Elements and Functions of Organisational Culture
Three Elements of Organisational Culture
- Artifacts. Symbols of culture in the physical and social work environment.
- Values. What members say and do.
- Espoused values: what members of an organisation say they value.
- Enacted values: reflected in the way individuals actually behave.
- Assumptions. Deeply held beliefs that guide behaviours and tell members how to perceive and think about things.
Two Functions of Culture
Managing Internal Integration
- Creating a common language and conceptual categories.
- Defining group boundaries and criteria for inclusion/exclusion.
- Distributing power and status.
- Developing norms of intimacy and friendship.
- Defining and allocating reward and punishment.
- Explaining the unexplainable; ideology and religion.
Managing External Adaptation
- Mission and strategy: shared understanding of primary tasks.
- Goals derived from mission.
- Means: how goals should be achieved.
- Measurement: determining how well the group is doing.
- Correction: remedial and repair strategies.
- Focus on external problems.
- Leadership and culture are intertwined.
Organisational culture has internal layers and external uses. Understanding both the elements that make up culture and the functions culture performs gives a school head two practical lenses for diagnosing and shaping her school’s culture.
Three elements of culture
Edgar Schein, one of the foundational thinkers on organisational culture, proposed three layers. The handout summarises them.
Artifacts
Symbols of culture in the physical and social work environment.
Artifacts are the visible signs of culture. What an outsider sees on entering the school.
In a school: the dress code, the way the entrance looks, the photos on the walls, the layout of the staffroom, the tone of assemblies, the way receptionists greet visitors, the school’s website, the school anthem.
Artifacts are easy to see and easy to change. A school can repaint its lobby in a day. But artifacts alone do not change culture. A school that changes its lobby without changing its deeper layers has changed the surface only.
Values
Values sit deeper than artifacts. The handout splits them into two kinds.
Espoused: what members of an organisation say they value.
Espoused values are the stated values. The school’s mission statement. The principal’s speeches. The values on the website.
Enacted: reflected in the way individuals actually behave.
Enacted values are the lived values. What members actually do when no one is watching. The values that show up in daily decisions.
The two often differ. A school may espouse “respect for every child” while routinely humiliating children who fall behind. A school may espouse “innovation” while enacting rigid adherence to traditional methods.
A school head should watch the gap between espoused and enacted values. The gap is information. Where the school says one thing and does another, the gap reveals where the culture is incoherent or where leadership has not closed the distance.
A school whose espoused and enacted values match is a coherent school. A school where they diverge significantly is a school where cynicism grows.
Assumptions
The deepest layer.
Deeply held beliefs that guide behaviours and tell members of an organisation how to perceive and think about the things.
Assumptions are the beliefs members hold without articulating them. They are taken for granted. Members do not even think to question them.
In a school: “children learn best by being told.” Or: “teachers should never disagree with the principal in public.” Or: “parents are customers.” Or: “academic results matter more than wellbeing.”
Assumptions are hard to see precisely because they are taken for granted. A school head who can surface her school’s assumptions has unusual insight into her culture.
How the three layers relate
Artifacts are visible but shallow. Values are partly visible (espoused) and partly behavioural (enacted). Assumptions are invisible but the deepest source of behaviour.
A change at the artifact layer affects only the surface. A change at the values layer can shift behaviour if espoused and enacted are aligned. A change at the assumptions layer is the deepest shift but the hardest to produce.
A school head leading culture change should work at multiple layers simultaneously: change the artifacts to signal the new direction, change the espoused values to articulate it, change the enacted values through her own behaviour, and over time shift the underlying assumptions.
Two functions of culture
The handout names two functions culture performs.
Managing internal integration. Managing external adaptation.
A culture does both. It holds the organisation together internally and helps it cope with the external environment.
Managing internal integration
The internal function. How the culture organises the school’s internal life.
The handout lists specifics.
Creating a common language and conceptual categories.
Members share vocabulary and ways of thinking. A staff that uses common terms (learning outcomes, differentiation, assessment for learning) can communicate efficiently.
Defining group boundaries and criteria for inclusion/exclusion.
The culture defines who is “us”. A new teacher is brought into the culture; an outsider is kept at the boundary. The criteria are usually implicit.
Distributing power and status.
The culture says who has authority and who has prestige. Sometimes this matches the org chart; sometimes it does not.
Developing norms of intimacy and friendship.
How close should staff be? Is the staffroom a social space or just a workspace? The culture answers.
Defining and allocating reward and punishment.
What gets rewarded and what gets punished is partly formal (appraisal, pay) and partly cultural (recognition, exclusion).
Explaining the unexplainable. Ideology and religion.
The culture provides frames for understanding hard situations. When a teacher dies, when a student tragedy occurs, when a major failure happens, the culture provides the meaning-making framework.
A school with strong internal integration runs smoothly. Members know what is expected, how to interact, who decides what, and how to make sense of difficult moments.
Managing external adaptation
The external function. How the culture helps the school respond to the world.
Mission and strategy: a shared understanding of primary tasks.
The culture provides a shared sense of what the school is trying to do in the world.
Goals are derived from mission. Means: how goals should be achieved. Measurement: determining how well the group is doing.
The culture supports the strategic work: setting goals, choosing methods, measuring outcomes.
Correction: remedial and repair strategies.
When things go wrong externally (a parent complaint, a board criticism, a regulatory issue), the culture shapes how the school responds and recovers.
Focus on the external problems. Successful management of external problems will determine your success.
A culture that focuses on external adaptation watches the world. A culture that focuses only internally becomes insular.
Leadership and culture are intertwined.
The handout’s final note. The leader shapes the culture; the culture shapes what leaders can do. They are not separable.
The two functions together
A healthy culture does both functions well.
| Function | What it does |
|---|---|
| Internal integration | Holds the school together; provides shared meaning |
| External adaptation | Helps the school respond to and shape its environment |
A culture strong on internal integration but weak on external adaptation becomes a closed community. Internal cohesion is strong; outside engagement is weak. The school becomes irrelevant to its environment over time.
A culture strong on external adaptation but weak on internal integration is responsive to the world but fragmented internally. It chases external trends but cannot hold together as one school.
The healthy combination has both. The school is coherent internally and responsive externally.
A school’s culture audit
A school head can audit her culture by working through each element.
Artifacts audit
- What do visitors see on entering the school?
- What images appear on the website?
- What does the staffroom look like?
- What is the tone of assemblies?
The artifacts should reflect the espoused values. Misalignment is a warning sign.
Values audit
- What are our espoused values?
- What do we actually do in difficult moments?
- Where do espoused and enacted diverge?
The gap is the work to be done.
Assumptions audit
- What do members of this school take for granted?
- What do new staff find surprising?
- What unspoken rules govern behaviour?
Surfacing assumptions is hard but reveals the deepest layer.
A school head who runs this audit annually sees her culture more clearly than one who does not. The cultural picture informs her broader strategy.
Three elements: Artifacts, Values (espoused and enacted), Assumptions.
Artifacts. Visible symbols (dress, decor, language). Surface layer.
Values. Espoused (what we say we value) and enacted (what we actually do). The two often diverge.
Assumptions. Deepest layer. Beliefs taken for granted, often unspoken.
Two functions:
Managing internal integration. Common language, group boundaries, power distribution, norms, rewards, meaning-making.
Managing external adaptation. Mission, strategy, goals, measurement, correction, response to external environment.
A healthy culture does both functions well. Strong on internal but weak on external produces a closed community. Strong on external but weak on internal produces fragmentation. Both together produce a coherent, responsive school.
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