Why does organizational culture matter to managers? Because management is about getting things done through others, and culture is a form of control that guides employee behavior in the accomplishment of organizational tasks. To perform their jobs well, managers need to understand what cultural values and assumptions dominate their company, and adjust that culture if it is not aligned with strategy and environment. They can do the former by acting as anthropologists—observing artifacts that signify the culture in subtle ways, such as how employees greet each other, how the building directs social interaction, what milestones or events get celebrated, where executives are located, what people say about the company's history, and so on.

Reading the organization's culture isn't easy, particularly for managers who have worked for the organization for many years. But even more challenging is the task of changing that culture. Cultural values and assumptions are so deeply embedded that employees don't think about or question them. The process of changing organizational culture, on the other hand, not only requires staff members to consciously understand and question the existing culture; it also requires them to abandon those values and assumptions in favor of others. Too often managers discover that the embedded culture is stronger than their capacity to bring about the required changes.

Managers also need to pay attention to organizational culture in mergers and acquisitions because cultural clashes are one of the most common reasons why these corporate marriages fail. As with changing their own culture, managers must understand the content of the two cultures, determine their compatibility, identify the extent to which one or both are compatible with the merged company's strategy and environment, and then apply the most appropriate cultural merger strategy. Overall, organizational culture may lurk under the radar screen, but it is a powerful force in organizations. As we discovered in Chapter 9, culture is a significant control system in organizational settings.