Documente Academic
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Documente Cultură
Running Head: AFFECTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE ON THE INSTITUTION
Organizational Culture and the Affects on
Institutional Cultures that Exist in
Museums and Archives
Jennifer Dibbern
Emporia State University
Affects of Organizational Culture 2
Abstract
This paper is an introduction to the ideas of organizational and institutional
cultures. It defines and explains the differences between the two cultures and
presents examples of these cultures that exist in libraries, archives and museums.
Affects of Organizational Culture 3
Introduction
“I think I know what’s different about working here, as apposed to the last
museum where I worked,” said Jessica, a collections assistant who had recently
started a new job at a different museum. “It’s beige. The employees, the
environment and even the policies, they’re all beige.” What Jessica was explaining
was the organizational culture of her new institution. She was used to certain
standards and norms that surrounded her at the institution where she worked in
the past. Entering a new environment with different “cultural” standards and norms
was not an easy transition and Jessica was expressing her first impressions of the
new institution as she was acclimatizing to a different environment.
The same acclimatization process can happen in any environment where
there is change. It does not only happen when one changes jobs, but it can also
happen on a cultural. In recent years many institutions, like museums and archives,
have begun to reinvent themselves. This shift can effect institutional beliefs, values
and even the physical organizational environment. By reinventing themselves
libraries, museums and archives must look inwardly and change the culture of the
organization, thus having an affect on the culture of the institution. For this paper,
institution and institutional are used to describe a larger concept than organization
and organizational. These two terms and their distinctions will be explained in the
paragraphs that follow.
The Family Group ‐ Organizational Culture
To examine organizational culture we must step back to gain a broader
perspective and look at factors that affect cultural shifts within institutions. All
institutions are made up of internal structures such as staff. The staff in institutions
like libraries, archives and museums is grouped together in what can only be
characterized, in the anthropological sense, as family groups. Within a museum a
specific curatorial department can be considered a family group. These
organizational structures or family groups, in most cases, are arranged
hierarchically, similar to a bureaucracy.
For example, the New World Art Department at the Denver Art Museum can
be considered a family group. The department has three curators, one of which is
the head or Director of the department, and for our family group the authoritative
figure in the family. Under the curator is the position of curatorial assistant and the
curatorial assistant will have a number of interns working under them. There are a
number of departments in museums including the security department, the facilities
department and other curatorial departments. All of these departments work
together in tandem to create a smoothly operating machine.
The same can be said for libraries and archives, organizations that run on
similar arrangements of hierarchically organized family groups. This internal
structure is called the organizational culture. The organizational culture, as Stueart
and Moran explain in their book Library and Information Center Management, is
when the “norms of the organization arise and become manifest in employee
behavior” (Stueart and Moran, 2007).
Institutional Culture
Affects of Organizational Culture 4
In the cases of libraries, archives and museums the organizational culture
exists at the pleasure of the institutional culture. The institutional culture is a larger
concept than the organizational culture. The many aspects of the organizational
culture combine and work together to create and cater to the institutional culture.
Once again, we must take a step back to properly examine the bigger picture of
institutional culture. As was earlier said, the institutional culture exists on a larger
scale, meaning that it is made up of larger communities. Communities such as the
population that each institution serves like museums visitors or libraries patrons.
The Larger Group‐Institutional Culture
These communities also include a board of directors that the organization
answers to or “works at the pleasure of”. Many mission and vision statements for
museums and libraries directly state that the organization exists at the pleasure of
the board. In the article The Roles of Boards of Directors in Shaping Organizational
Culture by Lightle et al, the board is described as having an affect on the
organizational culture (2009). This is entirely true, however the organizational
culture also has an extraordinary affect on the board. The road can and does go
both ways in this case. Although the case study in the article focuses on Washington
Mutual, it is a good example of how an organizational culture reinvented itself of
change not only the internal organizational culture, but the institutional culture as
well. In some stretches of the anthropological imagination the Institutional Culture
could be described as the “gods” that the organizational look to for guidance and in
turn better serve the institutional gods.
Ritualistic Tendencies – Message’s Message
In the anthropological sense, these organizations and institutions act out and
perform their own rituals. First of all, when an organization is in the process of
reinventing themselves it is necessary to redevelop an organizational culture. In the
book titled New Museums and the Making of Culture by Kylie Message, a shift in
organizational culture arises “as a result of substantive changes in thinking,
approach and development” (2006). Message writes that there three changes that
happen. First of all, there is a symbolic change, in which “there is a change
connected to the changing relationship between the museum, the state, and other
athourititative organizations”. Secondly, there are the practical shifts that are
“caused by changes within professional museum practice”. And thirdly, there is the
theoretical practice of change that occurs when there is “a result of the increasing
appropriation of museums by scholars and cultural studies” (2006).
Many of these changes can result in the formation of specific “rituals” that
certain organizations follow. For example, organizations such as Wal‐Mart and
Zappos foster happy employees. They strive to keep their employees happy,
resulting in better work environments and better customer service. To create
better environments, these companies perform specific “rituals” only known to
employees, such as morning stretch sessions or a benefits package that is catered to
specific employees of Zappos or Wal‐Mart. In the article Paid to Smile, Carolin Flora
speaks to the organizational culture in which Zappos employees benefit and become
“happier employees” by attending employee cruses and adhering to a specific set of
core values (Flora, 2009). This also common in organizations like Whole Foods and
Affects of Organizational Culture 5
Starbucks. Libraries, archives and museums would benefit from using these
companies as examples.
Therefore, in institutions like museums, libraries and archives, change is
eminent and that change can be instituted by not only the organizational culture,
but the institutional culture as well. In fact, the institutional culture is greatly
affected by organizational culture and can create an environment that is more
functional and caters to the institution. Many organizations would benefit from
stepping back to look at, first their organizational culture and then, secondly looking
at how that culture can affect outlying institutional cultures like boards and patrons.
In the words of Fopp, “In pursuit of our everyday tasks and objectives it is all too
easy to forget the less rational and instrumental, and more expressive social tissue
around us that gives those tasks meaning.”
Affects of Organizational Culture 6
References
Flora, C. (2009). Paid to smile. Psychology Today, 42, 5
Fopp, M. (1997(. Managing Museums and Galleries. Oxford: Rutledge
Lightle, S., Baker, B., Castellano, J. (2009). The role of boards of directors in shaping
organizational culture. The CPA Journal, 79, 11
Message, K. (2006). New Museums and the Making of Culture. New York: BERG
Stueart, R.D. and Moran, B.B. (2007). Library and Information Center Management.
Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited