Unit 3 Culture and

Strategy

Risk Management and Strategic Planning

Reading

Book Ch

Tribe, J, (2010) Strategy for Tourism, Goodfellow Publishers, Oxford.

3

Capon, C. (2008) Understanding Strategic Management, Prentice Hall: Hemel Hempstead.

5

Tribe, J. (2005) The Economics of Recreation, Leisure and Tourism, Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford.

-

Johnson, G., Scholes, K., and Whittington, R. (2008) Exploring Corporate Strategy, Prentice Hall: Hemel Hempstead.

5

Objectives

After studying this chapter and related materials you should be able to understand:Culture, difference and reproductionOrganisational cultureCultural web

and critically evaluate, explain and apply the above concepts.

Discussion Point

What is Culture?Why is organisational culture

important??

Case Study 3: The Walt Disney Company Larry Lynch of the Disney Institute, Walt

Disney World, Florida, explains the role of the WDC “university” in inducting new staff:“… it all begins the day new Cast Members arrive

for orientation at Disney University, the company's internal training operation. The timing couldn't be better to show them how our company thinks, to offer concrete examples of how creativity and innovation have helped us grow, and to emphasize how our ongoing traditions have been the steady hand that guides us. Those traditions are pointed out again when new Cast Members are introduced to their assigned workplaces. As they learn the culture of the company, they recognize the traditions in the standard operating procedures and established norms of their work areas…”

Culture

“a set of shared values, attitudes, goals, and practices that characterise a group of people.”

Organisational Culture Organisational culture refers to organisational

beliefs, values and attitudes (Schein, 1985; Martin and Siehl, 1983).

It describes out the way things are done in a particular organisation and forms the basis for the rules of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Organisational culture is thus the arbiter of organisational norms and it therefore acts as a powerful force in encouraging or frustrating the emergence of new missions and strategies. This is particularly so where culture is deeply embedded.

The term cultural web (Johnson and Scholes 1993) is a useful device for highlighting the different strands of an organisation's culture - symbols, rituals, stories and power, which add up to a paradigm - an agreed way of going about things.

Mission and Culture

Cultural variance between countries in which tourism organisations operate can be understood by reference to differences in: attitudes to authority attitudes to work and leisure beliefs including religion and materialism traditions pursuit of individual or community goals definitions of good and bad, worthy and unworthy (the

moral and ethical system) sources of status

Cultural norms are transmitted by and changed by the family education mass media the arts government

Reproduction and Path Dependency Cultural reproduction (Bourdieu, 1973) refers

to the way in which culture (including values, attitudes, goals, and practices) is maintained over time and transmitted from one generation to the next.

Acculturation refers to the process by which new members are inducted into the value systems of a culture.

Path dependency occurs when certain decisions and events create paths or routes into the future and exert long term effects on subsequent decisions and events.

The Cultural Web

A cultural web (Johnson et al., 2008) is a useful device for highlighting the different strands of an organisation's culture. These include:

symbolsrituals and routinesstoriespower structures and organisational

structurescontrol systems

Cultural Web

Etihad Airways: Different Culture?

Cultural Types

DefendersConservativeseek securityCautiousavoid changeInflexibleset in their waysreactive

Prospectorsoutward-lookingresponsive to

environmentdaringopportunisticflexibleadaptiveproactive

Miles and Snow (1978) distinguish between defender types, and prospector types of cultures in organisations.

Task 1

Prepare Vision, Mission and Objectives for your organisation

Unit 3 Culture and

Strategy The End

Risk Management and Strategic Planning