>In order to better understand the culture of an organization, it may be useful to distinguish different levels in which culture may be manifested. For example, Schein describes three levels of culture: observable artifacts, espoused values, and basic underlying assumptions.
Artifacts, the most visible demonstration of culture, include physical structures and office arrangements, level of formality, amount of interaction among members, as well as written documents and various forms of archival information. Also included under this category are organizational stories, myths, and legends that are used to socialize new members and to provide a feeling of cohesion among group members. Observation is an effective means of studying culture at this level of analysis. While artifacts may provide helpful cues to an organization’s culture, they cannot tell the whole story. It is difficult to draw inferences about the true meaning of such symbols to insiders and how these symbols reflect the culture.
The second level at which culture may be expressed is through organizational values. Shared values are often expressed through behavioral norms, or common ways of reacting to one’s environment. A good way to reach this level of culture is by questioning members of the organization regarding why certain artifacts or observed behaviors exist. This may be accomplished through interviews, focus groups, or survey instruments. Values may also be expressed in the form of ideologies, which ar英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】e often documented in a company’s mission statement or formally articulated as a philosophy for conducting business.
The deepest layer of culture, which is the most difficult to decipher, is the level of organizational assumptions. The reason culture is so hard to uncover at this level is because an organization’s ways of doing things have become taken-for-granted and are no longer in conscious awareness (Wilkins, 1983). Because members of the organization come to accept a similar perspective, their way of viewing the world goes unchallenged and unquestioned. Therefore, in order to reach the level of underlying assumptions, it is necessary to employ creative investigative approaches to the study of culture. This third stage of cultural examination is not simply a matter of asking employees to describe the culture in which they work. Broad samples of organizational members and a variety of data collection methods, including a combination of approaches such as focus groups, observations, surveys, and content analysis of archival records, are necessary to gather information that will be useful for uncovering shared assumptions.
The description of culture as a construct with various layers to be uncovered can reveal how culture develops within an organization. According to Schein (1990), many shared assumptions begin as values, which, over time become accepted ways of dealing with the world. Numerous factors influence the development of an organizational culture, including
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