Ade's first week: Ade started on the night shift at the Mill Lane bakehouse in June. His contract told him his hours and his pay. It did not tell him most of what he needed to know.
Nobody wrote down that everyone calls the managing director 'Lena'. Nobody told him that the bakers taste every batch before the vans leave, or that the last person out wipes down the ovens, whoever they are. He learned it all by watching.
What Ade was learning is the bakery's organizational culture: the beliefs, unwritten rules, customs and habits that people in a business share. Put simply, it is 'the way we do things around here'.
A new employee picks it up in weeks, usually without anyone explaining it.
Where you can see a culture
What people believe matters
At Lena's Bakery: a loaf is sold on the day it is baked or given away. Nobody would dream of selling yesterday's bread as fresh (shared beliefs and values).
The unwritten rules
Nobody goes home until the vans have left at 5 a.m. It is in no contract, but everyone does it (the norms of the business).
Customs and habits
First names for everyone, from Lena down. Friday's unsold cake goes in the staff room. These repeated habits are the customs and social practices of the business.
How decisions get made
When something big comes up, everyone knows who to ask. At Lena's Bakery the answer is almost always Lena. Who decides, and how, is part of the culture too.
Culture is not the chart, and not the poster: The organization chart shows who reports to whom. The culture is how people actually behave inside those boxes. Two businesses with the same chart can feel completely different to work in.
Values printed on a wall are not the culture either, unless people act on them. Culture is what people do when nobody is checking.
Across the street from Lena's High Street shop is a Goldcrust bakery. Same town, same bread, same kind of customers. There, the staff wear name badges with their job titles, follow a manual for every task, and take any question to the bakery manager, who checks the rules or asks the area manager.
A business picks up some habits from the country it works in, but two businesses in the same country, even on the same street, can have very different cultures.
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The management writer Charles Handy, in his book Gods of Management, sorted organizational cultures into four types and named each one after a Greek god. Here are the first two. Each has a picture that shows where the power sits.
Power culture: Lena at the centre of the web: At Lena's Bakery, every decision of weight goes to Lena: prices, new breads, suppliers, who is hired. There are few written rules; people do what they think Lena would want. The closer you are to her, the more say you have.
Handy called this a power culture and gave it Zeus, the king of the gods, who ruled by his own will. Its picture is a spider's web: power sits at the centre and spreads out along lines of trust and personal contact.
What a power culture gains
- Fast decisions. One person decides, so the business reacts in minutes. When a flour delivery failed at 2:30 a.m., Lena rang another mill and the vans still left at 5.
- Lower costs. Few managers are needed between the leader and the staff, so less is spent on salaries.
- One clear direction. Everything follows the founder's idea of what the business is for.
What it costs
- Everything rests on one person. If Lena is ill or away, decisions wait, and a poor decision has nobody to check it.
- Skilled staff want a say. Experienced or creative people who get no room to decide may lose motivation and leave.
- Few new ideas. Ideas come from the centre; with little say lower down, few come from anywhere else.
Now Goldcrust plc. Its 400 bakeries run on job descriptions, procedures and a manual for every task. Power comes from the job you hold, not from who you are or who you know: a new bakery manager has the same authority as the one she replaced on the day she starts.
Handy called this a role culture and gave it Apollo, the god of order and rules. Its picture is a Greek temple: the pillars are the departments (baking, sales, finance, human resources), and a small group of senior managers forms the roof that holds them together.
A role culture, gains and costs
Stable and predictable
Every Goldcrust bakery bakes the same loaf the same way, so a customer gets the same bread in any town.
Efficient at routine work
Everyone knows their job and its limits, so steady, repeated work runs smoothly and costs little to supervise.
Slow to change
A new idea climbs through every level and several departments before anything happens, like the slow approval of a bureaucracy.
Frustrating for go-getters
Rules come first, so ambitious or creative staff can feel boxed in by their job descriptions.
Where does the power come from?: Power culture: from a person at the centre. Role culture: from the job and the rules.
Ask that one question of any business in a case and you can tell the two apart.
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Task culture: Ines's project team: Goldcrust's gluten-free range was built by a project team led by Ines: a recipe developer, a food-safety specialist, a marketer and a cost accountant. Nobody in the team cared much about job titles. What counted was who knew the answer to the problem in front of them.
Handy called this a task culture and gave it Athena, the goddess of wisdom and clever planning. Its picture is a net: teams form where a task needs them and break up when it is done.
A task culture, gains and costs
Expert knowledge gives the power
In Ines's team the food-safety specialist decides what counts as gluten-free, not the most senior person in the room.
Creative and flexible
People with different skills work on one problem together, so new products and fresh solutions come quickly. Teams can be re-formed as the work changes.
Motivating
Skilled people get real say over their work, and many find that is what keeps them.
Costly and hard to control
Experts are expensive, teams compete for money and people, and senior managers find it hard to steer many teams at once. It sits well with the matrix structure that Ines's team used.
When Lena and Marco turned the bakery into a company, their accountant advised them. She works in a partnership of four accountants who share an office, a receptionist and a computer system. Each accountant has her own clients and works her own way. The office exists to help the four of them do their work; nobody tells them how to do it.
Handy called this a person culture and gave it Dionysus, the god of wine and song, whom he saw as the god of the free individual. Its picture is a loose cluster of stars: individuals who choose to share a few things, with the organization there to serve them.
What a person culture gains
- Freedom for experts. Each professional uses her own judgement, which suits skilled, independent people.
- Shared costs. Four accountants split the rent and the receptionist, far cheaper than working alone.
- Fits professional firms. Lawyers, architects, doctors and consultants often work this way.
What it costs
- Hard to manage. Nobody can easily tell the partners what to do, so shared decisions are slow.
- Little loyalty to the firm. Each person puts her own work first and may leave with her clients.
- No common direction. Four people going four ways make it hard to grow as one business.
Two mix-ups to avoid: Task is not role. Both sound like jobs. A role culture runs on job descriptions and rules; a task culture runs on teams of experts formed around a problem.
Person culture is not a caring culture. It does not mean the business looks after its people kindly. It means the organization exists to serve the individuals in it, who could do their work without it.
No culture is best. Each fits a different kind of business: its size, the work it does, the people it employs and how fast its market changes. The table puts the four side by side.
| Where the power sits | Fits best | Main gain | Main drawback | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Power culture (Zeus, the web) | With one person or a small group at the centre | A small or young business run by its founder | Fast decisions | Everything depends on the leader |
| Role culture (Apollo, the temple) | In the job, the rules and the procedures | A large business doing steady, repeated work | Stable and efficient | Slow to change |
| Task culture (Athena, the net) | With whoever has the expert knowledge | Projects, new products, fast-changing markets | Creative and flexible | Costly and hard to control |
| Person culture (Dionysus, the cluster) | With each individual professional | A partnership of experts sharing an office | Freedom for skilled people | Hard to manage as one business |
Most businesses are a mix: Goldcrust is a role culture overall, with a task culture inside Ines's project team. Lena's Bakery is a power culture overall, yet Priti's night shift runs to a fixed routine that feels much like a role culture.
So in a case, name the culture that shows most strongly, and point to the evidence: who decides, how, and what happens when they do.
The power culture at Lena's Bakery: gains
- Fast: a failed flour delivery was solved at 2:30 a.m. and the vans left on time
- Cheap to run: no layer of managers between Lena and the three shop managers
- Staff know what the business stands for, because it is what Lena stands for
The power culture at Lena's Bakery: drawbacks
- When Lena was ill for three weeks, a cafe's order waited and went to Goldcrust
- A poor call by Lena has nobody to question it
- Skilled bakers such as Rosa may leave if they never get a say
The answer move: Name the culture and the sign of it in the case. Give one gain or drawback. Then show it in this business, with a name, an event or a number.
'Decisions are fast' is a start. 'Lena found a new mill at 2:30 a.m. and the vans still left at 5' shows it.
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How this comes up: A case describes a business and names its culture, or describes it well enough for you to see it. Then: with reference to Handy's Gods of Management, explain one advantage and one disadvantage for the business of that culture, for four marks.
Each half is two marks: one for the advantage or disadvantage explained, one for showing it in the case.
The four-mark pattern
- Name the advantage and say why the culture brings it. Power sits with one person, so decisions are fast.
- Show it in the case. Use an event, a name or a number from the stimulus.
- Name the disadvantage and say why the culture brings it. Everything depends on that person's judgement and presence.
- Show it in the case. Again, something that happened in this business, not a general point.
The trap: describing instead of explaining: 'A power culture has one person at the centre of a web' describes the culture. It is not yet an advantage or a disadvantage.
Say what that does for the business: faster decisions, lower costs, dependence on one person, skilled staff leaving. Then tie it to the case. Copying out the stimulus is not the same as using it.
With reference to Charles Handy's Gods of Management, explain one advantage and one disadvantage for Lena's Bakery of being a power-cultured organization.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.