Organizational Culture

Today's discussion of Zappos is a fun way to get our discussion of organizational culture started. Zappos certainly has a unique way of working together. And when we're talking about culture in any organization, that's really what we're talking about: how we work together, or what some authors phrase as, "how things done around here".

There are a lot of different definitions of organizational culture. Let me offer a simple one: organizational culture is the beliefs, values, and customs or habits shared among organization members. These characteristics are often visible not only in our conversation and problem solving, but are physically visible in artifacts within the organization. Organizational culture is relatively stable, but it can change and does evolve as the organization solves problems, and these problem solving methods are accepted as valid (see Schein, 2010).

Cameron and Quinn's (2011) competing values framework provides us with a model for thinking about these beliefs, values and customs, and the impact various culture types can have on innovation, speed, and organizational sustainability. The first five minutes of this video provides a helpful introduction to the competing values framework.

Your posts captured some of the beliefs, values and customs at Zappos, and even some of the artifacts (e.g., the open and highly decorated work space). See Michael's post for a thorough discussion of why Zappos' culture might be classified as "clan" according to the competing values framework. Lucas, Rob and Ricky's posts help stretch our thinking, noting that there appears to be elements of the Zappos culture that fall outside the clan quadrant. We'll see on Monday that company cultures are rarely exclusive to one quadrant. As the video notes, each quadrant offers some value to the organization. The key, as Nuebert and Dyck (2014) point out, is to ensure our culture aligns with our customer/stakeholder expectations, and our business strategy.

We've looked at some interesting organizational cultures this semester. Earlier we took a peek at Ideo. Now Zappos. How would you like to work at these companies? A number of you would, but Joel, Lucas, Ricky and Ryan observe in their discussions that these organizational cultures may not be a fit for everybody, depending on personal work style, etc. That is certainly true. Let me also challenge us to consider being open to alternative organizational cultures and the value of each of the quadrants. Those of who prefer a more internal focus, or perhaps predictability and control, may find our organizations in need of the innovation offered by adhocracy in order to survive. If that's the case, how do we make that transition as an organization and as individuals? We'll talk about that more on Monday.  :-)

References

Cameron, K.S & Quinn, R.E. (2011). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Neubert, M. & Dyck, B. (2014). Organizational behavior. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Schein, E. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.