Organizational culture and culture crisis, ZN WSH Zarządzanie 2014

ZN WSH Zarządzanie 2014 (2), s. 33-43
Oryginalny artykuł naukowy
Original Article
Źródła finansowania publikacji: środki własne Autora
Authors’ Contribution:
(A) Study Design (projekt badania)
(B) Data Collection (zbieranie danych)
(C) Statistical Analysis (analiza statystyczna)
(D) Data Interpretation (interpretacja danych)
(E) Manuscript Preparation (redagowanie opracowania)
(F) Literature Search (badania literaturowe)
prof. zw. dr hab. Marian Huczek A B D E F Krakowska Akademia im. A. Frycza Modrzewskiego
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE A COMPANY CRISIS
KULTURA ORGANIZACYJNA A KRYZYS FIRMY
Summary: The article emphasizes that the organizational culture has a strong influence on the functioning of a company and to a large extent has an impact on the development of a crisis situation or
can counteract such a situation. The article presents basic factors leading to a crisis of a company. The
complexity of the organizational culture and its influence on counteracting crises were included in the
conditions of change of the organizational culture of a given company. Shaping the organizational culture carries axiological, ethic and moral aspects and building the company identity around particular
values constitutes consequences for all its stakeholders.
Key words: organizational culture, crisis, crisis factors, change of the organizational culture
Streszczenie: W artykule podkreślono, że kultura organizacyjna wywiera silny wpływ na funkcjonowanie firmy oraz w dużym stopniu wpływa na powstawanie sytuacji kryzysowej lub może jej przeciwdziałać. Przedstawiono również podstawowe czynniki prowadzące do kryzysu firmy. Problematykę
złożoności kultury organizacyjnej i jej wpływ na przeciwdziałanie kryzysom ujęto w warunkach zmiany kultury organizacyjnej danej firmy. Kształtowanie kultury organizacyjnej niesie ze sobą aspekty
aksjologiczne, etyczne i moralne, a budowanie tożsamości firmy wokół określonych wartości stanowi
konsekwencje dla wszystkich jej interesariuszy.
Słowa kluczowe: kultura organizacyjna, kryzys, czynniki kryzysu, zmiana kultury organizacyjnej
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Zeszyty Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Humanitas. Zarządzanie
Introduction
Organisational culture is a set of principles and values that naturally exist in a given organisational community, defining attitudes, human relations and style of functioning of an
organisation. Academic literature stresses that “organisational culture as an immanent characteristic of the social conditions of an enterprise, resulting from organisational learning
(learned product of group experience), defines, at a given level of organisational development, collective social consciousness and emotional involvement of employees.”1
The influence of organisational culture on an enterprise’s activity is multifaceted. Organisational culture impacts, among other things, employees’ attitude to work, level of work effectiveness, human relations, level of innovation absorption and competitiveness of an enterprise2.
K.S. Cameron and R.E. Quinn give examples of changes and point out that without fundamental transformations involving a change of the organisational culture chances of successful implementation of these changes and their impact on actual improvement of effectiveness are small.
As examples of these changes, they list three most widely implemented restructuring
changes in the US industry in the last decade of the 20th century, covering the following
areas: total quality management, employment reduction and reengineering. Enterprises that
implemented these changes, but dad not adjusted their organisational culture to the new
conditions, failed. The authors write that „efforts to increase effectiveness by using various
instruments and techniques and energetic implementation of strategies of change often come
to nothing if the culture of an organisation - system of values, way of thinking, management
style, paradigms and approach to problem solving - remains the same.”3
Based on academic literature and practice one can claim that the existing organisational culture
in an enterprise can be to a large extent responsible for a crisis situation arising in an enterprise.
Thanks to culture, a working group in an enterprise can plan and predict, which directly affects the
level of and increase in the sense of security. Certain elements of organisational culture help to solve
problems connected with the internal functioning of an enterprise, or its adaptation to its environment. Thanks to these elements of organisational culture, it is possible in an enterprise to achieve
common understanding of the mission, basic tasks, principles of labour division, objectives to be
achieved, and to allocate resources needed to achieve these objectives and distribute decision-making powers within an organisation. Similarly, organisational culture allows an enterprise to choose
appropriate criteria for evaluating the extent to which tasks have been performed, reformulate objectives and choose effective recovery programmes to eliminate crisis situations in an enterprise.
1. Culture in managing an organisation
Defining the concept of organisational culture is a complex task. Academic literature
provides a range of definitions that take different shapes depending on the concept, and re J. Stachowicz, J. Machulik, Kultura organizacyjna przedsiębiorstw przemysłowych, PAN Oddział w Katowicach,
Wyd. Szumacher, Kielce 2001, p. 35.
2
Smolarek M., Kształtowanie kultury organizacyjnej w małym przedsiębiorstwie, „Zeszyty Naukowe Wyższej
Szkoły HUMANITAS”, Seria: Zarządzanie, nr 2/2009, p. 38-46.
3
K.S. Cameron, R.F. Quinn, Kultura organizacyjna – diagnoza i zmiana. Model wartości konkurujących, Oficyna
Ekonomiczna, Oddział Polskich Wydawnictw Profesjonalnych Sp. z o.o., Kraków 2003, p. 18.
1
Organizational culture and culture crisis
35
flect approaches of their authors.4 J. Stachowicz and J. Machulik write that „Edgar Schein
created a model of organisational culture that is considered to be the broadest definition of
organisational culture. As Schein writes, «organisational culture is a set of dominating values
and norms characteristic of a given organisation, supported by assumptions about the nature
of reality and reflected in external artefacts, external artificial products of culture».”5 Schein’s
definition of organisational culture highlights collective understanding of employees’ common interests, which is necessary for accepting common objectives of an organisation.
Academic literature shows that „the birth of the theory of organisational culture strictly
speaking took place after the second world war.” E. Jacques used this term to refer mainly
to the analysis of the atmosphere in the workplace („organisational climate”). In the 1950s
and 1960s, studies of culture in management were scarse and constituted rather a marginal
issue [...]. However, the number of publications increased quickly after the year 1980 which
saw the publication of the first book by G. Hofsted containing results of comparative studies
of cultures, which became widely used in management [...]. The latest trend in research into
cultural processes in an organisation is critical perspective.”6
Organisational culture manifests itself in common sharing of fundamental assumptions,
norms, values, patterns of conduct, organisational behaviour and its meanings by participants of an organisation; it creates immaterial products in the form of artefacts. A special
kind of organisational social bond created by organisational culture is mutual trust between
partners, participants of the social process of governance.
Organisational culture is a complex phenomenon, and is not isolated from other elements of an enterprise. It is also not easy to analyse due to its multifaceted relations with other sub-systems, i.e. strategy, structure, human resources, etc., as well as with its environment.
This highlights the necessity to adapt organisational culture to the needs of an organisation,
its members and management.
Academic literature stresses that „most researchers examining organisations claim today
that an enterprise’s culture has a huge influence on its functioning and effectiveness. Research
has provided an impressive amount of evidence confirming the influence of culture on the
improvement of functioning of an organisation [...]. Apart from its influence on functioning
of an organisation, culture has also well-documented influence on individuals - on a team’s
morale, its involvement, productivity, physical health and emotional state.”7
B. Fryzeł writes that „management through culture is based on defining corporate culture as a set of dominating values and standards of conduct characteristic of a given organisation [...]. In the aspect of recognising the influence of the above-mentioned factors
on organisational culture, management through culture will be intentional modification of
organisational culture as part of general adaptations to changes in the environment.”8
Ł. Sułkowski, Kulturowe procesy zarządzania, Difin, Warszawa 2012, pp. 15-61; J. Stachowicz, J. Machulik, Kultura organizacyjna przedsiębiorstw przemysłowych, PAN Oddział w Katowicach, Wyd. Szumacher, Kielce 2001,
pp. 17-41; M.J. Hatch, Teoria organizacji, PWN, Warszawa 2002, pp. 206-209; A.K. Koźmiński, W. Piotrowski,
Zarządzanie. Teoria i praktyka, PWN, Warszawa 1995, pp. 298-301.
5
J. Stachowicz, J. Machulik, Kultura organizacyjna…, p. 24.
6
Ł. Sułkowski, Kulturowe procesy…, pp. 20-25.
7
K.S. Cameron, R.F. Quinn, Kultura organizacyjna – diagnoza i zmiana. Model wartości konkurujących, Oficyna
Ekonomiczna, Oddział Polskich Wydawnictw Profesjonalnych Sp. z o.o. Kraków 2003, pp. 14-15.
8
B. Fryzeł, Kultura a konkurencyjność przedsiębiorstwa, Wyd. Dom Organizatora, Toruń 2004, p. 54.
4
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Zeszyty Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Humanitas. Zarządzanie
When analysing organisational culture, one should define values that characterise it, as
it is these values that best translate into employees’ way of thinking and behaving. Values are
at the core of organisational culture; they are a source of an organisation’s persistence and
development, and affect the choice of measures and goals.
Academic literature states that „the position of values in the life of an organisation led
to creation of the concept of managing through values. A. Stachowicz-Stanusch defines this
concept as a consistent management of values. i.e. passing the main values of an organisation from one generation of management to the next generation and implementing them in
every aspect of functioning of an enterprise.”9 The most important problems of managing
organisational culture include: A great number of paradigms, theories and definitions of organisational culture.
1. Diversity of models and typologies of organisational culture.
2. Separation of organisational culture from other spheres of functioning of an organisation.
3. Priority, or rather subordination of culture in relation to other spheres of an organisation (e.g. strategy, structure).
4. Relations between organisational culture and an organisation’s environment.
5. Weakness of the methodology of studying and shaping organisational culture.”10
E. Głuszek proposed a concept of managing immaterial resources, including organisational culture, according to which knowledge plays an overriding role in relation to other
values. According to the author, immaterial resources overlap and each of them should be
analysed in relation to the others. E. Głuszek identifies three stages of managing immaterial
resources. They include:
1. Establishing objectives regarding immaterial resources and strategies of their development. Defining kinds and qualitative properties of these resources, desired from the perspective of the future.
2. Measuring the state and quality of immaterial resources, especially those that are
most significant for the implementation of the strategy.
3. Translating strategic goals in the area of immaterial resources into concret tasks for
organisational units.11
In his monograph, Ł. Sułkowski presents diversity of all schools and themes of cultural discourse in an organisation and management, and stresses that a clear tendency in the
development of cultural concepts in management studies „[...] is increased complexity of
theories and research methodology. The three identified historical approaches (preculturism,
social relations and work atmosphere) treated the issues of cultural management very narrowly, whereas the five approaches that have been continued to the present day create a very
complex and multifaceted picture of the processes of cultural management. The reasons for
the increase in the number and level of complexity of these theories are ambivalent results
of cultural research in studies of management and fast growth of the number of schools and
paradigms of understanding culture in humanities and social sciences. Cultural discourse in
K. Gadomska-Lila, Dopasowanie organizacyjne. Aspekt strategii, kultury organizacyjnej i zarządzania zasobami
ludzkimi, Difin, Warszawa 2013, pp. 64-65.
10
Ł. Sułkowski, Kulturowe procesy…, p. 52.
11
E. Głuszek, Zarządzanie zasobami niematerialnymi przedsiębiorstwa, Wyd. Akademia Ekonomiczna we Wrocławiu, Wrocław 2004, pp. 277-282.
9
Organizational culture and culture crisis
37
an organisation and management draws mostly on other sciences, which makes the issues
analysed highly interdisciplinary. Currently, in social sciences, including management, there
isn’t a single generally accepted view on ways of understanding and examining culture.12
2. Factors in an enterprise crisis
A crisis in an enterprise results from a number of factors. Academic literature presents various models of factors affecting a crisis situation in an enterprise. Sources of a crisis are divided
into external (beyond the control of an enterprise) and internal (within the control of an enterprise) ones.13 J. Walas-Trębacz and J. Ziaro provide a detailed classification of these sources.14 A.
Zelek stresses that „wrong management seems to be one of critical factors determining an enterprise’s success. This refers to both management at strategic level and tactical and operational
management. Depending on the level of management, crisis generating factors have different
character.”15 He also argues that in practice the sources of a crisis of an enterprise are most often
internal factors, that are under direct control of a company’s management.
R. Kaplan, analysing causes of failures of strategic projects in American corporations,
indicates the following three main causes of a crisis:
• „management barrier - 85% of the managers surveyed spend less than an hour in
a month on decisions directly connected with strategy of action,
• resources barrier - in 60% of the companies surveyed the budget was not linked with
the strategy of action,
• human (motivational) barrier - in 75% of the companies surveyed the motivation
system was not linked with the degree of implementation of strategic goals,
• lack of vision - in 95% of the companies surveyed employees did not understand or
know the assumptions of the strategy.”16
Analysis of the above-mentioned causes of a crisis shows that the main problem is disintegration between the strategic plan and ways of its implementation, both at strategic and
operational levels. Another model, describing an enterprise’s vulnerability to a crisis, linking
market efficiency and an enterprise’s vulnerability to a crisis, includes three groups of causal
variables, namely:
• „variables related with competition and environment (decisions concerning market of
a given product, business cycles, etc.),
• characteristics of the managerial staff, such as individual capabilities or used techniques and
management styles,
• organisational articles, such as strategic resources, organisational structure, processes, etc.”17
This model shows that external factors leading to a crisis situation depend on the current
situation in the sector of economy and its attractiveness, competition structure. Internal fac Ł. Sułkowski, Kulturowe procesy…, p. 29.
J. Stachowicz, J. Machulik, Kultura organizacyjna przedsiębiorstw przemysłowych, PAN w Katowicach, Wyd.
Szumacher, Kielce 2001, pp. 209-220.
14
J. Walas-Trębacz, J. Ziarko, Podstawy zarządzania kryzysowego, Krakowska Akademia im. A. Frycza Modrzewskiego, Kraków 2011, p. 48.
15
A. Zelek, Zarządzanie kryzysem w przedsiębiorstwie – perspektywa strategiczna, Warszawa 2003, p. 48.
16
R. Kaplan, BalancedScorecard, IRR, Warszawa 2000, cited after: A. Zelek, Zarządzanie kryzysem…, p. 49.
17
A. Zelek, Zarządzanie kryzysem…, p. 49.
12
13
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Zeszyty Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Humanitas. Zarządzanie
tors affecting an enterprise’s vulnerability to a crisis are: competences and qualifications of
the managerial staff, strategy and strategic potential of an enterprise, organisational structure
and its efficiency. These factors have a direct influence on the quality of decision-making
processes and thereby define an enterprise’s vulnerability to a crisis.
According to academic literature, the Polish practice shows that causes of a crisis are
usually internal factors, such as: insufficient quality of management, inappropriate organisational structures, neglected marketing and flawed financial management.18
M. Szczerba stresses that fundamental causes of a crisis in an enterprise include factors within an organisation, capital factors and those lying in the operational and financial
spheres of an enterprise.19
Analysis of literature review and findings in the area of factors causing a crisis in an enterprise shows that in most enterprises crisis situations are caused by several factors simultaneously. The crisis intensifies as new problems arise or the existing ones increase.
3. Impact of organisational culture on the development of crisis
situations in a company
Occurrence of an economic crisis depends on the degree of risk and uncertainty avoidance in running a business activity by a company. Academic literature stresses that “the main
function of organisational culture is to reduce uncertainty.”20 Risk can be reduced through an
appropriate process of risk management, which refers to risk occurring in all decision-making processes of an entrepreneur or an entity taking actions in the different areas of an enterprise’s activity (production, logistics, research and development). T.T. Kaczmarek writes that
„in business activity of an enterprise, we can distinguish predictable risk and risk threatening
the whole enterprise. Predictable risk allows for transformation of extraordinary expenses
that may arise in a period and in amount that are hard to predict. Such risk materialises in
a random way, i.e. has the following characteristics: is random, sudden, unexpected and irregular [...]. The second type of risk mentioned is risk that threatens the whole enterprise
and is hard to quantify. It comes from an enterprise’s environment and its sources include:
poor condition of the whole economy, global technological progress, growing competition
on markets and possibility of loosing important market outlets.”21 Level of risk connected
with an enterprise’s activities in its environment shows to what extent an enterprise is active
in its operations and bravely takes advantage of the market, and to what extent this is a cautious process („macho” culture vs. „process” culture).22
Another factor leading to a crisis situation is management’s striving to achieve shortterm profit and short-term reduction of costs and thus avoiding innovative ventures. Academic literature claims that „manifestation of a short-term approach is a marketing strategy
subordinate to market. It leads to concentrating research and development around those
J. Walas-Trębacz, J. Ziarko, Podstawy zarządzania…, p. 52.
M. Szczerba, Przyczyny upadłości przedsiębiorstw w świetle opinii syndyków i nadzorców sądowych, [in:] Ekonomiczne i prawne aspekty upadłości przedsiębiorstw, red. B. Prusak, Warszawa 2007, p. 39.
20
A.K. Koźmiński, W. Piotrowski, Zarządzanie. Teoria i praktyka, PWN, Warszawa 1995, p. 303.
21
T.T. Kaczmarek, Ryzyko i zarządzanie ryzykiem. Ujęcie interdyscyplinarne, Difin, Warszawa 2006, pp 257-258.
22
J. Stachowicz, J. Machulik, Kultura organizacyjna …, pp. 45-46.
18
19
Organizational culture and culture crisis
39
products that most popular among customers in a given period of time. If majority of companies use this strategy and rely on the same target group of customers, the competitive strategy
of a product becomes imitative instead of innovative […]. Competitiveness, achievement of
objectives and productivity (typical of the market culture) are often replaced by maximisation of a short-term rate of return on assets.”23
M. Hopej-Kamińska and R. Kamiński write about three constituents of organisational
culture that refer to aspects of functioning of every organisation, namely:
• „attitude of a human being towards the surrounding world (anthropological dimension),
• relations among people (social dimension) and
• character of knowledge about the reality (cognitive dimension).”24
The anthropological dimension of culture means freedom of an organisation and its employees to decide about their fate. Members of an enterprise with a closed culture cannot act
freely and are subject to planning from outside, they do not show initiative and wait for topdown orders. Openness or closeness of an enterprise determines how arising problems are
solved and how crisis situations are prevented.
The social dimension of organisational culture refers to individualism or collectivism. i.e. to
what extent employees are willing to accept the primacy of common interests over individual
ones. Individualism is connected with employees’ striving for freedom and belief that individual
good is fundamental. An enterprise is perceived here as a collection of employees having contradictory interests. Therefore, an enterprise should focus on motivations and competences of
employees rather than teams. Collectivism is a strong orientation on life in a group and conviction
that an enterprise’s interest is more important than that of an employee, who should be emotionally involved in the life of the company and make his/her private life subordinated to the company.
An employee trusts group decisions and is responsible for the other team members. In a collectivist culture, an anti-crisis program can be implemented in an enterprise more effectively.
The cognitive dimension is characterised by the answer to the question about the nature
of human cognition. An open culture is based on the assumption that it is fallible, whereas
the closed one assumes its reliability. An enterprise’s vulnerability to a crisis is connected
with conservatism typical of closed organisational culture, where the existing theories are not
verified so as not to change the status quo. There is supremacy of own knowledge over that of
others, and the verdict given by the superior is not subject to discussion.
Hierarchical culture is a type of organisational culture that shows little resistance to a crisis. In this culture, importance is particularly attached to maintaining discipline and strengthening of the authority of power, and there is acceptance of diversification of employees. This
culture highlights the importance of discipline and order, and managing employees by means
of detailed procedures. It assumes correctness of planing and concentration of decision-making at the highest levels of the organisational hierarchy. P. Łukasik writes that „correctness
of planning itself usually does not take place in a crisis situation. One can say that a crisis in
an enterprise is a result of implementing an incorrect plan [...]. Another problem of bureaucratic organisations is that in a situation when formal channels of communication have been
P. Łukasik, Kultura organizacyjna a kryzys przedsiębiorstwa, [in:] Zarządzanie w kryzysie, red. A. Stabryła,
Wyd. Mfiles, seria wydawnicza: Encyklopedia Zarządzania, Kraków 2010, p. 90.
24
M. Hopej-Kamińska, R. Kamiński, Przeciwdziałanie sytuacjom kryzysowym a kultura organizacyjna, „Przegląd Organizacji” 2009, nr 3, p. 21.
23
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Zeszyty Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Humanitas. Zarządzanie
destroyed employees are no longer able to inform one another and submit procedures that
could provide ways of solving a crisis situation, and the inflexibility of procedures makes it
difficult to adapt them beforehand.”25
Academic literature links the issues of a crisis with the impact of hierarchization on an
enterprise’s corporate governance and with unethical behaviour of employees of a corporation. J. Bakan gives an example of a crisis in Enron caused by failure of democratic corporate
governance and unethical behaviour of its employee.26 The author writes that „we can draw
a more general conclusion from Enron’s collapse. Although it is this company that has become today a synonym of arrogance and management at odds with ethics, at the root of its
collapse are the same features that can be found in all corporations: obsession with profits
and share prices, greed, lack of care for others and tendency to violate law. These features are
rooted in a specific institutional culture which characterises corporations and values pursuit
of own interests while undervaluing moral scruples.”27
Encapsulating the characteristics of an organisation that is vulnerable to crises, P. Łukasik
mentions the following features of a closed organisational culture:
1. Employee cannot act freely and are subject to planning from outside.
2. People do not show initiative and wait for top-down orders.
3. Employees have to stick to learned roles, are divided into less or more important
ones, displaying learned helplessness.
4. Organisational barriers impede information flow and organisational learning.
5. Good of the team is put before good of an individual, and people are unable to learn.
6. Groups and individuals with different opinions are excluded from decision-making.”28
A crisis in an enterprise makes it necessary to change organisational culture and overcome the limitations connected with this change. L. Zbiegień-Maciąg writes that „of all
changes in the process of management, a change of culture is the most difficult and most
crucial. It should be added that a change of culture is often treated as the ultimate recipe for
serious ills of an organisation.”29 A change of an organisational culture is a difficult process,
because it involves changing the fundamental assumptions that underlie it. In order to intentionally change organisational culture, it is necessary to establish:
• what change is possible in the first place and to what extent it can be implemented,
• how to assess the scale of the change and choose adequate measures,
• what employees are necessary to introduce the change.
If we want to change the organisational culture in an enterprise, then we have to make
employees change their attitudes and views, and also change the structure. Omitting any
of these two elements may result in a short-term change or a change that has been forced
and causes frustration and conflicts. Academic literature provides methods and tools for the
process of changing organisational culture.30 One of the methods of a change is an aggressive
strategy. It involves a quick and radical change. The old is regarded as an ineffective relic, and
P. Łukasik, Kultura organizacyjna…, p. 91.
J. Bakan, Korporacja. Patologiczna pogoń za zyskiem i władzą, Wyd. Lepszy Świat, Warszawa 2006, pp. 131-163.
27
Ibidem, p. 75.
28
P. Łukasik, Kultura organizacyjna…, p. 92.
29
L. Zbiegień-Maciąg, Kultura w organizacji. Identyfikacja kultur znanych firm, PWN, Warszawa 1989, p. 90.
30
K.S. Cameron, R.F. Quinn, Kultura organizacyjna…, pp. 129-132; Ł. Srokowski, Zmienić myślenie o firmie,
Wyd. Poltex, Warszawa 2011, pp. 107-133.
25
26
Organizational culture and culture crisis
41
all manifestations of traditional behaviour and attitudes are eradicated. Often, such a strategy
requires changing the staff. The other method of changing organisational culture is incubation of the new organisational culture around the leaders of the organisation. They initiate
changes and are role models. A change of organisational culture should be introduced in
a structured manner, irrespective of the method used.31
The new organisational culture, that can prevent crisis situations in the future, should
allow a company to actively implement anti-crisis management, that will ensure the achievement of high quality management of an enterprise. Quality of management is the fundamental factor in crisis prevention.32 Of importance for the quality of anti-crisis management is
effective management of risk. Effectiveness of functioning and development of an enterprise
depends, among other things, on how many employees want to do more than is required by
their roles in the organisation. For a company to function effectively, there have to be numerous acts of spontaneous cooperation and constant participation of employees in achievement
of the objectives of an enterprise. Academic literature presents the concept of highly reliable
organisation. P. Łukasik writes that „such an organisation has an obsession with possible
failure which manifests itself in reacting to even the smallest deviations from accepted norms
and threats. The managerial staff closely monitors first-line employees, upon whom the effect of activities depends. Knowledge is widely used, and simplification of reality is avoided.
Functioning in a turbulent environment necessitates reflection on the complexity of the issues in management. A highly reliable organisation is open to all information, including bad
information.”33
An important value of culture is appropriate level of managerial staff with the following
characteristics: multidimensional thinking, initiative to introduce changes, good strategy in
the conditions of bad economic situation, responsibility and defining individual objectives
of an employee. Of fundamental importance for creating organisational culture that prevents
a crisis are flexible communication processes, adapted to changes occurring within an enterprise and its external environment.
Summary
Organisational culture is a basic factor preventing crisis situations in an enterprise. It
is a key concept in cultural discourse in studies of management. Academic literature, discussing ambiguity of the term of organisational culture, highlights that “cognitive problems
with organisational culture reflect this ambiguity of cultural issues generally. These issues
are examined at the borderline of two discourses and across many scientific disciplines. On
the one hand, they are rooted in the theory of culture, which is a subject of such disciplines
as: cultural anthropology, sociology, social psychology, cultural studies and other humane
disciplines. On the other hand, they are a subject of studies of management, in theoretical,
methodological and pragmatic aspects. A consequence of this interdisciplinarity is diversity
P. Łukasik, Kultura organizacyjna…, p. 93; A.K. Koźmiński, W. Piotrowski, Zarządzanie. Teoria…, p.304; Ł.
Srokowski, Zmienić myślenie…, p. 114.
32
M. Huczek, Kryzys przedsiębiorstwa a jakość zarządzania, „Bezpieczeństwo. Teoria i Praktyka”, Krakowska
Akademia im. A. Frycza Modrzewskiego, Kraków 2013, Nr 1(X), pp. 13-14.
33
P. Łukasik, Kultura organizacyjna…, p. 94.
31
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Zeszyty Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Humanitas. Zarządzanie
of inspirations, as well as a large number of approaches that result in disproportion and contradiction of many concepts of organisational culture.”34
It should be stressed that organisational culture shapes behaviour of employees at any
time and in any circumstances, and also affects an enterprise’s ability to survive at a time of
crisis. The influence of organisational culture on an enterprise’s activity is multifaceted. It
includes, among other things: reduction of uncertainty, level of work effectiveness, shaping
of human relations and absorption of innovations, as well as an enterprise’s competitiveness.
Bibliography
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Nauk Oddział w Katowicach, Wyd. Szumjwicach, W(i)4(3ggcean </MCID 754 >BDC BT
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Organizational culture and culture crisis
Nota o Autorze:
Prof. Marian Huczek, profesor w Krakowskiej Akademii im. Andrzeja Frycza Modrzewskiego
Information about the author:
Prof. Marian Huczek, profesor at Krakowska Akademia im. Andrzeja Frycza Modrzewskiego
Kontakt/Contact:
Prof. Marian Huczek
Krakowska Akademia im. Andrzeja Frycza Modrzewskiego
ul. Gustawa Herlinga-Grudzińskiego 1,
30-705 Kraków
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