Organisations as Cultures and Political Systems

Organisations as cultures and political systems

There are a number of elements that suggest that the Department of Information Systems’ is functioning according to both the ‘organisation as cultures’ and ‘organisations as political systems’ metaphors, however, it is not as clear-cut as this.

Jassawalla and Sashittal, 2002, make reference to ‘the problems associated with functional hierarchical organizations that inevitably cause participants to focus on their narrowly defined functional areas’. The Department of Information Services (the Department), is a civil service organization that highlights the values of a bureaucratic / hierarchical organizational culture, with an emphasis on established rules, procedures, stability and formalized decision making processes, based around existing administrative expertise. The will of this civil service organization, is that they are subject to political, rather than market controls and are only affected by changing government authority decisions. In describing the culture, there are the competing forces of the internal / external and control / flexibility divides within the Department. The Department is not motivated by financial issues and is more concerned, by the external political pressure placed on it. There is no evident issue within the department about, Jitney’s, 1985 report, which is noted as expensive to implement, set against the political will to improve efficiency in government. On this evidence there is a perceived lack of interest by the department management in becoming more adaptable and to introduce changes to improve efficiency. The existing hierarchical culture, therefore lends itself to emphasizing rules, procedures and maintaining stability internally, with existing managers, pre Dun coming on board, focused on their defined functional sections, as their main drivers.

There is evidence of corporate culture, sub cultures and professional allegiances at play. Referring to the hierarchy, on first...