Cultural Change

“Good morning Angelika, we are a more customer oriented company now”. Quoting my boss of my previous job in a small service company. Surprisingly after the weekend, new nouns replaced the old values, statements on posters indicate a newly defined “we are...”, unfortunately it did not appeal to me. Should my boss have acted differently and was he able to change the company’s values so easily? This personal reference exemplifies the broad theme of the essay: Cultural change. The narrowed down purpose of the essay is to discuss how and why leadership may be significant to consider in understanding and managing organisational cultural change. First, I will elaborate on the concepts of both cultural change and leadership. Then, referring on the

The course cases exemplify intended cultural changes, implemented of leaders for example M&A projects, like BRL Hardy, or switching from a traditional hierarchical oriented to a modern, low-hierarchical culture such as the Semco case (Bartlett, 2003; Maddux, 2014). The leader, mostly a charismatic person who is primarily positioned at the top management, represents the main creator within this cultural change program. Many concepts and models exist portraying personal traits, approaches and tools of how to reach this almost holy, idealistic representation of this privileged position. Leadership roles shall switch between being a pastor, preacher or pedagogue (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2015). The following quote “I’m not a manager, I’m a leader” identifies the promising picture of being a leader (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2016, p.41). The authors emphasize that everyone wants to be the leader, because it is attractive to identify oneself with such an image, nurtured by glossy, wide spread pop-management literature. This image simplifies that cultural change is manageable and approachable. As being mentioned by Alvesson and Sveningsson (2015) the leadership role seems to be seen as a next step within the career - a personal development, boosting the identity. Furthermore, people primarily focus on the outcome of a “cultural change project”, ascribed its success or failure to traits or approaches of the leader by followers or society. Drawing and questioning this leader-centered view, it can be asked if a leader can generally change a culture. Alvesson, Blom & Sveningsson argue that a leader’s impact is too weak of changing the meaning within a settled organisational culture. As mentioning above, a well-functioning culture might substitute the leader. Additionally, the authors claim that the leader is more “an agent through the culture as a medium and target of action” (p.67). Hence, the role of a leader is merely about