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I just finished a fascinating chapter in Stanford University’s online course on “Organizational Analysis” , with “Tech” being a pseudonym behind an unknown Silicon Valley company.
However, the following analysis is also applicable elsewhere, and especially in organizations that try hard to be perceived as a Silicon Valley company that just happens to not be in Silicon Valley, geographically. (Bolded emphasis mine.)
“So what authority gets across in an organizational culture? Whose image of social order is offered and practiced?
The inscription of the organizational identity falls into three distinct categories each of which derives its authority from a different source.
First, there is managerial authority, which derives from the documented opinions of senior managers, the company philosophy, taped speeches of the CEO, company mission statements – all framed in terms of morals and ideals.
A second form of authority is expert authority. This type emanates from technical papers, reports, and memos that internal experts write.
The third form is one of objective authority. This type of authority comes from selective representation of materials produced by outside observers of Tech, such as news clipping, TV ads, etc. All of these forms of authority combine to create a company perspective and ideology. Their influence is additive and compounding.
[…]
The image is that there is no conflict between individual and company goals (an integrated paradigm). The organization claims to give employees a place to grow and develop, a moral order to participate in, and simultaneously sustains the company and affords members a “meaningful” identity.
[…]
Personal meaning is derived from participation in the collective.”
Many who have ever worked for a premium brand can probably relate.
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There’s the self-consuming sloganeering about the culture that can be aspirational and even prescriptive (“normative”?).
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Then there’s the more-factual and more-comforting expert documentation bolstering the positive claims of the former.
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And finally, there’s what third parties publish, as paid promotion, projection/transference, wishful thinking or biased reporting that can really hammer on the cognitive dissonance.
Who is correct among those three? All three, and none of them at the same time.
