Strategic Change
Strat. Change, 7, 251±260 (1998)
Dianne Lewis
Lecturer, School of Management, Queensland
University of Technology, 2 George Street,
PO Box 2434, GPO Brisbane, Australia 4001
Introduction
People have been trying to de®ne organiz-
ational culture, to understand its nature and to
gauge its in¯uence on organizational effective-
ness ever since Peters and Waterman (1982)
told managers that the key to organizational
success was to have a strong culture, and then
# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
How useful a
concept is
organizational
culture?
. Organizational culture has been
investigated along many different
lines and with many different
purposes since the ®rst explosion of
interest in the concept over 15 years
ago.
. We are no closer now to
understanding culture's nature and
effects than we were when Peters and
Waterman ®rst told managers that
the key to corporate success lay in
having a strong culture, and then
proceeded to prescribe a formula for
such a culture.
. The value of the culture concept to
today's managers remains
problematic for two main reasons:
we still cannot de®ne it; and the link
between culture and performance is
tenuous.
. The paper evaluates the value of the
culture concept to today's managers.
proceeded to prescribe a formula for such a
culture. Organizational culture, of course,
existed long before the publication of Peters
and Waterman's book; but as a purely
academic concept it was of little interest to
the business community. Once it was tied to
corporate pro®ts, however, it took on a new
signi®cance for managers.
Strategic Change, August 1998
252
Sixteen years after the explosion of interest in
organizational culture and 13 years after Adams
and Ingersoll ®rst explored the dif®culties of
`framing a perspective on organizational
culture' (Adams and Ingersoll, 1985), where
are we in terms of understanding its nature, in
studying its effects, and in understanding its
role in strategic change? My argument is that
very little progress has been made, that we are
still as far from a de®nition and an under-
standing of the signi®cance of culture as we
ever were, and that we are not likely to
progress greatly in the foreseeable future.
The paper will ®rstly give a brief history of
the trends in the organizational culture litera-
ture and will argue that the concept of culture
is not as `useful' to managers as the hype in the
early 1980s led us to believe it would be for two
main reasons. First, there are dif®culties in
understanding the nature of culture due to the
fact that it is a term borrowed from one
discipline and yet is itself an inter-disciplinary
phenomenon; that it is an unfamiliar descrip-
tion of an organization; and that culture's
components are only imprecisely understood,
in an external environment that is relying more
and more on precise measurement of inputs
and outputs. And second, the link between
culture and performance is a tenuous one at
best. Finally, an analysis will be made of culture
in general as a `useful' tool for viewing and
changing an organization.
The link between culture and
performance is a tenuous one
Trends in the culture literature
The saga of the literature on organizational
culture has been traced by Lewis (1996a,
1996b), where it was argued that it had its
origins in the traditional organization develop-
ment model of slow, planned change (Beer
and Walton, 1987) and later converged with
the ®eld of total quality management (TQM) in
the belief that either culture change or at least
# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Dianne Lewis
culture awareness was a necessary prerequi-
site for `excellence' and `quality'.
The culture literature, beginning modestly
with ®ve articles under the heading `Corporate
Culture' in the Business Periodicals Index in
August 1982 and exploding rapidly from there,
®rst attempted to de®ne the term (Schein,
1983 and 1984; Sathe, 1983 and 1985; Smir-
cich, 1983a, 1983b). According to Lewis
(1996a), as later researchers began to ask the
question, `What use may be made of the
information?' (Hofstede, 1986), the literature
has attempted to prescribe methods of study,
diagnosis and measurement; discussed the
feasibility of culture change and often recom-
mended change strategies; recommended
methods to evaluate the extent and success
of change; and tried to marry culture and TQM.
Through all these transitions, the concept
and effects of culture have remained proble-
matic. The remainder of this paper explores
the reasons for this.
Dif®culties in understanding the
nature of culture
Culture is a term borrowed from
another discipline
Part of the problem with de®ning culture lies
in the fact that it comes under the umbrella of
organizational behaviour, which is itself a
combination of a number of behaviourial
disciplinesÐpsychology, sociology, social psy-
chology, anthropology and political science.
Culture has traditionally been viewed as one
facet of anthropology (Robbins, 1983).
However, the classi®cation of organiza-
tional culture as purely anthropological is
too narrow; the study of culture is really
an interdisciplinary phenomenon with
contributions from psychology, sociology,
anthropology and social psychology. Social
psychology is itself considered a sub-discipline
Culture is really an inter-
disciplinary phenomenon
Strategic Change, August 1998
Organization culture
of both sociology and psychology. According to
Meek (1988), problems of de®nition always
occur when a term is borrowed from another
discipline. The problem is further com-
pounded with culture, which incorporates
ideas from a number of other disciplines as
well as from anthropology.
Culture is an unfamiliar concept
of organizations
Another part of the problem with de®ning
culture and understanding its nature is that it
represents a newÐand therefore unfamiliarÐ
way of viewing organizations. Culture theor-
ists, led and encouraged by Peters and
Waterman, believe that most of the other
organizational theoriesÐscienti®c manage-
ment, systems theory, even the political
model to a certain extentÐhave an inherent
weakness in the fact that they all consider
organizations are run rationallyÐeither that
people work solely for money; or that they will
respond to changes in the environment and
work as a team in a series of inter-related
groups; or that they are politically motivated
and will work towards pre-determined ends of
their own. Even the human relations school,
which recognized that people are not rational,
believed that if people were treated right and
their superiors were nice to them, they would
respond and would be motivated to work
harder. And this is a rational decision! Culture
theorists argue there are far more inde®nable
things that motivate people and affect their
actions. They are, then, searching for the
`meanings' behind actions.
Apart from rational motivation of people,
culture theorists argue that each of the other
schools of management thought had viewed
the workplace as a collection of individualsÐ
interdependent in different relationshipsÐbut
nevertheless as individuals. The culture school
sees the organization as a collectivity, a social
entity, to which employees and managers alike
belong; just as they also belong to the wider
collectivity of the society in which they live.
People may belong to many collectivities at
the same timeÐto their family unit, their
school, university, course, social club, church
# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
253
group, sporting organization. Each of these will
have a different culture and individuals will
behave in different ways, depending on the
surrounding culture.
This does seem very similar to the anthro-
pological view of culture
. . . patterned ways of thinking, feeling, and
reacting, acquired and transmitted mainly
by symbols, constituting the distinctive
achievements of human groups, including
their embodiments in artifacts; the essential
core of culture consists of traditional
(ie. historically derived and selected) ideas
and especially their attached values. (Kluck-
hohn, 1951, p. 86)
However, just as anthropology and psychology
have found it dif®cult to precisely de®ne the
meaning of any of these component terms, so
the organizational culture school has also
found dif®culties in de®ning and measuring
them.
Imprecise nature of the terms used to
de®ne culture
Researchers investigating the nature of organ-
izational culture are not oblivious to the dif®-
culties in studying it. Frost, for example, says:
Some see the term `organisational culture'
as a metaphor . . . Others see (it) as a thing
. . . There is disagreement as to where the
organisational culture originates, whether
the unconscious mind plays a role, whether
there is a single organisational culture or
many cultures, whether an organisation's
culture or cultures can be managed,
whether organisations have cultures or are
places to study cultures, whether and how
organisational cultures can be studied and
whether they should be studied at all.
(Frost, 1985, p. 18)
My contention is that we have not come any
closer to solving these problems in 1998 than
Frost and other researchers had in 1985. Never-
theless, many researchers have tried, and some
have succeeded in clarifying points and classi-
fying others.
Strategic Change, August 1998
254
From the many de®nitions of culture given in
the literature, it would appear that the most
common components are symbols, processes,
forms and behaviourÐall of which can be
observed; feelings, beliefs and valuesÐwhich
have to be inferred from the observable com-
ponents; and basic assumptionsÐwhich are
the core of the culture. And each of these
components is an imprecise concept.
If one considers Lewis's (1992) adaptation of
the Schein three-layered model of observable
forms, which reveal feelings, beliefs and values,
and which in turn reveal basic assumptions
(see Figure 1), we are faced with precisely
de®ning each of these terms so that any
study of culture can be replicated by different
researchers and yield reliable and valid
results.
The ®rst layer seems relatively easy to
de®ne and is explained in more detail in
Lewis (1992). According to the literature,
symbols include logos; slogans; rituals;
ceremonies; stories that people in the organiz-
ation tell; day-to-day work practices (studied by
ethnographers); who the power holders are;
criteria for sidelining, appointment and re-
warding; and language. These components
have been studied by many culture research-
ers. Processes are the methods that an organ-
ization uses to carry out its tasks, such as who
reports to whom; the design of work; the
mechanisms for integration and differentiation;
management decision-making strategies; socia-
lization procedures for new staff and perform-
ance appraisal and other review processes for
existing staff (Schein, 1983); the of®cial com-
munication channels (Schall, 1983); and rules
and regulations about meetings and attendance
(Lewis, 1992). Forms are directly observable
things such as the design of physical spaces,
facades, buildings (Schein, 1983); furniture;
of®cial documents; speeches; newsletters;
memos. And behaviour is the speci®c day-to-
day actions performed by organizational mem-
bers. Behaviour as a visible manifestation
belongs on a different level from symbols,
processes and forms as not all behaviour is
cultural; that is, while behaviour is one
embodiment of culture, culture is not the
only determinant of behaviour.
# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Dianne Lewis
FEELINGS
BELIEFS
VALUES
Figure 1. The three-layered nature of organizational
culture. (Lewis, 1992, p. 48)
The second layer in the organizational
culture chart consists of feelings, beliefs and
values, none of which can be directly
observed, but must be inferred from symbols,
processes, forms and behaviour (Schein,
1984). Early culture theorists like Schein and
Sathe loosely used these terms as they were
de®ned in the psychology literature. Rokeach
(1968, p. 2), for example, had de®ned beliefs as
taken-for-granted `underlying states of expect-
ancy'; and Sathe (1983, p. 11 and 1985, p. 11)
considered them to be `basic assumptions
about the world and how it works'. In the
organizational arena, Sathe considered beliefs
to be basic assumptions held by organization
members about the organization's role in
society and their own and other people's role
in the organization. Values, again according to
Rokeach (1968, p. 124), are members' beliefs
about what is ultimately worth having or doing,
`how one ought or ought not to behave, or
about some end-state of existence worth or not
worth attaining'. Sathe (1983, p. 11) de®ned
them as `basic assumptions . . . (that) have an
``ought to'' implicit in them'; and Schein (1981,
p. 64) de®ned values and ideology as
the rules, principles, norms, values, morals,
and ethics which guide both the ends of a
Strategic Change, August 1998
Organization culture
given society (group) and the means by
which to accomplish them.
Basic assumptions he de®ned as `underlying
and typically unconscious assumptions about
the nature of truth and reality. . .' (Schein, 1981,
p. 65).
Feelings, or emotional reactions, necessitate
the de®nition of an emotion. Ashkanasy (1996,
p. 4) says that `One of the most frustrating
issues confronting both writers and readers in
the emotion literature is the diversity of
de®nitions and overlapping terms.' Ashkanasy
prefers to see emotion in terms of an
interactive model proposed by Fischer, Shaver
and Carnochan (1990), who de®ne it as a
`discrete, innate, functional, biosocial action
and expression system' (p. 84). This is hardly a
precise de®nition of something that is used to
de®ne feelings, which are, in turn, used to
de®ne culture. Most culture researchers use
the term feelings without de®ning it, possibly
because, although we have no real justi®cation
for it, `somehow we all seem quite convinced
we know what we mean when we use it'
(Reber, 1985, p. 272).
The term attitude (often used by organiz-
ational psychologists) is generally avoided by
culture theorists. Rokeach de®nes an attitude
as `a relatively enduring organisation of beliefs
around an object or situation predisposing one
to respond in some preferential manner'
(Rokeach, 1968, p. 112), but also admits there
is much controversy over what an attitude is
(Rokeach, 1968, pp. 110±111). Presumably
culture theorists believe that both cognitive
and affective components of attitudes are
already covered by beliefs and feelings and
that they do not need to use the term. How-
ever, culture theorists appear to feel comfor-
table with the use of the terms beliefs, feelings
and values.
Finally, the third layer in the organizational
culture chart consists of the basic assumptions
that organizational members hold about things
relating to the organization. Assumptions
underlie feelings, beliefs and values and, like
them, cannot be directly observed, but need to
be inferred. However, they differ from feelings,
beliefs and values in being largely unconscious;
# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
255
feelings, beliefs and values are often conscious
and articulated.
They can probably be more easily equated
with culture than can any of the more visible
manifestations because two groups may share a
number of common symbols, processes and
forms, but have entirely different basic assump-
tions about them. For example, a common
ritual between two groups may not necessarily
indicate a common culture. Kluckhohn gives
the following example:
Both the Navaho and the Hopi (North
American Indian Tribes) have an initiation
rite for boys wherein the boys are whipped
on the naked back by older men with staves
of yucca. But the importance or intensity of
this occasion is exceedingly different in the
two cases. Many adult Navahos never go
through this rite. Among the Hopi, how-
ever, this is an absolute prerequisite to full
participation in the society. If a Navaho man
has been initiated, his references in con-
versation to this event are likely to be quite
casual. The ordinary Hopi will evidence
considerable emotion in any discussion of
the subject. (Kluckhohn, 1951, pp. 90±91)
Thus, while the ritual of whipping was
indicative of the culture of each of the
tribes, it was not indicative of the same basic
assumptions. To the Navahos it was incidental;
to the Hopi it was central. One would need
to look beneath the level of the ritual itself to
infer the feelings, beliefs and values and then
®nally the basic assumptions on which it was
based.
Attribution theory argues that we perceive
the behaviour of others as being caused by the
other person themselves, by the environment,
or by a combination of both (Wrightsman and
Sanford, 1975, p. 83). We therefore tend to
make conclusions based more on circum-
stances and past events than on observable
behaviour itself (Cook, 1979, p. 60). There are
three main dangers in inferring feelings, beliefs
and values from behaviour:
. Even if attribution theory holds, people's
behaviour may not be attributable to their
Strategic Change, August 1998
256
ideological values, but to their pragmatic
ones. People may act in a certain way,
not because they believe it is right, but
because they do not want to lose their job,
their status, or their privileges. People's
behaviour may not be an expression of
their feelings, beliefs and values at all, but
may be a contingency measure that they
adopt to cope with situations as they arise.
This point of view differs from that of
Schein, who says:
. . . as a value leads to a behavior, and as
that behavior begins to solve the
problem which prompted it in the
®rst place, the value gradually is trans-
formed into an underlying assumption
about how things really are. (Schein,
1984, p. 4)
. Attribution theory may have cause and
effect the wrong way around. Instead of
assuming that values cause the develop-
ment of a certain behaviour, there is the
possibility that behaviour causes the
development of certain values.
. The conditions under which we view
other people's behaviour often determine
how we ascribe that behaviour to their
intentions.
Behaviour, therefore, has to be interpreted
very carefully in unearthing a culture; for, in
isolation, we can never be sure whether we are
looking at a cause, an effect, or a contingency
action that people are taking to cope with
`cognitive dissonance' (Festinger, 1957) caused
by their being forced to behave in ways not
congruent with their feelings, beliefs and
values. Behaviour may or may not be an
embodiment of culture. The culture literature,
however, argues a congruence between values
(and their underlying basic assumptions; that
is, culture) and patterned behaviour, assuming
Behaviour may or may not
be an embodiment of culture
# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Dianne Lewis
that patterned behaviour implies the culture of
the organization. This congruence has been
challenged by Lewis and Cunnington (1993)
and by Lewis (1994).
Tenuous links between culture
and performance
Almost without exception, authors believe
that culture (imperfectly understood as it is)
has a signi®cant effect on organizational
performance. Peters and Waterman (1982)
and Deal and Kennedy (1982) built their
whole arguments on the cultural traits necess-
ary for success and the importance of a `strong
culture' and other researchers and consultants
took up the idea. The argument is that if
culture has no effect, then interest in it would
be minimal and arguments about its nature
would become purely academic. However,
most authors treat `culture' as a single entity in
assessing its effect on performance, whereas
only behaviour can affect performance. As
argued earlier, while patterned behaviour may
be one embodiment of culture, culture is not
the only determinant of patterned behaviour.
Even those authors who see behaviour as part
of culture rather than as an embodiment of it
are claiming too much in saying that culture
affects performance.
Authors who have questioned the value of
the `strong culture' hypothesis are Saffold
(1988), who sees ®ve weaknesses in it; and
Schein (1989), who argues that `strong' cul-
tures do not necessarily lead to organizational
effectiveness. In agreement with Schlesinger
and Balzer (1985), no direct link is seen
between culture and performance. As long as
organizations are composed of people, out-
comes will never be totally predictable.
The culture±performance link is therefore a
tenuous one at best.
Analysis of the `usefulness' of
organizational culture
Considering the problems with de®ning the
nature of culture and in assessing its effects on
Strategic Change, August 1998
Organization culture
an organization, what, if any, contribution has
the discipline made to organizational theory,
managerial knowledge and strategic change?
As all management theories are prescriptive
as opposed to scienti®c theories, which are
largely descriptive, for a management theory to
be a good theory it needs to be a good
prescriptive theory (Fulop et al., 1992). That
is, it needs to be useful to managers in guiding
them in their behaviour. Another consider-
ation, often overlooked in the management
literature, is one of ethics. On these bases, how
useful a concept is organizational culture?
There are a number of strengths and weak-
nesses to culture theory.
Strengths
Culture theory has the strength of highlighting
the symbolic signi®cance of every aspect of
organizational life, and so focuses attention on
a human side of organization that other
metaphors ignore or gloss over. Human
relations theorists claimed to be concerned
with the human element, but that theory was
only very super®cial, concentrating on being
nice to people in order to get them to work
harder. Culture theory goes much deeper than
that and people are seen as much more
complex beings.
It focuses on other than design aspects of
organizing; for example, language, norms,
ceremonies. It has allowed managers to try to
`manage meanings' (Weick, 1987) rather than
just structures. The rational approach to
managing and changing ignored these more
`intangible' things.
And ®nally, it gives new meaning to `leader-
ship' and the role of the leader, with the belief
that it takes a leader to create, manage and
transform a culture.
Weaknesses
However, culture has many weaknesses as a
way of describing and managing an organiz-
ation and some of these have been described
in this paper.
One of the most obvious weaknesses is the
imprecise understanding of its components.
The culture literature maintains that culture is
# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
257
composed of feelings, beliefs, attitudes
(maybe), values, assumptions and behaviour;
yet no one has yet been able to give a precise
de®nition of most of these terms. Many of the
de®nitions in the early culture literature were
circular and used one imprecisely understood
term to de®ne another one; for example,
Rokeach's (1968) and Sathe's (1983) de®nitions
of beliefs as basic assumptions, Rokeach's
(1968) de®nition of values as members'
beliefs, and Schein's (1981) de®nition of
values as rules, principles, norms, values,
morals and ethicsÐa de®nition that uses a
term to de®ne itself. The literature being
written on these topics today still uses the
same de®nitionsÐor slight variations of
themÐas the early culture theorists did.
Feelings, for example, are de®ned by Birch
(1995, p. 109) as `any kind of acting or being
acted upon in such a way that the make-up or
constitution of the subject is affected.' Values
and beliefs are de®ned with reference to
Rokeach. For example, Olson and Zanna
(1993, p. 125) de®ne values as `higher-order
evaluative standards, referring to desirable
means and ends of action', and give Rokeach
(1973) as their reference. Dose (1997) admits
the term values is dif®cult to de®ne, but then
says values are `standards or criteria . . . for
choosing goals or guiding action and are
relatively enduring or stable over time', also
giving Rokeach (1968 and 1973) and Kluck-
holn (1951) as references. Ennis et al., 1997,
p. 74) quote Pajares (1992) as de®ning beliefs
as `incontrovertible, personal truths that are
unaffected by persuasion'. Pajares acknowl-
edges Rokeach (1968) as his source of
de®nition of the term. Authors of the literature
dealing speci®cally with organizational
culture, Total Quality Management (TQM) or
Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) do not
de®ne these terms at all, probably assuming
that they have already been adequately de®ned.
Thus, in advocating culture change to
achieve TQM or in BPR or in creating a learning
organization, theorists are working with very
fragile and unpredictable tools in the hands of
people who do notÐand cannotÐunderstand
them. Numerous consultants have thrown
together `quick ®x' methods for organizational
Strategic Change, August 1998
258
success, working on changing the culture, but
how can one change something one does not
fully understand?
Apart from the imprecise nature of culture's
components, many culture theorists make the
assumption of unitarism; that is, that culture is
a single entity, that culture is the prerogative of
management, and that managers have the right
to change it. Sathe, for example, says:
. . . just as it is in the nature of the manager's
job to in¯uence organizational behavior
in a responsible and professional manner,
so it is his or her job to conscientiously
shape organizational beliefs and values
in the appropriate direction. (Sathe, 1983,
p. 17)
As far as culture's being a single entity, there is
no consensus. In fact, many researchers (Van
Maanen and Barley, 1985; Martin and Siehl,
1983; Gregory, 1983; Krefting and Frost, 1985;
Lucas, 1987; Saffold, 1988; Short and Ferratt,
1984) believe that organizations are composed
of many cultures, which have grown up over
time and which make a study of any overall
culture dif®cult or impossible. Riley (1983,
p. 414) goes so far as to say there is no `uni®ed
set of values to which all organizational
members ascribe', because all organizational
culture is composed of `integrated sub-
cultures'. If there is no one culture, how can
it be changed? Unitarist theories do not give full
recognition to the existence of heterogeneous
goals in organizations, but consider that all
con¯ict will be able to be overcome by the
presence of a transformational leader, who will
be able to unite people with common goals and
objectives. All organization members will work
as a team towards these goals and objectives.
Thus, the transformational leader will be able
to unite the members of the organization,
shape their feelings, beliefs and values (what-
ever those terms may mean), and lead them on
to greater heights of self-awareness and
achievement (Lewis, 1996c).
A second assumption of unitarism intro-
duces an ethical consideration; that culture is
the prerogative of managers and they have the
right to change it. The culture concept has led
# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Dianne Lewis
many managers to try to become ideological
gurus, trying to change people's beliefs and
values; and, in disagreement with Sathe,
Schein, Peters and Waterman, Deal and Kenne-
dy, and the host of other prescriptive culture
theorists, I seriously question whether anyone
has the right to attempt to do this to anyone
else. I do not dispute the fact that management
have the right to manage; but surely this stops
at behaviour control. While there is value in
having committed, dedicated people working
in an organization, mind control is totally
different.
Conclusion
Perhaps we will never understand organiz-
ational culture. The philosopher Karl Popper
said that we can never actually get at `truth';
we can only come closer and closer to it; for
all knowledge is provisional and always will
be. According to Popper, it is not possible to
verify anything, but only to falsify it. We can
test theories, but can never verify them,
because there is always the possibility that
one day they will turn out to be false (Popper,
1959 and 1963). In accordance with Popper-
ian philosophy, this would apply to culture
theory; and, given the dif®culties in under-
standing the nature of culture due to its being
a term borrowed from one discipline and
applied to another, its being an unfamiliar
description of an organization, the imprecise
nature of its components, and the tenuous
link between culture and performance, it is
unlikely that we are going to be able to rely on
it for precise measurements of relationships
between inputs and outputs in the foreseeable
future.
I am not implying that culture is a useless
concept; rather, that practitioners in particular
need to exercise caution when claiming it as
the answer to all problems in their organiz-
ations and a tool to be used as part of strategic
change. Change in the late 1990s demands
measurement of inputs and outputs and at the
present time it is not possible to measure such
an esoteric concept as organizational culture.
Strategic Change, August 1998
Organization culture
Biographical note
Dr Dianne Lewis currently lectures in
management at the Queensland University of
Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Her research
interests are organizational culture, change,
power, politics and leadership. Both in her
research and in her consultancy she has had
experience in analysing organizations structu-
rally, culturally and strategically with the aim
of helping them plan for the future.
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