Fear and Cultural Division

Ashley Jones and I both work for the same company, but she is based in San Francisco.  Ashley is junior to me but does not work directly for me.  She and I both report to the same individual. The reasons I chose Ashley for her perspective on our company culture is that she is young, bright, ambitious and honest.  

LD - Good morning, Ashley.  Thank you for taking the time to talk with me.  Please know all of your responses will be kept confidential. 

AJ - Good morning to you, Lisa.  I appreciate that (laughs).

LD - How would you describe the culture of your current organization?

AJ - That’s a great question, Lisa.  It's young, energetic, has potential. There are places where people could step up – a few things that are missing. 

LD – What do you see missing?

AJ – Communication, organization, leadership, training, the human element.

LD – What do you mean by the human element?

AJ – I used to work for larger companies and always felt like a number, wanted to work for startup so I would feel like Ashley there. 

LD – I hear you saying that you still do not feel like Ashley in this organization.  In what way or ways do you feel like you can't be yourself?

AJ – Not listening to me when I have a problem and not helping me, assuming that I know things I don’t know. My manager does not support me in my day-to-day operations and makes me do all administrative duties.  I’m a salesperson. I’d like to know why I’m responsible for operations and managerial reporting - things she should be doing.

LD – I’m gathering that you don’t feel comfortable discussing these issues with your manager is that correct?

AJ – Of course not.  I feel like the culture is like a sorority. 

LD – If you did approach your manager, what do think would happen?

AJ – Depends on her mood.  Even on a good day and she accepted my criticism I don’t think anything would change.  I think it would put a target on my back.

LD - Do you feel adequately involved in the organization (Dennison and Mishra)?

AJ – No. 

LD - Would more involvement and participation change the culture and improve the effectiveness of the organization (Denison & Mishra)?

AJ – Of course!  I would feel like I had a voice.  Instead I feel as though I’m in a dictatorship.

LD - You mentioned a sorority. Do you think of this as subcultures in your current organization (Denison & Mishra)?

AJ – Yes, because it’s not the full culture of the organization.  There are outsiders and then there are insiders.  I think the organization as a whole is trying to have a great culture but because of lack of communication it is failing.

LD - I’m going to read you five different dimensions that briefly describe the Hofstede Model.  They are Power Distance, Weak and Strong UncertaintyAvoidance, Collectivisim and Individualism, Femininity and Masculinity and Short-Term Orientation and Long Term Orientation.  According to Hofstede, these tables or dimensions exist with in countries and cultures (Hoffstede, 2009).  After I finish reading them to you, please, let me know where you think your organization’s culture lands and why. 

LD - Where do you see your organization on the Power Distance table?

AJ - Large power distance at GC. Middle management is on a power trip.

LD - How about avoidance?

AJ - More strong than weak.  From middle management up, it seems to be weak avoidance, but from where I am I see it as a strong avoidance.  There appears to be a transition from strong to weak avoidance as you go up.

 LD - Individualism and collectivism?

AJ - I see us as both especially on a power level. Others are classified as in-groups or out-groups.  Task prevails over relationship. Others are classified as individuals, opinions and votes are predetermined by in-groups or the sorority.

 LD - Feminine and masculine?

AJ – More are on the masculine side – not a nurturing environment, at least not in my role.  I do think there is more nurturing and collaboration in higher positions.  Once you hit a certain level in the organization I think a more feminine attitude is replaced

Short and long term oriented?

AJ – Short term we don’t have any problem solving outside of the people we trust but management is not involved in those discussions. There is no feeling of belonging, focus is on short-term profits. There is a clear division between lower level employees and management.  I feel like a machine.

LD - If you could change the culture of this organization what would you change?

AJ – How we communicate with each other, and ask individuals is important to them.  I don’t know what’s important to my manager.  I would involve more people in decisions processes from day-to-day operations to rate of pay.  There would be more personal conversations.  A “how are you?” would be nice.  If I had a company it would be very feminine.  The expectations would be modified.  There would be more of a level playing field, more transparency.  The perks only go to upper management, while those of us who are working harder seem to only get more work and more berating.  I feel that we are kept in the dark, then when things out of our control or we weren’t aware of occur, we’re held accountable for these things that we had no knowledge of and did not have the opportunity to offer our input.  I'd make it more like Google, Twitter, Facebook and Genentech. I know people who work at all of these companies and they all have very open, welcoming cultures – I think this is why they’re successful. 

LD – GC does try to replicate that environment, in New York, do you agree? 

AJ – If you interviewed someone in New York I think the answers would be drastically different.  I feel like here I could be forgotten about.

LD – So what I hear you saying, is that being a remote employee is damaging to the culture of the organization, is that true?

AJ- I think NY has the opportunity to have a better culture but we seem to be “out of sight out of mind.”  I don’t think upper management realizes that we need interaction and support to thrive, grow and stay motivated.  At least I don’t get that from my regional manager.

LD – You manager spends a lot of time in New York, even though she lives in CA, do you think this is an unfair advantage? 

AJ – Only because I don’t feel like she shares her experiences or what is going in while she’s there.  I think the organization should drill down to the salespeople and include them on what’s going on.  I don’t think she communicate with us effectively.  It seems to be a need to know culture that breeds paranoia and negatively affects my performance.  If there was a positive outcome to her constantly going to NY, I would feel differently, but I don’t understand what she does while she is there.

LD - Ashley, thank you so much for your time and your honesty. This is very helpful.

AJ - No problem. Are you going to send this to Cristina (Cristina is a senior VP at the organization)?

LD - (Laughs) No, it's going to stay right here and only be shared with my professor and my class.

AJ - Okay, well maybe if Cristina saw it, things would change.

Conclusion:

I wasn't surprised by Ashley's responses, but they did concern me.  There are overarching themes of lack of transparency, inequality, fear-based management, helplessness, sense of ambiguity and defeat and a big divide created at the middle management level.  I don't experience this to the degree Ashley does, but I agree that it does exist within the organization. 

Interestingly, she used the term "sorority" a couple of times.  What she sees is a bureaucratic subculture (Denison & Mishra, 1995).  Subcultures exist in all organizations (Denison & Misra, 1995) and exist in a belief system.  However, Ashley sees the subcultures as enemies of each other and thinks the cultural divide is deep.  Thus, she does not feel comfortable sharing her values or beliefs for fear of backlash.  What Ashley would like to see is the cultural trait of involvement as hypothesized by Denision and Mishra (1995).  She thinks a high level of involvement and participation would motivate and encourage her.

At the end of the interview, she asked me if I was going to send this to the SVP of sales.  I was quite surprised by this question.  The SVP of sales is who Ashley's manager reports to.  This tells me three things:
1.  Ashley wants someone to fix the fractures in the organizational networks, particularly at the mid-management level
2.  She is too afraid to do it herself and does not feel that she has a direct line to the person she thinks could change the culture
3.  Supports her belief that things are different at the top of the org chart; a fractured network does exist, and further supports evidence of structural holes in this organization.

I tried to stay as unbiased as possible during this interview, but I do agree with a lot of what Ashley so openly shared with me.  This is a young company that is experiencing growing pains, and I have hope that things will improve.  The "sorority" is a group of inexperienced individuals who were placed in positions of power out of necessity.  However, it is not necessarily their responsibly to instinctively know what to do or how to manage.  It is the people at the top, the ones Ashley thinks will change things, who need to create a culture of involvement and recognize the above mentioned themes and work to modify them.

References

Denison, D. R., & Mishra, A. K. (1995). Toward a theory of organizational culture and effectiveness. Organizational Science, 6(2), 204-223.

Hofstede, G. (2009). Dimensionalizing cultures: The Hofstede model in context. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture,12(8), 1-13. Retrieved from http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol2/issI/8