Читать книгу Cultural Reflection in Management - Lukasz Sulkowski - Страница 19

The criterion for distinguishing positive and negative cultures is mostly their long-term influence on the effectiveness of organisational activities. Positive cultures should support the achievement of goals indicated by managers, while negative cultures can hinder the achievement of these goals. Based on research, P. Bate described a syndrome of negative organisational culture that can be juxtaposed with a positive culture (Tab. 6)⁸⁹.

Tab. 6: Negative vs. positive cultures. Source: Own work, based on P. Bate, 1984.

Features	Negative culture	Positive culture
Emotionality	Emotional coldness – avoiding expression and feelings.	Moderate or strong emotionality – sharing emotions with others.
Personalisation of organisational bonds	Depersonalisation of interpersonal relationships – a high level of formalisation.	Personalisation of relationships in the organisation – personal, direct statements, a lower level of formalisation.
Employee activity	Subordination – expecting guidelines from superiors in order to solve problems.	Activeness – employees strive for making decisions and solving problems by themselves.
Approach to changes	Conservatism – lack of flexibility in new situations.	Flexibility – openness to changes and readiness to implement them.
Isolation	Focus on one’s own duties, specialisation.	A wider perspective on the enterprise’s functioning, attempts at generalisations.
Approach to other organisations	Antipathy – people are opponents, rather than supporters (individualism).	Friendliness – people are more often supporters than opponents (collectivism).

Manifestations of ‘negative cultures’ are related to the risk of passivity (subordination) and conservatism. Passivity can result from the fact that the paternalistic management style prevails. Thanks to the sense of security resulting from the subordination to organisational power, employees no longer have to make decisions. Conservatism is related to a striving for the maintenance of the known, safe, status quo. Nevertheless, in the case of turbulence in the organisation’s environment, both passivity and conservatism contribute to lowering the enterprise’s competitiveness.