When looking at functions of culture, it is easy to see these in favourable terms and presume that a strong culture would directly lead to an organization’s success. While this is often the case, we usually find that a strong culture obstruct some of the actions taken by managers. This often takes place in unforeseen and inconsistent ways. It is important to note that while cultural control mechanisms direct individual Behavior, they may not necessarily direct it in manner consistent with the organization’s mission or managerial goals. For example, employees may set production norms and apply these on group members. These norms or limits are often lower than production standards sought after by managers. Groups often apply powerful influences on their members in an attempt to protect each other from managerial action. In such a scenario can formal structure and group norms clash. Here are some other situations where a strong culture may be a constraint to action.
Barrier to Change and Improvement: The very fact that cultural derived norms, values and mental models are often internalized by members often makes them opposed to change when they see these changes are clashing with these values. This is particularly true when organizational change is put into practice through structural change. For example, while a new reward or incentive system is applied in support of the change in direction or strategy, employee values and other cultural mechanisms supporting the former direction are still deeply connected which conflict with the new structure. This becomes a challenge over the relative strengths of the structure and culture. Even if the structure winds up being a more powerful force, the execution of the change is slowed as multiple forms of resistance come out..
Barrier to Diversity: Strong company cultures create standardization and consistency of behavior among employees. This is known as cross individual behavioral consistency. While this may be favorable in many ways, it goes against a company’s goals of creating a diverse workplace and make use of this diversity for competitive advantage in at least two ways. The first is that one of way in which strong cultures are made through selection of new employees based on person-organization fit, that is applicants are selected who are believed to “fit” into the organization. This practice tends to bound diversity of any kind. A related problem is that when potential employees are choosing employers, they tend to skip companies with strong cultures not aligned with their values. The second way in which strong cultures acts as a barrier to diversity has to do with the way in which a strong culture acts to homogenize the workforce. One the reasons why companies want to increase diversity is based on the supposition that more diverse decision-making teams will be more creative and make decisions more in line with a varied marketplace. Any benefits accomplished through diversity hiring can be lost as the mechanisms of a strong culture as new employees endeavours to fit in with the team.
Barrier to Cross Departmental and Cross Organizational Cooperation: While we often use the concept of organizational culture or company culture, most large organizations have sub-cultures connected with different geographic locals or different functional units. For example the culture of an engineering department is usually very different than the culture of a marketing department. When communication and coordination is vital between units with very different sub-cultures, messages are often misunderstood and conflict in priorities dampens the ability of these units to work in cohesion on a project of solve a problem.
Barrier to Mergers and Acquisitions: One of the factors mentioned from the high percentage failure of merged organizations to meet their goals, is the change process did not account for or do anything to deal with conflict in cultures between the two original organizations. This is particularly true when the merger plan seeks to merge different departments into one and requiring them to function as a single unit. This may be as simple as dress codes or a basic as leadership style and team decision-making procedure.
