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15 Culture, Change and Organizational Health
CULTURE AND CLIMATE The culture of a school is more permanent and built into the organization than the climate. It is more difficult to change. The healthy schools initiative is one of several new initiatives, including developments associated with teacher workload, which recognize the importance of schools having a ‘healthy’ culture. How managers understand the culture of their organization is of crucial importance to developing strategy. Culture is about capability, integrating the cluster of resources and binding the organization together through its network of relationships. It incorporates the basic values, ideologies and assumptions that guide and fashion individual and organizational behaviour. Its effects are seen in the symbols and behaviours. The corporate culture reflects the values and interpretations of senior managers; the organizational culture, on the other hand, embraces many subcultures. There is a possibility that compliance with the corporate culture may lead to an assumption of the existence of a homogenous organizational culture. School leaders may have problems in growing and changing the existing culture and beliefs and values, and sustaining the commitment and retaining the experience of staff, when they are trying to be more responsive to the demands of the state and parents and the community. However, over time, impartial and open-minded behaviour will lead to trust and then to commitment, and the consequential committed effort which will be co-operative and innovative. Core values are beliefs about how the world should be and how we should behave, with such beliefs guiding actions. Those beliefs, if validated, become assumptions about how the world is. The same holds true for schools, and their values provide the basis for strategymaking, strategy formulation and strategy implementation discussed in the next chapter. School cultures are heterogeneous – there are subcultures around different functions, roles, skills or levels in a school. These create a broader sense of identity but can be counterproductive if they limit co-operation, exacerbate conflict or reinforce entrenched views and positions. This explains some of the difficulties in attempted culture change and in trying to create a more homogenous culture. How do you understand the culture(s) in your school? CHANGING THE CULTURE Changing the cultures of organizations is the central aim of strategic human resource initiatives. The purpose is that employees can be persuaded to align them150
