Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

• Justifying Concepts (involves “the process of determining if the newly created concepts are
truly worthwhile for the organization and society; it is primarily the role of top management
to formulate the justification criteria in the form of organizational intention, which is
expressed in terms of strategy and vision.”);
• Building an Archetype (as a kind of tangible incarnation of a concept in the form of a
‘prototype’, as in the case of a new product or ‘mock-up’, that should be developed by
collective efforts; “attention to detail is the key to managing this complex process”); and
• Cross-Levelling of Knowledge (when “the new concept, which has been created, justified
and modelled, moves into the new cycle of knowledge creation at a different ontological
level. This interactive and spiral process takes place both intra-organizationally and interorganizationally.).
Nonaka and Takeuchi also present a specific model of organizational design that, in their opinion,
provides a structural basis for organizational knowledge creation. They call it ‘hypertext
organization’. It is made up of interconnected layers of contexts: the ‘business system’ for routine
operations, which may be shaped like a hierarchical pyramid; the ‘project-teams’ layer, where
multiple teams engage in knowledge-creating activities; and the ‘knowledge-base’ layer, where
organizational knowledge is re-categorized and re-contextualized. “This layer does not exist as an
actual organizational entity, but is embedded in corporate vision, organizational culture, or
technology. Corporate vision and organizational culture tap tacit knowledge, whereas technology
taps the explicit knowledge generated in the other two layers.” (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995)
We already paid a lot of attention to the first two layers – to solid structures (hierarchical or not)
and to interrelations, like in teamwork (whether in taskforces or more permanent entities). Let us
move on to the more subtle issues related to the ‘third layer’.
Developing organizational culture
Organizational culture comprises the attitudes, values, beliefs, norms and customs of an
organization. The word culture, from the Latin cultus, cultura, with its root meaning ‘to cultivate’,
generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity
significance. Values are comprised of ideas about what in life seems important. They guide the
rest of the culture. Norms consist of expectations about how people will behave in different
situations. Each culture has different methods, called sanctions, for enforcing its norms. Norms
that a society enforces formally have the status of laws. (www.en.wikipedia.org)
Clutterbuck and Grainer (1990) describe culture as “a set of behavioural and attitudinal norms, to
which most of all members of organization subscribe, either consciously or unconsciously…” (Cited
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