Women, Organizational Culture & Change

Striving towards gender equity is greater than a one-day effort. For State Secretary Barbara Loth, it’s a full-time job. State Secretary Loth represents the Senate Administration for Labor, Integration and Women in Berlin, Germany. In this role, according to the State Secretary, she is “responsible for women’s issues and equal treatment, integration and antidiscrimination”; she and her team work daily “against all forms of discrimination and for equal treatment.” Efforts towards inclusion and equity in the workplace in the face of continuing societal gender-based exclusion and inequity are familiar to this readership. Such initiatives, policies, programs and otherwise have a simple and underlying rationale: Organizational culture is a strong competitor to the dominant cultures that we experience in our everyday lives. The following article shares research about organizational culture and organizational change, accented by State Secretary Loth’s related comments specific to gender-inclusive workplaces. The State Secretary’s comments were solicited subsequent to her guest appearance at a 14 Feb. 2014 launch event for the book, Daima: Images of Women of Colour in Germany.

Describing Organizational Culture

We begin with a basic description of organizational culture. Just as culture is a learned set of values, beliefs, assumptions and behaviors generally shared by a group of people, organizational culture is a learned set of values, beliefs, assumptions and behaviors more or less shared by the group of people within an organization. As with any other type of culture, subcultures exist. Edgard Schein, organizational culture scholar and developer of the Three Levels of Culture, has defined organizational culture as “the basic tacit assumption about how the world is and ought to be that a group of people share and that determines their perceptions, thoughts, feelings and their overt behavior” (Schein, 1996). Further, organizational change practitioners David Kelleher and Kate McLaren affirm that culture “defines the way of working that solved problems in the past” (Kelleher and McLaren, 1996, p.45). While there is no “right” or “wrong” culture, “organizational culture inhibits or facilitates change” (Kelleher and McLaren, p.44) as a conduit for action or inaction.

Organizational Culture as a Gatekeeper of Change

This last point about organizational culture acting as the gatekeeper of change and action is important for those who want to succeed collectively and individually in a professional environment that facilitates the participation and influence of its employees. Might that person be you? Most, if not all, of us have experienced the business, interpersonal and / or personal consequences of exclusion and inequity. We know well how to uphold this kind of status quo. Though, it’s both significant and empowering to understand how we can act to create the kind of success that we seek through our organizations.

According to State Secretary Loth, Germany has learned new lessons over time. “In Germany,” states the State Secretary, “at least in my view, it was for too long expected that those who differ from the majority have to assimilate to the dominant culture of an organization. Now, we know that the cultures of organizations themselves have to change in order to be more inclusive.” Though these lessons may have been learned beyond Germany, they are not necessarily understood or practiced globally.

“Cultural Fit” as Acceptable Workplace Bias

The so-called “cultural fit” remains accepted as both a business imperative and a means of acceptable workplace bias. Still—and for good reasons—hiring people whose behavior and / or appearance “match” with those of the mainstream organizational culture endures as a best Human Resource Management practice. With the benefits of hiring for cultural fit come unintended consequences. BusinessWeek News columnist Logan Hill, who wrote the article, Job applicants’ cultural fit can trump qualifications, states that working with homogenous others—or, “your pals,” as he calls them—has the distinct competitive disadvantage of groupthink (2013). Randy Hains, Managing Partner of a U.S.-national executive search firm and an interviewee quoted by Hill, shares a similar idea about people’s tendencies that has been proven through behavioral research. Hains states, “It’s probably human nature to generally like to hire people who look like us, sound like us, act like us. But you get a culture of sameness…People lack an understanding of how to go out and recruit for a diversity of thought…” (qtd. in Hill, 2013). How will trends shift in your organization such that what’s good for business is also good for gender-based inclusion and equity?

Culture as a Means To Change and Increased Performance

Research has shown a direct and necessary link between organizational change and organizational culture. Following their experiments on how to create organizational change, David Kelleher and Kate McLaren reported their discovery that, “The ‘culture’ has to change” (1996, p. 43). For change initiatives to be successful, culture must be the conduit through which change takes place.

As another example, Kelleher and McLaren also share the research of “Most organizational scholars and observers [who] now recognize that organizational culture has a powerful effect on the performance and long-term effectiveness of organizations. Empirical research has produced an impressive array of findings demonstrating the importance of culture to enhancing organizational performance (for reviews, see Cameron and Ettington, 1988; and Trice and Beyer, 1993)” (Cameron & Quinn, 2011, p.5). Further, “Several studies reported that the most frequently cited reason given for failure was a neglect of the organization’s culture. In other words, failure to change the organization’s culture doomed the other kinds of organizational change that were initiated (Caldwell, 1994; CSC Index, 1994; Gross, Pascale, and Athos, 1993; Kotter and Heskett, 1992)” (Cameron & Quinn, 2011, pp.1-2).

Changing Towards Increased Workplace Inclusion and Equity

How to change culture is our shared and intriguing question of opportunity.

State Secretary Loth describes an inclusive workplace as a process and acknowledges that it is not easy. She defines such a workplace as, “a place with a culture of valuing differences and a strong commitment against all forms of discrimination.” She adds that, “In order to create an inclusive workplace, self-reflection and an openness to recognize and deal with other perspectives are necessary.” In the sprit of inclusion, changing an organization’s culture towards increased inclusion and equity involves all employees, from bottom to top. “To achieve such a culture,” says the State Secretary, “efforts are needed from the top management but from the employees as well.” How are you striving today—and everyday—towards a gender-inclusive and equitable workplace in the organization with which you work?

The above article was included in the Mar. 2014 intercultures e-newsletter.

This article would not have been possible without the support of Julia Schimeta from the office of Senate Administration for Labor, Integration and Women, Berlin.

Portions of this article were drawn with permission from the research, „For the Love of Music: A Story of Organizational Culture and Change,“ by Malii Brown (2013). Additional sources include: