business world. The companies that carry out the Business Improvement are in better conditions to opt for the Business Excellence Award. A process that has no end is started, if the company wishes to continue fulfilling its Mission or Reason for Being towards socialist society.
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