Organizational Culture and Leadership, 5th Edition

Part ThreeCULTURE AND LEADERSHIPTHROUGH STAGES OF GROWTH

How is culture created; how does it evolve; and how is it managed, manipulated, and influenced by human intervention? As I have indicated previously, an excellent way to define the unique function of leadership is to say that leadership is the management of culture. However, what we mean by leadership has to be understood in the context of the stage of growth of the organization or group.

Leaders as entrepreneurs, prophets, and politicians create new groups, organizations, and movements, thereby creating new cultures. But once organizations have succeeded in establishing themselves, their beliefs, values, norms, and basic assumptions (i.e., have created a culture), that culture will now define what kind of leadership will be valued and tolerated. The role of the leader now shifts to maintaining and consolidating the existing culture. Whereas leaders initially defined the basic values of the culture, the culture now defines what are the desired characteristics of leadership!

But cultures are nested within other cultures and create environments for each other that are dynamic and changing. Organizations then may find themselves with beliefs, values, norms, and basic assumptions that are to some degree dysfunctional and will require change that will typically involve some “culture change.” It now falls to leadership again to identify the problem, to assess how the existing culture will aid or hinder the required changes, ...