In the popular book, “Harvard Business Review on Managing People”, one of the articles - is by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones - presents a matrix for understanding organizational culture, and what holds the modern company together. I present you the gist of that article. Moreover, I encourage you to read the complete article on your own in order to gain more insights.
Sociability is a measure of sincere friendliness among members of a community.
Solidarity is a measure of community’s ability to pursue shared objectives quickly and effectively, regardless of personal ties.
Note: None of these cultures is “the best.” In fact each is appropriate for different business environments.
Networked Organization:
Networked organizations are characterized not by a lack of hierarchy but by a profusion of ways to get around it. Few organizations start their life cycle in the networked quadrant. Sociability is built up over time. It follows that many organizations migrate to networked organization from other quadrants.
Characteristics:
1) People frequently stop to talk in the hallways.
2) People wander into one another’s offices with no purpose but to say hello.
3) Lunch is an event in which groups often go out and dine together.
4) Many of these organizations celebrate birthdays, field softball teams, and hold parties to honor an employee’s long service or retirement.
5) Employees act like family, attending one another’s weddings, and anniversary parties.
6) Friends or cliques of friends make sure that decisions about issues are made before meetings are held to discuss them.
7) People move from one position to another without “required” training.
8) Employees are hired without going through official channels in the human resources department.
Advantages:
1) Informality can lend flexibility to an organization and be a healthy way of cutting through the bureaucracy.
2) The ability to collect and selectively disseminate soft information.
3) The ability to acquire sponsors or allies in the company who will speak on their behalf both formally and informally.
Disadvantages:
1) The low level of solidarity means the managers often have trouble getting functions or operating companies to cooperate.
2) A networked organization is usually so political that individuals and cliques spend much of their time pursuing personal agendas.
3) It becomes hard for colleagues to agree on priorities and for managers to enforce them.
4) Employees often contest performance measures, procedures, rules, and systems.
How to improve?
1) Learn to overcome the negatives of sociability, such as cliques, gossip, and low productivity.
2) Focus on increased creativity and commitment.
3) Move individuals regularly between functions, businesses, and countries in order to limit excessive local identification and help them develop a wider strategic view of the organization.
4) Later on, these individuals often become the primary managers of the networked organization’s political processes, and they keep them healthy.
Mercenary Organization:
Characteristics:
1) Low on hallway hobnobbing and high on data-laden memos.
2) Almost all communication in a mercenary organization is focused on business matters.
3) Individual interests coincide with corporate objectives, and those objectives are often linked to a crystal clear perception of the “enemy” and the steps to beat it.
4) Ability to respond quickly and cohesively to a perceived opportunity or threat in the marketplace.
5) Priorities are decided swiftly – generally by senior management – and enforced throughout the organization with little debate.
6) A clear separation of work and social life. Interestingly, these cultures often consist of people whose work life takes priority over their private life.
7) Members of this kind of business community rarely fraternize outside the office, and if they do, it is at business functions.
8) Because of the absence of the personal ties, mercenary organizations are generally intolerant of poor performance.
9) They are rarely bastions of loyalty because people stay with high-solidarity companies as long as their personal needs are met, and then they move on.
Advantages:
1) Because of focused activities, many mercenary organizations are very productive.
2) Unhindered by friendships, employees are not reluctant to compete, further enhancing performance as standards get pushed ever higher.
Disadvantages:
1) Employees busy chasing specific targets are often disinclined to cooperate, share information, or exchange new or creative ideas.
2) Cooperation between units with different goals is even less likely.
Fragmented Organization:
People in fragmented organizations often work with their doors shut or at home.
Characteristics:
1) Employees show a low consciousness of organizational membership. They often believe that they work for themselves or they identify with occupational groups.
2) Employees don’t like to wear the name of the company on their T-shirts.
3) Employees engage in none of the extracurricular rites and rituals that characterize high-sociability cultures, considering them a waste of time.
4) People work with their doors shut or, in many cases, at home, going to the office only to collect mails or make long-distance calls.
5) Employees are generally secretive about their projects and progress with co-workers, offering information only when asked point-blank.
6) In extreme cases, members of fragmented organizations have such low levels of sociability that they attempt to sabotage the work of their “colleagues” through gossip, rumor, or overt criticism delivered to higher-ups in the organization.
7) This culture also has low levels of solidarity: its members rarely agree about organizational objectives, critical success factors, and performance standards.
8) Any social behavior that is discretionary is unlikely to take place.
Advantages-cum-disadvantages:
1) This kind of environment is attractive to individuals who prefer to work alone or to keep their work and personal lives entirely separate.
2) This culture functions well in manufacturing concerns that rely heavily on the outsourcing of piecework.
3) This culture may succeed in professional organizations, such as Consulting and Law Firms, in which highly trained individuals have idiosyncratic work styles.
4) This culture can also work for companies that have become virtual: employees work either at home or on the road, reporting in to a central base mainly by electronic means.
Communal Organization:
A communal culture can evolve at any stage of a company’s life cycle. This culture is most prevalent at start-ups. Many managers see the communal organization as the ideal.
Characteristics:
1) In communal organizations, everything feels in sync.
2) Employees possess a high, sometimes exaggerated, consciousness of organizational identity and membership.
3) Organizational life is punctuated by social events that take on a strong ritual significance.
4) An equitable share of risks and rewards among employees.
5) Communal organizations place an extremely high value on fairness and justice.
6) Solidarity also shows itself clearly when it comes to company goals and values.
7) Finally, in communal organizations, employees are very clear about the competition. They know which companies threaten theirs.
Advantages:
1) Ideal.
2) Once this culture is achieved and sustained, corporate life becomes very productive.
3) Very useful for an organization where innovation requires elaborate and extensive teamwork across functions and perhaps locations.
4) Very useful for an organization where there are real synergies among organizational subunits and real opportunities for learning.
5) Very useful for an organization where the business environment is dynamic and complex, such as in IT, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals, because in these industries, organizations interface with their environment through multiple connections involving technology, customers, the government, competition, and research institutes. Communal culture aids in the synthesis of information from all the sources.
Disadvantages:
1) Employees may withdraw their cooperation the moment they become unable to identify shared advantage.
2) Communal culture may be an inappropriate and unattainable ideal in many business contexts. The reason is that many businesses that achieve the communal form find it hard to sustain. Communal culture works mostly for religious, political, and civic organizations.
3) High levels of sociability and solidarity are often formed around particular founders or leaders whose departure may weaken either or both forms of social relationship.
4) The high-sociability, half of the communal culture, is often antithetical to what goes on inside an organization during periods of growth, diversification, or internalization.
5) The sincere geniality of sociability doesn’t usually coexist – it cannot – with solidarity’s dispassionate, sometimes ruthless focus on achievement of goals. When the two do coexist, it is often in religious or volunteer groups.
To increase sociability, Managers can take the following steps:
1) Promote the sharing of ideas, interests, and emotions by recruiting compatible people – people who naturally seem likely to become friends.
2) Increase social interaction among employees by arranging casual gatherings inside and outside the office, such as parties, excursions, and book club.
3) Reduce formality amongst employees.
4) Limit hierarchical differences.
5) Act like a friend yourself, and set example for geniality and kindness by caring for those in trouble.
To build solidarity, Managers can take the following steps:
1) Develop awareness of competitors through briefings, newsletters, videos, memos, or E-mails.
2) Create a sense of urgency.
3) Stimulate the will to win.
4) Encourage commitment to shared corporate goals.
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