Culture and Organizational Change

Abstract

The introduction of new management accounting systems to support management initiatives (JIT, TQM, ABC and the balanced scorecard are excellent examples) provides opportunities to investigate those factors which impact on successful organisational change and the diffusion of accounting innovations. When introducing new systems we need to match managerial practices with cultural settings, otherwise organisational change will have less than the desired effect The implementation of planned change within an organisation is frequently problematical. Culture at a number of levels, notably group, corporate and societal, will all impact on the change process. As managers of the change process it is vital that we are aware of the nature of this impact and how we might behave to ensure that eventual outcomes are successful. The fundamental distinction we must make is between corporate (or organisational) culture and societal (or national) culture. This despite research which suggests that sub-cultures exist within national cultures. Corporate culture is based in the visible practices of an organisation, and may be consciously changed; national culture, on the other hand, may change little, if at all, over time. As managers of organisational change, we therefore have a dual function: to mould the corporate culture so that it is amenable to incorporating the initiatives we wish to embrace; to modify corporate practices so that they produce the desired effects when implemented in alternative environments. This is particularly important to global operations embracing investment, manufacturing and distribution which may be confronted with the problems of expatriate management or with those of different languages, religions and values; and to the problems associated with overseas selection decisions and training programmes.