Ogbonna Et Al-2003-Journal of Management Studies PDF

Journal of Management Studies 40:5 July 2003
0022-2380
The False Promise of Organizational Culture

Change: A Case Study of Middle Managers in
Grocery Retailing*
Emmanuel Ogbonna and Barry Wilkinson

Cardiff University; University of Bath
 The strategic importance of managing organizational culture has been a

central theme in organizational literature over the past two decades. But relatively
little attention has been given to the impact of culture change initiatives on
managers. This paper reports on the impact of a programme of culture change on
managers at one of Britain’s leading grocery retail chains. Based on a series of
detailed interviews with managers together with examination of company documents
and an understanding of trends in grocery retailing, we explain the purpose and
content of change, and document and analyse the reactions of those managers who
are expected to change their own cultural orientations as well as persuade their
subordinates to change. We conclude that in this case at least changes in managerial
behaviour, as with previously documented changes in the behaviour of shopfloor
workers, are related more to surveillance, direct control and the threat of sanction
than any transformation of managerial values. Indeed, the situation and experiences
of managers – one of reduced autonomy, close monitoring and control, and
perceived career insecurity – are explained less in relation to ‘organizational culture’,
more in relation to organizational (re-)structuring intended to create a more
centralized form of organizational control.
INTRODUCTION
Attempts by the UK’s major grocery retailers to transform the culture of their
organizations through human resource management practices intended to instil
company loyalty and a customer ethos among staff are well documented (March-
ington and Harrison, 1991; Ogbonna and Harris, 1998; Ogbonna and Wilkinson,
1988; Rosenthal et al., 1997). Previous research (for example, Ogbonna and
Wilkinson, 1990) identified a range of problems associated with these culture
Address for reprints: Emmanuel Ogbonna, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Colum Drive,
Cardiff CFI 3EU, UK (Ogbonna@Cardiff.ac.uk).
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ ,
UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
1152 E. Ogbonna and B. Wilkinson
change programmes, and concluded that the prospects for a company to trans-
form successfully the values of a low paid, low skilled and largely transient work-
force were poor. Behavioural changes were documented, but these related to
heightened surveillance and closer direct control of employees rather than changes
to values and assumptions (see Ogbonna and Wilkinson, 1988, 1990). Evidence of
alteration to employee values has been limited (for example, Rosenthal et al., 1997)
and behavioural change has been related in part to instrumental motives (see
Ogbonna and Harris, 1998). These findings have been echoed in several other dis-
cussions of the culture phenomenon (see for example, Ackroyd and Crowdy, 1990;
Höpfl et al., 1992; Legge, 1994; Ogbor, 2001; Willmott, 1993) and Anthony (1990)
raised the perplexing question of why, in the face of achieving at best only a
‘resigned behavioural compliance’, managers continued to pursue culture change
programmes.
One answer to this question, as Anthony discusses at length, might lie in the
psychological needs of managers to engage in legitimatory activities, and to their
need to distance themselves from shopfloors (building a ‘cocoon’). Another, which
could be argued from the mainstream view of organizational culture (see for
example, Alvesson, 1993; Martin, 1992; Meyerson and Martin, 1987; Ogbonna,
1993; Ogbor, 2001; Silvester et al., 1999) could simply be the length of time it
might take to change ingrained and embedded cultures.
However, previous studies of planned culture change have commonly been
directed at low-level employees, especially shopfloor workers (see Ackroyd and
Crowdy, 1990; Harris and Ogbonna, 1998a, 1998b; Ogbonna and Wilkinson,
1988, 1990; Rosenthal et al., 1997). It is possible that the ambiguous findings of
studies into culture management might be explained by the peculiar nature of
much shopfloor work and shopfloor workforces. That is, relative to managerial and
professional occupational groups, most shopfloor workers are subject to poor terms
and conditions of employment, have poor (if any) career prospects, and in grocery
retailing are often part-time or temporary workers for whom the job is not a central
aspect of life. Hence, in order to provide a fuller assessment of the organizational
culture paradigm, the question of whether planned culture change is more likely
to be achieved at managerial levels needs to be addressed. Put simply, if managers
enjoy greater rewards and opportunities, carry more responsibility, exercise a wider
range of skills, and invest more of their identity in their work and careers, then it
might logically be assumed that they are more likely than shopfloor workers to
respond positively to values espoused by their organizations.
The research on which this paper is based was designed to contribute to the
development of the literature on planned culture change by exploring managerial
perceptions of organizational culture initiatives, and examining whether planned
culture change is more likely to be achieved at managerial levels. It seemed to us
that while an organization-wide ‘strong culture’ might be unlikely under most cir-
cumstances (and certainly in UK grocery retailing) the managerial ranks within
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003
Organizational Culture Change 1153
the organizations might more readily identify with espoused values. Whether this
would be the case or not, it was clear that the paucity of empirical research into
managers’ relationships with, and responses to, culture change initiatives made them
an important focus of enquiry. The evidence gathered was primarily a series of
in-depth interviews and detailed observation of the work of middle managers in
one of the leading UK grocery retail chains, together with an array of documen-
tary evidence on change programmes, organization reporting structures, and orga-
nizational control systems.
Prior to the presentation of the findings of the study, we set the study in context
by briefly overviewing the literature on planned culture change and its links to the
study of middle managers, and by describing the research methods adopted.
MANAGING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Organizational culture has become a key concept in the human resource man-
agement literature, with scholars distinguishing between a ‘personnel manage-
ment’ or ‘low commitment’ approach which emphasizes a bureaucratic, rule-based
culture, and an ‘HRM’ or ‘high commitment’ approach which emphasizes em-
powerment and shared values (Guest, 1991; Storey, 1992; Watson, 2002). Like the
organizational behaviour literature, the human resources literature is character-
ized by debate over the importance of the culture concept as well as the possibil-
ity and desirability of planned culture change. Thus, although organizational
culture is now a widely studied topic, considerable conceptual difficulties continue
to undermine the status of the concept. Interestingly, the spread of theoretical
perspectives through which culture has been studied in organizational settings
has added to (rather than resolved) the confusion and complexity surrounding
the concept (see discussion by Rowlinson and Proctor, 1999). In this regard,
researchers have called for an amalgamation of extant conceptualizations into
an integrated theory of organizational culture (see Frost et al., 1991; Hendry,
1999).
However, whilst a consolidation of existing knowledge is yet to be achieved, it
is arguable that an element of convergence is emerging in contemporary organi-
zational culture research. It is beyond to scope of this review to provide a full
discussion, but it is important to note that organizational culture is commonly
conceptualized as dynamic (see Frank and Farhrbach, 1999; Hatch, 1993; Schein,
1996), multifaceted (see Harrison, 2000; Ogbonna and Harris, 2000) and layered (see
Detert et al., Hofstede et al., 1990; Pettigrew, 1990; Schein, 1992).
Paradoxically, despite the general lack of agreement amongst academic
researchers, practitioner interest in applying the concept of culture to their
organizations has been growing rapidly. Such is the attractiveness of culture to
practitioners that a recent survey concluded that 94 per cent of organizations ex-
perienced planned cultural change in 1997 (see IRS Employment Trends, 1997). This
level of interest is clearly premised on the assumption that astute executives can
control the cultures of their organizations.
Research into managing organizational culture has caused widespread contro-
versy and divisions both amongst academics and between academics and practi-
tioners. Previous reviews of the literature have been comprehensive and the
intention is not to provide a rehearsal of these debates (interested readers are
referred to the reviews by Legge, 1994; Martin, 1985; Ogbonna, 1993; Ogbonna
and Harris, 2002). However, a brief overview of the broad tenets of this literature
is important to set the context for this research. Three broad positions character-
ize research in this area. Working largely from a functionalist perspective, the first
category of studies consists of those writers who view culture as an organizational
variable which, like other organizational variables, is subject to the control of
management. This approach is clearly premised on the assumption that the per-
formance of an organization is dependent on the strength of its culture, a view
which is championed by a number of academics and practitioners (see Deal
and Kennedy, 1982; Denison, 1990; Kilmann, 1982; Kotter and Heskett, 1992;
Peters and Waterman, 1982). In many ways, the popularity and practical
acceptance of this perspective is evidenced by the large number of organizations
which are frequently reported to be undergoing planned cultural intervention (see
IRS Employment Trends, 1997; Worrall et al., 2000). Proponents of this perspective
have also offered several models to assist managers in their quest to achieve
planned cultural change (for example, Silverzweig and Allen, 1976; Wilkinson
et al., 1996).
Notwithstanding the practical appeal of the idea that executives can control the
culture of organizations, numerous critical researchers have questioned the ethical
and intellectual foundations of this view. It is within this broad group of
researchers that the remaining two approaches to the study of organizational
culture management are located. The most critical researchers frequently argue
that the assumption that organizations can achieve planned cultural change is both
intellectually flawed and practically impossible. In this regard, researchers have
questioned the capacity of managers (including their knowledge and information)
to understand and control the basic values and assumptions of employees which,
by definition, are deeply embedded in the subconscious (see Krefting and Frost,
1985; Gagliardi, 1986). Furthermore, critical culture researchers have argued that
the rich, complex and differentiated nature of culture makes it a neutral resource
and one which can equally be employed by the managed as well as those manag-
ing (see Harrris and Ogbonna, 2002; Legge, 1994; Ogbonna, 1993).
Another strand of research emerging from the critical perspective argues that
there is some scope for cultural manipulation. These researchers argue that whilst
planned cultural change is difficult, cultural processes in organizations may be
influenced by certain (albeit rare) organizational and industry conditions (see
Christensen, 1999; Martin, 1985; Meyerson and Martin, 1987; Ogbonna and
Harris, 2002). That is, the successful implementation of planned culture change
is dependent on the context in which it is introduced. However, whilst acknowl-
edging that change may be possible under certain conditions, such critical culture
theorists warn that cultural manipulation not only raises ethical dilemmas but that
it is also potentially dangerous and may lead to unintended consequences for the
organizations and individuals concerned (Casey, 1999; Ogbor, 2001; Ray, 1986;
Watson, 2002; Willmott, 1993).
While lower level employees’ responses to culture change initiatives have been
widely studied, managers are typically presented simply as the agents of culture
change rather than the targets. That is, managers’ experiences of, and responses to,
planned culture change, have not been studied. Yet studies of the related topics of
quality management and employee involvement have identified middle managers
as barriers to the successful implementation of such initiatives (Bradley and Hill,
1983; Fenton O’Creevy and Nicholson, 1994; Marchington et al., 1993). Fenton
O’Creevy (2001, p. 26) points out that middle management resistance often takes
on subtle forms, such as ‘engaging only in those involvement activities most visible
to senior management’. He goes on to argue that the context in which initiatives
are introduced (e.g. the level of managerial job security; the structuring of mana-
gerial roles) have a direct bearing on their enthusiastic acceptance and pursuit.
Some studies have suggested that reductions in managerial layers have been asso-
ciated with increased job autonomy and satisfaction for middle managers (Dopson
and Stewart, 1990; Thomas and Dunkerly, 1999). Scase and Goffee (1989) on the
other hand uncovered greater insecurity and pressures to perform while Watson
(2002) has detailed a high degree of ambivalence among managers towards new
organizational initiatives. Thus, studies of middle managers suggest that their
responses to initiatives might be akin to those of shopfloor employees – they are
context-dependent, or as Peccei and Rosenthal (2001) argue with regard to cus-
tomer orientation initiatives, they must be supported by human resources strate-
gies that fit. Our own study provided the opportunity to explore the extent of
acceptance and pursuit of a strong culture by middle managers working in a par-
ticular organizational and sectoral context.
Overall, the literature on managing organizational culture diverges regarding
the possibility and desirability of the managerial control of the values, beliefs and
assumptions of organizational members. The position of critical organizational
culture and human resource management research has been particularly negative,
and many scholars have raised ethical concerns regarding the inculcation of
‘organizational values’ to lower level employees who are disadvantaged in terms
of their status and power capacity both to decide organizational values and to
develop appropriate and legitimate strategies of resistance. Such concerns are
understandable given that existing studies of culture management focus on lower
level (frequently front-line) employees with no study directly exploring the impact
of culture change on managers. This study was designed to contribute to the
literature on organizational culture by exploring managerial perceptions and reac-
tions to culture change initiatives.
METHODOLOGY
The study reported in this paper was designed to explore the perceptions and reac-
tions of managers to organizational culture change initiatives. The aim was to
uncover whether managers were more likely to share espoused organizational
values than employees at the lower levels of the organizational hierarchy.
The empirical evidence for the paper was gathered through an in-depth quali-
tative study of a single organization. This approach was adopted for a variety of
reasons. For example, organizational culture theorists have extolled the virtues of
the qualitative case approach as a way of achieving penetrating accounts of organi-
zational change. Specifically, it is commonly argued that in-depth case studies are
more appropriate methods of uncovering the meanings that organizational
members ascribe to their environment as well as the ways in which such meanings
are constructed and re-constructed (Martin, 1992; Schein, 1996; Smircich, 1983).
Furthermore, a number of researchers have noted that since every organization
has unique attributes, investigators should adopt approaches that enable them to
develop insights into the patterns of values and assumptions that characterize the
culture of a given group (Howard, 1998; Schein, 1990). Such desire for depth and
understanding influenced the choice of a single case study. Similarly, the choice of
a single rather than multiple case studies follow the persuasive arguments of Dyer
and Wilkins (1991) and is consistent with the precedent of many recent influen-
tial studies in organizational theory in general (for example, Dutton and Dukerich,
1991; Martin, et al., 1998) and organizational culture in particular (see Kunda,
1992; Harrison, 2000).
Research Strategy
The research team have a collective experience of 25 years of conducting organi-
zational culture research. Much of the empirical studies carried out by the team
during this period have focused on cultural change initiatives in the UK food retail
sector (for example, Ogbonna and Wilkinson, 1988; 1990). In this regard, we have
established good working relationship with many organizations in the industry and
this helped us to gain good access to study the cultural change initiatives of one
of the top food retailing groups in the UK.
The case study organization, STAR (a pseudonym), employs over 100,000
people, of which just over a third are full time. At the beginning of the research
in 1996, the company had around 160 stores, of which most were superstores with
around 30,000 square feet of trading space. Twelve of the stores were designated
as the ‘model’ stores and each of these had around 100,000 square feet of trading
space. As will be detailed later, the bulk of the empirical data for the study was
generated from six of these flagship stores.
Data Sources
Data for this study were gathered from three main sources. Firstly, the company
provided access to a vast array of documented material detailing both the espoused
rationales for the change initiative and the strategies for cultural change. Archival
data were also made available and these included several internal memoranda
relating to this and previous change initiatives, internal consultancy reports, copies
of staff attitude surveys, and internal records of press cuttings.
A second source of data was the observation of managerial behaviour at a series
of training and team building sessions centrally organized for: (1) area managers
who were responsible for motivating general store managers to adopt the espoused
company values; (2) general store managers who were in turn responsible for moti-
vating the management teams in their individual stores; and (3) other members of
the store management teams whose commitment to change was also considered
important for the success of the change initiative. In all, we attended seven one-
day training courses and team building exercises in which over 200 managers par-
ticipated. These courses provided us with a useful opportunity to gauge the overall
strength of feeling on this and previous change initiatives. Although we did not
conduct formal interviews with the course participants, we had several informal
discussions with many managers. Indeed, we regularly sat with the course par-
ticipants during coffee and lunch breaks and would frequently invite them to
comment on the change programme. Their comments were recorded in a research
notebook as soon as possible after the discussions. A total of 14 such meetings were
held with 26 managers, of which four were area managers, nine were general store
managers and the rest were other members of the store-level management teams.
Although these discussions helped in establishing the general pattern of percep-
tions which were explored in detail in subsequent interviews, they did not provide
any verbatim accounts which could be reported in this paper.
The third and most important source of data for the study is the series of in-
depth face-to-face interviews and observation at six of the largest stores in STAR
(each store had a trading space of 100,000 square feet). These stores were espe-
cially targeted because they were among the 12 stores identified in internal reports
as STAR’s flagship stores. Similarly, these stores were selected because they were
designated training centres for store managers across the group and they were also
amongst the most profitable stores in the group. In this phase of the study, a total
of 30 interviews were held with 15 managers (two regional managers in whose
regions the six stores were located, four general store managers, two deputy general
store managers and seven departmental managers). In addition, we interviewed
one head office director who has experienced several change initiatives with STAR
and who was the only director to have worked as a general store manager in the
company.
The number of informants was deliberately kept low so as to allow detailed
probing and exploration of the issues, particularly those issues that were raised
during the training and team building sessions discussed earlier.
The Interviews
With the exception of the director, all the managers interviewed were categorized
as middle managers by the company. An indication of the significance of the key
informants is that collectively, the six participating stores contributed over £500
million to the company’s turnover and accounted for around 7 per cent of STAR’s
full time employees. At the time of the interviews, the average annual salary for a
general store manager in the company was £55,000 although three of our infor-
mants in this category indicated that their annual salaries and bonuses regularly
exceeded £75,000. In addition, the package for a general store manager included
a fully expensed executive car, full family health cover, paid annual holiday trips
and a range of other benefits.
Interviews were semi-structured with the intention that managers could freely
express their thoughts on culture change. They were asked to contrast the ‘old’
and the ‘new’ company cultures, and they were asked how their roles, respon-
sibilities, and ‘ways of working and managing’ might be changing. They were also
asked to comment on how they experienced and felt about these developments.
Each manager was interviewed twice and each interview lasted between one and
two hours. Interviews were audiotape recorded, resulting in a total 27 audiotapes.
We also attended regular weekly management meetings in the six stores and were
present during several meetings that managers were required to have with employ-
ees as part of the change initiative. We also observed actual work behaviour during
numerous formal and informal visits to the participating stores.
Data Analysis
All interviews were transcribed verbatim, leading to over 300 pages of transcribed
data. In addition, we collected over 400 pages of reports, change manuals and
other information. The process of analysis began with the coding of the inter-
views and documents into theoretically derived categories focusing on the per-
ceptions of the informants on the espoused rationale for change, the changing
nature of managerial roles, the level of culture change advocated, the approaches
adopted, the intended and unintended impacts of change, and the tensions and
contradictions which characterized change. Consequently, we worked on the task
of developing categories, linkages, relationships and subdividing categories in a
manner akin to the approach to grounded theory suggested by Strauss and Corbin
(1990). The coding and categorization were first conducted independently by the
researchers following which the results were compared and the inconsistencies
were discussed and resolved.
Following the suggestion of Price et al. (2000), we carried out internal and
external credibility tests by asking an experienced qualitative researcher to review
our coding and categories and by sending our findings to four STAR managers
who expressed an interest during the interviews. All the comments received were
considered and where necessary, amendments were made to reflect them.
Finally, we recognize that a key limitation of this study is that it is based on a
limited number of informants in a single organization. However, our intention was
not to seek generalizability. Instead, we sought to embrace all the richness and
complexity of a real organizational setting to provide what Lincoln and Guba
(1985, p. 359) refer to as ‘vicarious experience’. In this regard, it is anticipated that
the wealth of contextual detail and the depth and insight that we provide will
enable readers to assess our findings and evaluate the applicability of our results
to other situations.
FINDINGS
Prior to the presentation of the findings, it is useful to provide some contextual
information on the case company.
In the mid-1980s, in common with its competitors, STAR attempted to trans-
form the way it did business to become more ‘customer focused’. A whole array
of changes aimed at improving the offering to customers were introduced, includ-
ing locating new superstores out-of-town with convenient parking facilities, extend-
ing the range of goods on offer to enable ‘one stop shopping’, and enhancing store
attractiveness with changes to design and layout. A greater emphasis on customer
service also led to attention to staff interactions with customers. No longer
‘punters’, customers were to be treated with courtesy and respect, and this was to
be achieved by a transformation of the corporate culture. Specifically, employees
were expected to identify closely with the company and its customers, and changes
to selection, training, appraisal, communications, etc. policies were introduced in
pursuit of value change. Our research in this company in the late 1980s – on
shopfloor workers’ responses to culture change initiatives – uncovered significant
changes in shopfloor workers’ behaviour (giving customers more attention, dis-
playing deference), but this was more to do with behavioural compliance under a
situation of surveillance and threat of sanction than with any transformation of
the values of workers (workers did not express love of either the customer or the
company) (Ogbonna and Wilkinson, 1988; 1990). At the time we did not seriously
study managerial responses to the new culture change initiatives, although on the
surface it did appear that managers were enthusiastic in their implementation of
the policies that were associated with the culture change programme.
But a fuller understanding of managers is important. Not only do managers
have to ‘act the part’; they are expected to persuade others, their subordinates, to
act the part too. They are key agents in any process of change. Hence in this study
our intent was to focus on managers. How do managers, presented with the impera-
tive of culture change and charged with the responsibility of diffusing that change,
rationalize their experiences and actions? Given their relatively privileged posi-
tions and their presumed career ambitions, are they more likely to adopt a new
set of values, perhaps become ‘evangelists’ themselves? The shopfloor workers we
studied included many part-time and temporary workers, wages were quite poor,
and turnover among their ranks was high: would the different circumstances of
managers make them more ready to align themselves with espoused organizational
values?
BACKGROUND: THE STAR WAY OF WORKING FOR

MANAGEMENT
As mentioned above, previous initiatives to change culture and values date back
to the mid-1980s. New initiatives, some major and some minor, have been intro-
duced since then. The initiative all the managers were talking about during inter-
views in 1996/97 was a major one – it was still being actively diffused four years
after its launch – and it focused specifically on the expectations placed on man-
agers, particularly store managers. In 1993 STAR distributed a 100 plus pages
document entitled The STAR Way of Working for Management (hereafter STARWOW)
which prescribed in some detail what managers should do. The document was
produced by head office personnel staff with the assistance of consultants and
in consultation with the board of directors. In the document, ‘co-operation’,
‘common purpose’, ‘trust’, and ‘mutual exchange’ are the order of the day, to be
achieved through ‘workforce involvement’, ‘continuous learning and develop-
ment’, and ‘constant listening and appraising’. It urges all managers to ‘win the
hearts and minds’ of subordinates in order to achieve ‘continuous improvement
for improved total sales performance’. While many of the general themes in the
document had been proselytized since the late 1980s, STARWOW is remarkable
for its detailed explicit prescriptions for managerial behaviour. (In hindsight it
appears to us that perhaps the very production of the document indicated a lack
of satisfaction at the highest levels of the company with store management.) Detail-
ing some of its content here will give a clear indication of the ‘culture change’
thought necessary.
The STAR Way of Working (STARWOW)

STARWOW stipulates a top-down programme of culture change, using the
familiar ‘cascade’ approach whereby regional managers and regional personnel
managers lead and manage the process through general store managers. In turn
the general store manager persuades his or her departmental managers to adopt
and internalize the desired values, behaviours and styles; change then cascades
down through supervisors to shopfloor workers (defined as ‘colleagues’ in the
STARWOW culture change manual). Most of the messages are aimed at the
general store manager who is presented as the key to change, though the impli-
cations for other levels of management are clear. As information from official
company documentation shows, STARWOW provides a mix of encouragement
and imperative.
The general store manager plays a key part in the process of change. Everyone
in the store takes their lead from the general store manager and the general
store manager will either facilitate it or block and delay it. It will be evident to
everyone whether the general store manager is truly behind this development
or only paying lip service to it . . . It is important that everyone is aware of the
desired styles of behaviour for the success of STAR, and realizes the
consequences of not operating in the STAR way of working. (STARWOW
Manual)
The STARWOW culture change initiative demands a move towards ‘performance

responsible teams’ in each department (grocery, bakery, dry goods, etc.) of each
store, where colleagues are ‘trained to do every task’ within the department, and
where many tasks which were previously the responsibility of managers and super-
visors are delegated to colleagues. Managers and team trainers are expected to
create such teams via training in technical competencies and broadening col-
leagues’ understanding of the business; also through ‘motivating everyone with a
vision of STAR’, ‘creating a sense of group loyalty’, and ‘getting the team to take
ownership’.
STARWOW specifies in detail selection criteria for colleagues, induction pro-
grammes for new recruits, and content and methods of training and appraisal.
These are essentially the same as those in use since the late 1980s, though they
have been further refined, and carefully justified in relation to the ‘new way
of working’. Perhaps more significant innovations are new specifications for
communications, and clear formal prescriptions for managerial orientations and
behaviour.
On the communications front, meetings are now specified in terms of frequency,
length and agenda: the general store manager should meet weekly with depart-
mental managers, who in turn should meet weekly with their teams; and on a
monthly basis the general store manager should bring together the whole man-
agement team. In addition, the general store manager should organize customer
feedback groups regularly, and groups of colleague representatives of the store
should meet with their general store manager fortnightly. The latter meeting is
called a ‘listening group’, and the manager is expected to note problems and ideas
raised by colleagues, and where appropriate take action to improve things. Points
raised and action taken are displayed on a notice board which can be read by all
colleagues. In fact, interviews and observation revealed that listening groups were
not always successful, largely because regularly freeing colleagues for such
meetings contradicted the simultaneous drive for efficiency and maximum human
asset utilization. Hence the introduction, with senior management approval, of
‘huddles’, where managers occasionally put on their ‘huddle hats’ and pull
colleagues together on the shopfloor for briefer and more informal listening
sessions.
On prescriptions for orientations, STARWOW explains in some detail the ‘char-
acteristics and commitments’ needed by store managers: these are summarized as
‘committed to STAR, committed to customers, committed to teams, and com-
mitted to personal (self and subordinate) development’. Regional managers and
regional personnel managers are asked regularly to monitor managerial orienta-
tions on an informal basis by talking with managers, colleagues and customers,
and to undertake more systematic reviews by examining the results of ‘role expec-
tation graphs’ (REGs). These entail a self analysis by each manager, giving a score
from 1 (poor) to 10 (good) for several desirable attributes (‘I understand customers’,
‘I select the best people’, ‘I help subordinates set goals’, ‘I communicate informa-
tion on store performance’, etc.); this is then followed by subordinate assessments
of the manager on the same dimensions and using the same scale. Discrepancies
between superior and subordinate assessments, as well as low scores, are cause for
concern and action.
STARWOW tells regional managers and regional personnel managers that: ‘It
is hard to change a management style. It takes time and determination. There will
be many moments when people revert to old ways and other values’. They are
encouraged to adopt a ‘coaching’ relationship with general store managers. Setting
timetables and benchmarks, and communicating constantly, they are expected to
report regularly to the Company Board on ‘progress in cultural and organizational
management in relation to the STAR Way of Working’. They are asked to oversee,
for each store in their region, the introduction of STARWOW, as the general store
managers take their store through a specified 17-stage programme of change
which lasts a little under six months.
Managerial Responses
The reader may now have a feel for the content of STARWOW and the methods
of introduction. Desired changes across STAR’s many superstores are highly pre-
scribed, and responsibilities for implementation are spelled out quite clearly. The
general store manager is key to introducing a new management style and organi-
zational culture which is characterized by openness, delegation, learning, co-
operation, trust and mutual exchange. The questions to be addressed are: How
did managers understand and respond to the prescriptions for a new management
style?. Did their values become aligned with the espoused values?; and if their
values were different. Why was this so?
The analysis of the interviews and other data led us to categorize findings under
three broad headings. Firstly, we discuss the views of managers on the ‘old’ and
‘new’ ways of working. Second, we present the answers of managers to questions
of how change had affected the way they behave in practice: how they manage
subordinates, how they relate to head office, how they make decisions, etc. Here,
issues of ‘control’ (in particular being controlled) were expressed regularly and
strongly. Our third category, ‘career’, was, like the second, not a topic which was
deliberately or consciously pursued in interviews, but was one which most man-
agers expressed a view on, in response to questions such as ‘what is it like to work
for STAR’?
Then and Now

The old way of working at STAR, according to most interviewees, was ‘tell and
do’ (‘as we are constantly reminded’ according to one cynical manager). General
store managers said in the old days they ‘were not expected to think for them-
selves’, it was ‘very much head office controlled’. In turn departmental managers
said they were ‘ruled by intimidation and position – I’m the general store manager
so what I say goes’. A deputy general store manager summed up the old way as
‘a very dictatorial approach down from top management, you shall do it or else,
if you don’t like it, there’s the door’. However, a few managers questioned the
‘tell and do’ characterization of the past (a characterization espoused at several
points in the STARWOW document), pointing instead to a degree of ‘paternal-
ism’ and a degree of independence from head office. A general store manager
said, ‘as a manager then it was a very powerful position because people listened
to you . . . the way the company was then was that you were very much running
your store’.
Although a majority of interviewees made negative comments about the ‘the
old culture’, many expressed positive views about the new, often using the termi-
nology found in the STARWOW document. Interestingly, the similarities between
the comments of the managers and prescriptions of the STARWOW change
document provide an indication of the willingness of the managers to exhibit
compliance with the espoused management values. This also raises an interesting
question relating to the extent of value internalization. That is, if the enthusiasm
of managers is an indication that genuine culture change had been achieved (see
Ogbonna, 1993), the managers would have been more likely to articulate the
positive aspects of the espoused culture in their own terms rather than regurgitate
the language of the STARWOW document. For example:
. . . the new culture as it’s supposed to be is very much, well, adult relationships,
feedback, cycle of improvement, give feedback, they listen, and we want you
to take part, and you’ve got something to offer and it’s about responsibility
and taking ownership and all these things. (General store manager, 7 years
service)
Well it’s a bit more open and honest and challenging, it’s treating colleagues like
you would like to be treated yourself and it’s also developing people, it’s very
much more a developing role the whole time. Instead of telling somebody to do
it you are asking them to do it and you are also asking for ideas and feedback
consistently while doing it. Although you are still the manager, at the end of the
day they are also doing the thinking themselves so you are encouraging them
to think and to take ownership of their ideas. (Departmental manager, 2 years
service)
Many managers (interviewed between 1996 and 1997) commented on the incom-
pleteness of the implementation of STARWOW (which was launched in 1993),
often and perhaps predictably blaming top management for not devoting the nec-
essary resources to follow it through. A deputy general store manager commented
that:
I think it’s like a lot of things that have been launched in this organization. It
starts off with a bang and then peters off whether it be through lack of enthu-
siasm or resource or whatever . . . we’ve had STARWOW launch one, we’ve had
launch two, and now I hear there is something coming up soon that should have
been launched in January that hasn’t appeared yet . . . (Deputy general store
manager, 8 years service)
In this regard, the extensive use of training and teambuilding strategies by head
office change managers is one indication of the desire of top management to main-
tain the momentum of the STARWOW change initiative. However, a number of
managers suggested that other limits to the progress of STARWOW were related
to the nature of the work and the workforce. For instance:
I think that there will always be elements of the workforce who are quite happy
to go to work, you tell them what to do, how to do it, and they do it and go
home again. Because of the nature of our workforce – predominantly part-time
and still a relatively high percentage of those on relatively low wages – I think
we’ve probably got more of those than we recognize. I think we have to be very
careful about that because we could be seen to be ramming it down their throats
that we want them to be involved and that could actually work as a negative
against us. (Regional manager, 13 years service)
But a number of comments from the informants suggested a radical cynicism
towards ‘the new way of working’. One said:
It’s a bit like communism, I’m telling you this is how it works – ‘we want the
masses to believe it, but I want to live in wealth and have millions in the bank,
but you peasants – do as I say, not as I do!’ (Regional manager, 11 years service)
Ironically, it was the one company director interviewed who was the most scathing:
. . . most of the paternalism, if not all of the paternalism that we knew in the
old company has gone and has been replaced by hard unfeeling and uncaring
managers who compound that behaviour by actually putting the message out
that they are the opposite, that they are in fact caring and solicitous employers
which they are not. (Director, 17 years service)
This director was one of a few long serving board members who were gradually
being replaced by younger directors with a different approach. His comments sug-
gested a battle between an old and a new generation of directors, with both sides
claiming the moral high ground, was being won by the new generation. Such gen-
erational conflicts have been documented previously (see Gouldner, 1954; Wilkin-
son and Smith, 1984). In this regard, the findings of this study suggests a tendency
for an organization undergoing change to attribute the negative aspects of change
to experienced employees and to label such employees ‘old guard’ and ‘resistant’
in a manner that makes their actions more visible. Such practices appear to be
linked to attempts by the ‘new generation’ to control organizational discourse,
eliminate insurgence and encourage employees who wish to remain in the orga-
nization to repress their ambivalence (see Casey, 1999; Ogbor, 2001).
During interviews managers often echoed the ideals embodied in STARWOW.
However, when asked to talk in more detail about their roles, responsibilities and
relationships under the new regime, those very same managers typically indicated
serious reservations or qualifications. Negative commentaries related particularly
to loss of control (and autonomy, and respect from superiors) on the one hand,
and to (fears about) career prospects on the other. Similarly to the findings of other
studies on empowerment (see Grugulis et al., 2000; Lee, 1999), the rhetoric of
‘empowerment’ and ‘personal development’ in STARWOW stood in stark
contrast to managers’ expressed experiences which characterized feelings of self
torment, discipline and loss of identity.
Control
The issue of control emerged as significant in the study of managers and organi-
zational culture change. Indeed, almost all the managers interviewed expressed
strong views on what they perceived as the tightening of organizational control
systems. A particular source of concern was the increasing interference of the head
office and the escalating attempts to monitor and control the work of store man-
agers. As two informants note:
. . . management teams in all the stores have felt that cultural change has added
to the pressure of running the business because they were being monitored and
measured on a lot more other things apart from pure commercial performance
of the store. (Deputy general store manager, 7 years service)
Store managers have a lot less control than we’ve had before without a shadow
of a doubt . . . by the week and by the month a little bit more is taken away
from us; it’s literally if you over-spend you will get a call on Monday morning
. . . (General store manager, 12 years service)
Indeed, the researchers were shown two memos which were received by different
general store managers on the days they were interviewed. In one memo, a head
office operations manager commented on the ‘1 per cent over spend’ on staffing
in the previous week while the other memo detailed concern over the store
manager’s implementation of employee communication and feedback system
under the STARWOW change initiative. In both cases, the managers were asked
to inform the head office on how they planned to improve or resolve the issues
identified. Other interviewees commented on the psychological impact of working
in an environment wherein their power to control various aspects of their opera-
tion was dwindling. For example:
Managers are being policed, they’re being told what to do . . . they’re reacting
to head office wanting things done; they’re not trading managers, they’re just
flying around reacting to situations that other people are creating and they’re
very very stressed out. (Deputy general store manager, 8 years service)
One manager who was interviewed shortly after a ‘feedback meeting’ with an area
manager expressed his concern at the way the organization was undermining the
role of store management and his dissatisfaction with the company’s approach to
appraising store managers. As he notes:
I just got feedback from a hundred colleagues, an upward feedback session

where they fill in forms and answer various questions . . . They’ve been drawn
up and designed by somebody who has very obviously had a personnel back-
ground, who has never run a company store in their life, and some of the ques-
tions that are in it are very very awkward for a colleague to answer, and very
very unfair for you to take feedback on. Such as, ‘does your general store
manager communicate with you on a daily basis?’, which is unfair to ask a check-
out operator or a lady on the deli counter. (General store manager, 6 years
service)
Such comments are typical responses to the increase in behavioural and opera-
tional prescriptions and monitoring in STAR. The nature of behavioural pre-
scriptions and monitoring systems (including REGs) has been summarized earlier.
Operational monitoring is equally, if not more, detailed including items such as
customer complaints, ‘mystery shopper’ scores, average check-out queue lengths,
scanning speeds, contract cleaning bills, turnover and absentee rates, and free
carrier bags usage, as well as sales, wastage and shrinkage measures. Performance
league tables which list all group stores against these and other measures are pub-
lished and distributed on a monthly basis. The ‘best’ stores act as ‘benchmarks’;
other stores are set targets for improvement; the ‘worst’ stores are subject to close
attention and monitoring while their managers undergo further training.
The grounds were laid for the possibility of close monitoring and league tables
by the late 1980s. Store managers’ autonomy had already began to be undermined
by the progressive centralization of purchasing and distribution functions, and
decisions on stock levels, range, and product offerings were increasingly being
taken at head office. Managers could be judged simply on how well they imple-
mented a recipe determined elsewhere. In addition, advances in information tech-
nology and systems such as electronic-point-of-sale (EPOS) enabled a range of
accurate information to be analysed speedily for all the stores in the chain
(Ogbonna and Wilkinson, 1996). By the mid 1990s, league tables on a range of
measures were being published and distributed monthly, and while almost all the
managers interviewed expressed concerns over the validity of particular measures
and the ways in which results were interpreted, the consequences of the results
could not be escaped. One regional manager lamented that:
. . . it’s a statistical approach to managing a multi-million pound business – it’s

all based on statistics. (Regional manager, 13 years service)
The same regional manager went on to give an example:
So, they have this agenda about increasing rotas, you know, less colleagues
working more hours, reducing labour turnover (but) no one ever asked me what
the problems are, such as recruitment, retention, labour turnover, absenteeism
. . . I genuinely believe that they don’t want to know. (Regional manager, 13
years service)
The alienation from, or even hostility towards, head office suggested in this quo-
tation was repeated by the vast majority of informants:
. . . from head office, store management don’t have respect, undoubtedly they
don’t, and I think for some strange reason they have even less respect than they
used to have . . . store management are slightly the whipping force for the
company. (General store manager, 8 years service)
Before people were appointed to head office I’d make them work in a store for
a year, so they can appreciate what it is like in store and understand the effects
that decisions they make would have on stores. (Departmental manager, 3 years
service)
In STARWOW it’s meant to be we challenge head office and they give us what
we want and they’re the service centre and they are servicing us. That’s the way
I would like it to be, but I don’t see it heading that way. (Deputy general store
Equally, the vast majority of managers in the study felt quite powerless against ‘the
directorate’ and, as will become clear in the next section, feared serious sanction
for any (to use the language of one of STAR’s quality manual) non-conformance
to specification.
Career
The regularity of negative comment about increased prescription and surveillance
from head office was matched by the frequent expression of fears about negative
sanction, especially in relation to job security and career prospects. This point is
best illustrated by the comments of two regional managers regarding the fears and
insecurity that characterized managerial work and the ways in which the culture
change programme at STAR had accentuated these:
. . . the other thing that concerns the general store managers is this on-going
review of general store managers and this uncertainty does not engender a great
deal of confidence in terms of where they sit . . . you will end up eventually with
people spending a disproportionate amount of their time looking over their
shoulders as opposed to concentrating on the job. (Regional manager, 11 years
service)
. . . whenever you meet certain key people you always have to project this happy
and I love the company impression . . . because there is this underlying insecu-
rity, because sometimes what people say isn’t really what they think, there is an
ulterior motive, there is a bit of suspicion around . . . (Regional manager, 13
years service)

The insecurity is, according to virtually all managers interviewed, not just in the
imagination. Change at STAR has not been restricted to behavioural and opera-
tional issues, but includes structural change. Managers described ‘delayering’, a
‘flattening of the hierarchy in stores’, ‘taking people out’ when they reach their
fifties, and a shift in promotion preferences for deputy and general store managers
to favour graduates in their late twenties over more experienced departmental
managers. According to the director interviewed there was an unwritten, but
. . . deliberate policy . . . of saying we take the 20 per cent of worst performers

out in year one and replace them and in year two take the next 20 per cent who
are the bottom performers of the good ones and you work your way up . . .
(Director, 17 years service)
Such practice of linking organizational rationalization with a deliberate attempt

to eliminate those who are perceived to be unenthusiastic about the espoused cul-
tural ideals has been documented in other studies of culture change (for example,
the case of Westco Millennium change discussed in Ogbonna and Harris, 1998).
Unsurprisingly, the managers interviewed in this study expressed not only their
frustrations in terms of personal career development, but also concerns for their
jobs:
. . . we are now becoming a business of getting rid of people very very quickly
without them necessarily seeing it coming and people do not seem to have a
long term career opportunity in our business, so there doesn’t seem to be a lot
of people being allowed to work into their fifties and towards a sensible retire-
ment. I think it’s great if you are very highly paid and have the chance of amass-
ing substantial capital but for most people who depend on their monthly pay
cheque it’s obviously a major concern. (General store manager, 12 years service)
I know that sometimes you think about security of your position and your future
and what you are going to be doing. At times of structural changes you do
wonder to yourself will I still be with this company in five years time or what
will I be doing in five years time with this company . . . (Departmental manager,
4 years service)
. . . people are concerned because we are taking on over a hundred graduates

and after six months they go through managing a series of departments and
round about their mid-twenties if they have performed well they go from first
line managers to general store managers. So in their mid to late twenties these
are the people that will become general store managers. The company’s (non-
graduate) first line managers are saying ‘what incentive have I got to work hard

and achieve results when I know I am going to get side stepped’. (Regional
Our methodology precludes definitive claims about the impact that feelings of
career insecurity may have on the perceptions and behaviours of individual man-
agers. However, most managers interviewed expressed serious concerns over the
ease with which the company was willing to dispense with the services of experi-
enced managers whose dedication and commitment contributed to transforming
the company to its present position as a leading grocery retailer. In this regard,
many managers noted that the fear of losing their jobs has acted as a significant
driver to their behaviour which now reflects compliance to top management
espoused behaviours. As two managers observe:
I would consider myself to be a bit of an animal, very experienced and very

forthright in my comments and speak my mind, but I can say hand on heart
that I would be frightened to give feedback (to head office) that’s controversial
or challenging what we are doing because it would be deemed as negative.
(General store manager, 10 years service)
. . . we feel insecure and although it is very open and you can talk to the chief
executive, I think the most worrying aspect is you don’t really feel you can be
open and that concerns me. A lot of the openness is really tongue in cheek . . .
(Departmental manager, 6 years service)
The director interviewed was particularly lucid on the fears and anxieties of man-
agerial staffs, and his comments help sum up the situation:
. . . whilst there is a genuine commitment amongst many general store man-

agers and line managers for the principles that STARWOW stands for, there is
no doubt that underneath it all there is a resentment and fear of not perform-
ing . . . There has been an argument for many years as to whether behaviour
changes attitude or attitude changes behaviour. I think in the case of STAR the
pressure is put on people to change their behaviour – forcing them to change
their behaviour whereas it means that people can act in certain ways while not
being fully committed towards it . . . it is a behaviour change that is forced on
people – you must act in this way and do it in this format. (Director, 17 years
service)
Although this director is considered part of the ‘old guard’, his summary of the
situation is instructive. As a senior executive in the company, such views suggest
recognition of the difficulty of expecting people to change their cultural beliefs
(described as attitude by the director) under the threat of sanctions, job insecurity
and fears. Ironically, the director’s comments also suggest that top managers are
aware that what is being achieved is not culture change in the sense of beliefs and
values but rather behavioural change in the face of tight regulations and control
of work.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions and responses of managers
to organizational culture change initiatives. The key issue was to uncover whether
managers would be more likely than their subordinates to respond positively to an
organizational culture change programme. The findings suggest that managers are
at best ambiguous about culture change. Managers made positive comments
on STARWOW, particularly in relation to openness in communication and to
seeking a greater involvement from subordinates. However, the same managers
in the same interviews expressed concerns about being policed from head
office and working in fear of negative sanction (appearing bottom in league
tables, re-training, promotion blockage, and ultimately redundancy). This is related
to the common notion of a ‘tongue in cheek openness’ on the part of managers.
Interestingly, this finding parallels that of Jackall (1988) that in some US compa-
nies under conditions of restructuring, managers expressed enthusiasm for what
they were doing while covering up the profound anxieties they were experiencing.
There was a big gulf between store managers and head office (from where the
prescriptions originated) and many store managers saw ‘the directorate’ as
‘hypocritical’, of not acting out STARWOW themselves, but insisting everyone
else did.
Our analysis suggests that managers were not wholly ‘taken in’, that a ‘strong
culture’ did not exist within the middle management ranks – from departmental
managers through to regional managers. Their active implementation of
STARWOW, huddle hats and other initiatives, may derive in part from the legiti-
macy they attach to STARWOW sentiments about involvement, colleague devel-
opment, etc., but more importantly from heightened surveillance and threat of
sanction from an increasingly powerful head office and directorate.
In the context of the literature on organizational culture change, our findings
support the position of critical researchers who suggest that attempts to impose
top management derived values on employees are fraught with difficulties and
unintended consequences (for example, Casey, 1999; Harris and Ogbonna, 2002;
Ray, 1986; Willmott, 1993). Indeed, the idea that organizational members may
readily adopt top management derived values (whether or not these are consistent
with their own individual values) may not only be naïve but may also raise signifi-
cant issues regarding individual identity. In the current case, the organization’s
previous attempts at culture change were designed to shape individual identity and
construct them into particular ‘corporate actors’. The present change programme
requires managers to assume new identities that are in many respects different,
and the difficulty that many of them appear to have in reconciling the differences
is one indication of the problematic nature of planned organizational culture
change (see Ogbor, 2001).
The finding that managers are as ambivalent as lower level employees on the
issue of culture change is interesting in a number of respects. In particular, if evi-
dence of planned culture change cannot be found amongst the ranks of relatively
privileged managers, then a key question must be whether the experiences of man-
agers and other employees in organizations undergoing cultural change can be
conceptualized in relation to organizational culture alone. Thus, although many
studies of organizational culture change frequently describe structural change
processes, their conceptual frameworks and analyses continue to draw extensively
from the culture literature. This issue probably explains the continuing focus of
much culture literature on debates of whether culture management is achievable
(see Driscoll and Morris, 2001; Legge, 1994; Ogbonna and Harris, 1998, 2002;
Peccei and Rosenthal, 2001). The findings of this study suggest that whilst the
interests of executives may revolve around planned culture change (see IRS Employ-
ment Trends, 1997), the experiences of other organizational members may best be
explained not in terms of organizational culture alone but in relation to the com-
bined impacts of cultural processes and organizational re-structuring.
Such broader analysis provides an opportunity to explore how organizational
re-structuring promoted as ‘culture change’ may reveal the significant impact of
other changes which may characterize contemporary work organizations but
which may be downplayed by the focus on culture change alone. In this regard,
the finding of the impact of career insecurity on the behaviour of managers in
this study echoes the work of other studies of management work and organiza-
tional re-structuring (Berkeley-Thomas, 1983; Worrall et al., 2000). In the current
case, a deliberate policy of replacing older managers with ‘new blood’ was con-
sidered central to the cultural transformation process. Whilst this approach is con-
sistent with the practices prescribed in the literature on managing organizational
culture (for example, Ogbonna and Harris, 1998; Silverzweig and Allen, 1976), it
is this threat of insecurity that provided managers with a visible and powerful
symbol of the likely consequences of their behavioural choices. Indeed, it has been
argued that career prospects are a key basis for organizational commitment by
managerial employees and are central to managers’ sense of identity (Dunford,
1999; Ebadan and Winstanley, 1997; Scarbrough and Burrell, 1996). Hence, the
desire of managers to maintain their careers can be seen as a primary reason why,
like their ‘colleagues’ at the checkout, managers might be smiling and saying
please, but not necessarily meaning it.
Furthermore, the situation of STAR’s middle managers can be explained in
relation to structural changes and applications of surveillance technologies which
have combined in a way that undermines the autonomy of store management in a
continuing shift of strategic decision making power to a central head office. The
rhetoric of empowerment conveniently ignores such a historical and political
context (see Lee, 1999; Wilkinson, 1998). Structural change relates primarily to
the centralization of decisions in areas such as buying, product range, inventory,
distribution and marketing to head office, a process which brings economies of
scale and enables the grocery chain to take advantage of its market power in a
situation of increasing industry concentration (Harris and Ogbonna, 2001). Hence
the comment that general store managers are ‘being told what to do . . . they’re
not trading managers’. Such a fate for store managers has been documented in
other studies of retailing (Baret et al., 2000; Bramble et al., 1996; Wrigley and
Lowe, 2002). Thus, whilst some surveys of middle managers (across a range of
industries) suggest a reducing number of managers with a wider range of duties
and a greater strategic orientation (see Dopson and Stewart, 1990, 1993; Worrall
et al., 2000), our own case study reveals a narrower range of duties and a greatly
reduced scope for strategic decision making in a process akin to proletarianization,
providing support for Scarbrough and Burrell’s (1996) analysis. We would suggest
that such a process may lead to behavioural changes, but it does not lead to a
situation conducive to managers ‘buying in’ to the espoused culture: their hearts
and minds are elsewhere.
Just as the centralization of functional activities such as buying and product
range and location have been made economically feasible by advances in infor-
mation systems, so detailed control and monitoring of store level activities have
been enabled by similar advances. Hence there is very little autonomy over jobs
which have been reduced in scope. Even carrier bag usage is measured and pub-
lished, with advice from above on how to improve for those stores failing to
conform to specification. And there are detailed prescriptions on how to select and
manage shopfloor staff – the one commodity which (for the moment at least)
cannot be bought centrally, but whose characteristics and performance can be mon-
itored centrally. A range of operational measures is routinely used to assess stores,
and managers can see their own and others’ positions in well publicized league
tables. Poorly performing stores are subject to even closer attention and monitor-
ing while the store managers are subject of further training. Close monitoring and
corrective discipline also applies to the behaviour and attitudes of store managers,
with superior, self and subordinate assessments being scrutinized for low scores or
discrepancies that may, like poor organizational performance, lead to corrective
action. Hence detailed surveillance, which has been well documented for retail
shop floor workers (du Gay, 1996; Freathy and Sparks, 1996; Smith, 1988; Wrigley
and Lowe, 2002) also applies to store managers. And this surveillance comes with
implicit threats to managerial careers and livelihoods. As the STARWOW for
Management document states: ‘It is important that everyone . . . realizes the con-
sequences of not operating in the STAR way of working’. Store managers, then,
experience a contradiction, reflected in their comments in interviews, between
what they hear (‘cooperation’, ‘common purpose’, ‘trust’) and what they see
(reduced autonomy, detailed prescription and monitoring, and career insecurity)
(cf. Dunford, 1999). In sum, after several years of erosion of their autonomy, store
managers, in Armstrong’s (1989, 1991) terms, have little left of their agency status.
Trust has been replaced by behavioural and performance prescription, monitor-
ing and control. The new trusted agents, much smaller in number, reside at head
office.
Oranizational culture change promises to improve the performance of organi-
zations through transforming values and thereby maximizing human asset uti-
lization. It is presented as a superior, cheaper form of control than bureaucratic
control (see Ray, 1986). But perhaps the promise is a false one. The purpose of
transforming culture is undermined by practices which contradict the rhetoric
(Dunford, 1999). In line with Willmott’s (1993) analysis, we found that not only is
there an erosion of (expensive) arrangements such as job security and career pro-
gression which might ‘smooth the conflicts of interest’ between the company and
its middle managers, increasingly there have been real threats to the livelihoods of
managers who fail to conform. Our documentation of an ‘instrumental compli-
ance’ and a ‘skilful parodying of corporate culturism’ (Willmott, 1993) makes sense
in this context.
Perhaps our findings do not necessarily contradict the notion that planned culture
change initiatives are feasible in the appropriate organizational context. Indeed,
the STAR case study identifies that the reduced autonomy and career insecurity
associated with organizational restructuring were major impediments to culture
change, and in theory these impediments could be removed and replaced with
more supportive arrangements. However, we find it difficult to accept any notion
that changing the organizational context would be easy, or indeed would be con-
sidered suitable for systematic pursuit. This is because the broader context is one
of a massive concentration of the UK supermarket industry over the past two
decades, from which STAR has been a major beneficiary. This concentration has
been premised on the (well documented) centralization of activities such as buying
and marketing, the establishment of uniform ‘best practice’ for store management,
the central monitoring and control of detailed performance, and more generally
on cost cutting (Burt and Sparks, 1994; IGD, 1993; Lockett and Holland, 1991;
Wrigley, 1993; Wrigley and Lowe, 2002). Under such circumstances the tighten-
ing of head office control that accompanied the STARWOW culture change
initiative appeared inevitable, and the apparent polarity of opinion between the
board room and middle management is not altogether surprising in this context.
In conclusion, the context in which culture change initiatives have been intro-
duced, in particular organizational restructuring, job insecurity and detailed moni-
toring and control of behaviour and performance, makes planned culture change
unlikely. Middle managers, like shopfloor workers, may be compliant, but the
espoused culture has not been embraced.
NOTE
*The term ‘middle manager’, while generally understood as those managers subject to management
from ‘above’ at the same time as they manage those ‘below’, is recognized as problematic because
of its varying usage in different organizations. Here we use the term to refer to the levels of store
manager (store managers oversee departmental managers and functional managers within stores)
and area manager (area managers each oversee several stores). This is the definition widely used
within the company studied and in the grocery industry generally.
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Journal of Management Studies 40:5 July 2003

The False Promise of Organizational Culture

Emmanuel Ogbonna and Barry Wilkinson

 The strategic importance of managing organizational culture has been a

MANAGING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

BACKGROUND: THE STAR WAY OF WORKING FOR

The STAR Way of Working (STARWOW)

The STARWOW culture change initiative demands a move towards ‘performance

Then and Now

I just got feedback from a hundred colleagues, an upward feedback session

. . . it’s a statistical approach to managing a multi-million pound business – it’s

The same regional manager went on to give an example:

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

. . . deliberate policy . . . of saying we take the 20 per cent of worst performers

Such practice of linking organizational rationalization with a deliberate attempt

. . . people are concerned because we are taking on over a hundred graduates

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

I would consider myself to be a bit of an animal, very experienced and very

. . . whilst there is a genuine commitment amongst many general store man-

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

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