Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Adapting Organizational Culture
for the Cloud
Organizational culture is the collective values, principles, visions, norms, working language,
systems, symbols, beliefs, and habits that have evolved with the organization. David Needle,
in Business in Context: An Introduction to Business and Its Environment (Learning Business
Press, 2004), opines that this is a product of factors such as history, product, market, technol-
ogy, strategy, types of employees, management style, regional/national cultures, and so on.
Although a large firm usually has its own unique culture, there might be diverse and
conflicting subcultures that coexist within the firm. This is due to different projects and
the characteristics of different departments and teams. Organizational culture also consti-
tutes the behavior of employees who are part of an organization as well as their thought
and work habits. This affects the way employees interact within departments or teams,
with clients, and with other stakeholders. The negative and positive aspects of an organiza-
tion's culture can also greatly affect employee perceptions and how they identify with the
organization.
According to Daniel P. Modaff, Jennifer A. Butler, and Sue DeWine in Organizational
Communication: Foundations, Challenges, and Misunderstandings, Third Edition
(Pearson, 2011), the organization sees its culture as a root metaphor created through com-
munication and symbols or competing metaphors. Just like personal experience, culture also
produces a variety of perspectives.
The organizational communication perspective on culture includes three different views:
Traditionalism Culture is viewed through objective things, such as stories, symbols, and
work rituals.
Interpretivism Culture is viewed through a network of shared meaning; that is, members
of an organization share subjective meanings.
Critical interpretivism Culture is viewed through a network of shared meanings as well
as power struggles created by a competing network of shared meanings.
In the following sections, we will discuss how to determine your current organizational
culture and map out plan for adapting to the changes in culture due to the integration of
cloud technology. We will also discuss how to ensure propagation of the cloud-influenced
culture and maintain the new cloud-influenced culture.
Finding Out the Current Culture
Understanding different types of cultures and their attributes is essential to finding
organizational culture. Several management studies have classified organizational cultures.
Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner, in Managing People across Cultures
(Capstone, 2004), propose four cultural archetypes. These archetypes can help an organiza-
tion to benchmark its culture and execute an effective strategy to use the culture for growth.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search