B. Product champions are those who take "ownership" of a product development project and lead it to completion.
C. Skunkworks – a group of intrapreneurs who are separated from normal operation so they can devote all their attention to developing new products.
D. Rewards for Innovation: Intrapreneurs need to be equitably rewarded for success to ensure they stay with the company.
E. Adaptive Cultures versus Inert Cultures: adaptive cultures encourage attitudes and behaviours that foster creativity and innovation, whereas inert cultures fail to inspire employees, leading to stagnation or failure.
II. Organizational Culture
Organizational culture – the shared values (stable beliefs about what is important), norms (unwritten rules for appropriate behaviour), and work routines that influence the ways individuals interact and work together.
A. Levels of Culture
The visible level is seen through the organizations artifacts. At the invisible level are the values, beliefs and assumptions of the organization.
B. Creating a Strong Organizational Culture
1. Managers hire and keep those who think and feel the same as they do.
2. Managers indoctrinate and socialize employees to their thinking.
3. Top managers serve as role models.
C. Learning Organizational Culture
1. Values of the Founder – the personal values and beliefs of the organization's founder influence behaviour over time
2. Socialization – new employees learn and internalize the organization's values and norms needed to do their jobs successfully
3. Ceremonies and Rites
a. Rites of passage – determine how new workers begin, advance, and leave the organization
b. Rites of integration – shared experiences of organizational success
c. Rites of enhancement –provide public recognition of contribution, e.g. awards and promotions
4. Stories and Language – stories about organizational heroes and villains provide clues of values and norms
5. Material Symbols - office size, layout, dress codes, etc. to convey importance, appropriate behaviour, etc.
III. Organizational Change and Culture
A. Organizational change is the movement of an organization away from its present state and toward some desired future state
1. Induced change is planned in response to changes in the environment and to enhance competitiveness.
2. Imposed change is made in response to changes in laws and regulations.
3. Many companies face the challenge of becoming an e-business.
4. Structural, technological, new product, and cultural changes need to be carried out within the context of examining the current culture.
IV. Managing Organizational Change
A. Assessing the Need for Change
1. Organizational learning, which increases abilities to understand and appropriately respond to changing conditions, can be an important impetus for change and increase the effectiveness of change decisions
2. Need to recognize the problem (often a performance gap between desired and actual performance) and identify its source.
B. Deciding on the Change to Make - and identifying obstacles or resistance.
1. The present strategy and structure, inert cultures, changes that threaten managers' interests or power, differing goals and time horizons, and the desire to avoid uncertainty and stress create obstacles to change
2. Some obstacles can be overcome by improving communication and integrating mechanisms; empowering employees to participate in planning; and emphasizing big picture goals.
C. Introducing the Change
1. Top-down change is implemented quickly and bottom-up change is more gradual, emphasizing participation from all levels and reducing uncertainty and resistance to change.
D. Evaluating the Change to measure any performance improvements.
1. Can use benchmarking to compare to other high-performing firms.
V. Models of Organizational Change
A. Lewin's Three Stage Model of Change
1. Involves unfreezing the status quo, moving to a new state and refreezing the change; by increasing driving forces or decreasing restraining forces.
2. Reasons for resistance: fear of unknown and loss of power or privilege; doubt of the legitimacy or disagreement with the benefits of the change
3. Resistance can be reduced by communicating desired outcome and seeking input, promising new rewards or benefits, offering training, or if necessary, withholding rewards as a means of persuasion.
B. Complexity Theory
1. Organizations respond best to change if they are not perfectly aligned with their environment.
2. There are several things managers can do to ensure that employees do not become too comfortable with the status quo and to create more comfort with constant change.
3. The theory suggests that fixed mission statements, core competencies and such are relevant for firms in stable environments but not for those requiring fundamental change to remain competitive today.
C. Managing Change in a Unionized Environment requires:
1. An effective system for resolving day-to-day issues.
2. A jointly administered business education process.
3. A jointly developed strategic vision for the organization.
4. A non-traditional, problem-solving method of negotiating collective agreements.
