Strong versus Weak Cultures

Organizational cultures can be strong or weak. In a strong culture, standards and guidelines are widely shared within the organization, providing common direction for

day-to-day behavior. This is likely because all cultural systems, formal and informal, are aligned to provide consistent direction and to point behavior in the same direction. In the 1980s, Citicorp’s culture was so strong that when Katherine Nelson, a coauthor of this text and former vice president and head of human resources communications at Citicorp, traveled to the firm’s offices in the Far East to deliver ethics training, she felt right at home  ‘‘You could tell that you were in a Citicorp facility,’’ she said, ‘‘whether you were in London, Tokyo, or New York.’’ When Nelson facilitated an ethics training session for Japanese managers, she presented them with a common ethical dilemma—what do you do if you have raised an important ethical issue with your manager and nothing is done? Moreover, the manager discourages you from pursuing the issue. The potential answers included do nothing, go around the manager to the next level, raise the issue in writing to the manager, or take the issue to a staff department such as human resources.

The Japanese managers unanimously gave the ‘‘correct’’ answer according to Citicorp culture and policies at the time. They said they would go around their manager and take the issue to the next level. Nelson was surprised at their response, thinking that it conflicted with the wider Japanese culture’s deference to authority and seniority. So she asked these managers, ‘‘Doesn’t this conflict with Japanese culture?’’ To which they responded, ‘‘You forget—we are much more Citicorp than we are Japanese.’’ Citicorp’s culture proved to be so strong that standards and guidelines spanned continents and superseded national culture.  This type of experience has since been verified by some of our international students who worked for U.S.-based multinationals before returning to school for their MBA degree. For example, one student worked for Baxter Healthcare in a country known for corruption and bribery. Baxter’s strong ethical culture didn’t allow such conduct, and employees were proud to be a part of such an organization and happy to comply  In a weak organizational culture, strong subcultures exist and guide behavior that differs from one subculture to another. Many large public universities can be thought of as having weak cultures. For example, for faculty, departmental subcultures are often stronger than the overall university culture; the romance languages department differs from the accounting department. Among students at a large state university, the fraternity-sorority subculture coexists with the political activist subculture, the devout Christian subculture, the jock subculture, and many other subcultures, and behavior is quite different within each. It’s important to note that weak doesn’t necessarily mean bad. In some situations, weak cultures are desirable. They allow for strong subcultures featuring diversity of thought and action. However, in a weak culture, behavioral consistency across the organization is tough to achieve. Look around your own school or work organization. Would you characterize its culture as strong or weak?