You are strongly encouraged to review the Project 3 Step 1
Final Deliverable Expectation/Outline/Key Issues & Questions. This document
will help you proceed in a logical sequence through the project and ensure you
address key issues of the project. These key issues are addressed by answering
with your own work the following questions:
What is organizational culture? How does it
relate to my organization? How would I describe the culture of my organization?
Does the culture need to be changed? How can that be accomplished? If not, why
not?
What is organizational climate? (Do people enjoy
working here? If so, why? If not, why not? Are our motivation, evaluation and
reward system perceived as fair and equitable? What effect do such measures
have on climate? Do we do climate surveys? What do they indicate as key
concerns? If we don’t measure climate, should we? Why or why not? How?
What is our ethics like? Do we employ fair
practices? Are we provided clear ethical guidelines? Do we receive ethics
training? How do we measure compliance? Do our leaders shape ethical decision
making? If so, how? If not, why not? Do we ask employees to do certain things
we would not? Have there been any scandals to overcome? If so, how were they
dealt with? Are they gone? What steps have been taken to ensure they do not
recur?
Based on the above what are your recommendations
you would make to the COO, as the assignment requires. I have provided some
context and substantive guidance in my thoughts above in the prior week’s
highlights regarding the various issues your Project 3 might consider for
inclusion or discussion. Below is an example that integrates some of the major
issues that apply, in general, to Project 3.
Project 3 Example:
Think for a moment about the recent scandal at
Wells Fargo Bank. What gives rise to an unethical culture involving hundreds of
employees? What must the climate be like to drive individuals to such extremes?
Does unethical behavior become so commonplace — that it becomes acceptable,
overlooked, or an integral part of the value system? What was CEO Sloan’s value
system? What type of climate and culture did he establish and what were his
views on human motivation?
The looming issue for Wells Fargo (and all
organizations), is how does leadership, when required, change the culture to a
more desirable one? Perhaps, current leadership forecloses that option! Think
about what a changed culture means for Wells Fargo in terms of the possible
effects for organization structure, reporting lines, reward systems, bonus
structures, business income replacement, and so forth. How will successful
changes in culture, climate and ethics be measured?
Thank goodness it is your job and not mine to
examine these daunting issues: :). But, if I were thrown into the fray, I might
start my examination of culture, behavior, climate, and ethics with a good
general source of information on these topics. In addition to the references
for the readings in class, one such work is Organizational Behavior by Robbins
and Judge. This text is in its 16th edition. Any of the last 5 editions would
be fine. Of course, there are many, many fine textbooks on the same topics.
A seminal work on the concept of organizational
culture, Organizational Culture and Leadership (1983), was written by a founder
of the discipline of industrial-organizational psychology, Edgar Schein, of
MIT’s Sloan School. Schein examines culture in the same manner a
psychotherapist works to understand a patient. He argues that culture manifests
itself in organizational artifacts, stories, myths, legends, and behaviors. The
types of individuals hired by an organization are indicative of what the
organization values. At different stages of an organization’s culture,
different types of leadership are needed to effectuate necessary changes and to
keep the organization thriving and healthy. Schein views organizational
leadership and changing culture as “two sides of the same coin.”
On the matter of ethics, we can find viewpoints
stretching from 16th century Florence, as detailed in Machiavelli’s book, The
Prince, to modern-day writers such as Harvard Professor Badaracco in his video
lecture, Defining Moments. Where Machiavelli preached “ruthlessness” in
that the “ends justify the means,” Badaracco stresses a method that
acknowledges the important need for morality and ethics to underpin solutions
leading to acceptable outcomes. He also acknowledges and discusses the
inevitable ethical dilemmas that arise in modern organizational life stressing
that these dilemmas often have imperfect solutions. His video is worth the 30
minutes of your time it takes to watch.