OML 8020 Module 4 Leaders and Culture Seminar Paper: How CEO Values and Behavior Shape Organizations Example

What Leaders Pay Attention To: Shaping a Plant's Culture After Integration

Student Name

Doctor of Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University

OML-8020: Seminar in Leadership and Culture: Organizational and National Perspectives

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

What Leaders Pay Attention To: Shaping a Plant's Culture After Integration

Introduction

Module three diagnosed a plant moving from a family-like clan culture toward hierarchy and market values. The question now is what leaders can do. The new general manager, a German engineer, asked me whether culture can be managed or only endured. Research suggests leaders do shape culture, but not always in the ways they intend.

How Leaders Embed Culture

Schein and Schein (2017) identified primary mechanisms through which leaders embed culture. Six stand out: the things leaders routinely notice, measure and control; their reactions to crises and critical incidents; where they put resources; the example they set and the coaching they give; who gets rewards and status; and the people who are brought in, moved up or shown the door. Secondary mechanisms, which reinforce culture only if they match the primary ones, include organizational structure, systems and procedures, rites and rituals, physical space, stories and formal statements of philosophy. When primary and secondary mechanisms conflict, people believe what leaders do over what they say.

CEO Values and Culture

Berson et al. (2008) studied 26 Israeli companies, measuring CEOs' personal values and their firms' cultures and outcomes. CEOs who valued self-direction led firms with more innovation-oriented cultures. CEOs who valued security led firms with more bureaucratic cultures. CEOs who valued benevolence led firms with more supportive cultures. The cultures in turn related to outcomes: innovation-oriented cultures to sales growth, bureaucratic cultures to efficiency and supportive cultures to employee satisfaction. The study supports the idea that leaders' values flow through culture to performance.

When Leadership and Culture Diverge

Tsui et al. (2006) studied CEOs and organizational cultures in Chinese firms. In many firms, strong CEO leadership behavior went with strong culture. But they also found firms with strong leaders and weak cultures and firms with weak leaders and strong cultures. In the first case, leaders' influence had not yet become embedded in shared values, perhaps because they were new or because their behavior was inconsistent. In the second, culture had been institutionalized through systems and practices that carried it beyond any single leader. The authors concluded that the relationship between leadership and culture is not automatic and that institutionalizing values through systems matters as much as leader behavior.

What the Plant's Leaders Are Signaling

Applying Schein's mechanisms revealed mixed signals. The new general manager talks about valuing people, but the daily meeting reviews only efficiency numbers, which tells supervisors that efficiency is what counts. When a line went down last month, he asked first who was responsible, which employees read as blame. Resources went to new dashboards but the annual picnic was canceled for budget reasons. Promotions since the sale have gone to managers from outside, which long-serving staff see as a sign that loyalty no longer matters, whatever the posters say. The secondary mechanisms, a new values poster and a bilingual handbook, say the right things, but the primary mechanisms say something else.

A Plan for Leading by Attention

The general manager and I agreed on changes aimed at primary mechanisms. The daily meeting will add two items to efficiency: a safety observation and a recognition of someone who solved a problem. After an incident, the first questions will be about causes and prevention; who was involved comes later. The picnic will be restored, partly funded by the parent company's employee engagement budget. Two of the next four supervisor promotions will be open to internal candidates, with a development program to prepare them. Following Tsui and colleagues, we will also build these practices into systems, such as the meeting agenda template and the promotion policy, so that they outlast us.

Measuring Progress

To know whether the changes are shaping culture rather than just adding activities, we will repeat the competing values survey from module three after a year and compare results by shift and department. We will also track a few behavioral indicators that reflect the norms we want: the number of improvement ideas submitted by hourly staff, the share of incidents reviewed without disciplinary action unless warranted and the proportion of supervisor promotions filled internally. Employee turnover among those with more than ten years of service will serve as a measure of whether long-serving staff still see a place for themselves. These measures follow Schein's point that culture shows in what people actually do.

My Own Role

As vice president of operations, I also send signals. I noticed that my own questions in plant visits focus on schedules, reinforcing the efficiency message. I will spend part of each visit on the floor asking about obstacles and improvements, and I will tell stories of employees who combined loyalty with improvement, linking the old culture to the new.

Cross-Cultural Considerations

The general manager's direct style and focus on procedures reflect German norms as well as his engineering background. Some long-serving American employees read this as coldness. Helping him explain the reasons behind procedures, and helping employees see his directness as respect for clarity rather than disregard, is part of the work.

Limits

Berson and colleagues' and Tsui and colleagues' samples came from Israel and China, and their findings may not transfer exactly. Culture change takes years, and early signs may mislead.

Conclusion

By Schein's account, culture follows the daily attention, rewards and budgets of leaders more than their speeches. Berson and colleagues show that leaders' values flow through culture to outcomes, and Tsui and colleagues warn that leader influence must be institutionalized to last. At the plant, aligning daily attention, incident responses, resources and promotions with the values we espouse, and building them into systems, offers the best chance of shaping the culture rather than enduring it.

References

Berson, Y., Oreg, S., & Dvir, T. (2008). CEO values, organizational culture and firm outcomes. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29(5), 615-633. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.499

Schein, E. H., & Schein, P. A. (2017). Organizational culture and leadership (5th ed.). Wiley.

Tsui, A. S., Zhang, Z.-X., Wang, H., Xin, K. R., & Wu, J. B. (2006). Unpacking the relationship between CEO leadership behavior and organizational culture. The Leadership Quarterly, 17(2), 113-137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2005.12.001