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Corporate culture deals primarily with an organization's fundamental mind set and capabilities: how information is shared, how people are treated, how work is allocated, and how decisions are made among employees, suppliers, and customers.

This FutureU module presents ways for leaders to build a case for exploring the organization's corporate culture and changing it when needed. Participants are introduced to the process of cultural change, including methods for describing the current culture and any desired changes, articulating the gap between them, preparing and implementing plans for change, coordinating efforts around ongoing change, and measuring the impact of cultural change on morale, performance, and the bottom line.

Participant Profile

Executives and mid- to upper-level managers who want to learn about the role of the HR function in understanding an organization's culture.

Topics

• Leadership and management within the context of organizational culture.
• The rites, artifacts, beliefs, values, and norms of an organization and the behaviors they elicit.
• The impact of an organization's culture on its strategy.
• The importance of clarity both within and outside the organization.
• The role of culture in creating and supporting innovators and innovation.
• The impact of culture on innovative thinking and cross- functional cooperation.
• The effect of cultural change on organizational processes.
• How to make the meaning of culture explicit within an organization by identifying behaviors, artifacts, symbols, and policies.
• How to analyze the potential effects of different cultural elements on such things as quality of work life, employee motivation and productivity, product and service quality, and organizational adaptiveness.
• How to identify those agents that are traditionally viewed as causing, sustaining, and changing organizational cultures, with special emphasis on interventions for positive change.
• How growth stages, cultural functions, and mechanisms and processes of change interact with one another.
• The "cultural audit" for assessing organization culture.
• How to knowledgeably affect and support an organization's cultural changes.

Module Design

When delivered online, this module lasts two weeks when offered as part of the focused-learning program on Leadership and Human Resources. It is also available as a stand-alone, four-week online course. In either case, it requires an average of 10 hours a week of online participation and study time.

Delivery Options

Off-the-shelf or customized to meet your organization's needs. Usually delivered entirely online, via FutureU's Internet-accessible electronic campus or on your own corporate Intranet. Participants "attend class" from their own desktop or laptop computers, at home or at work, and at whatever time is most convenient to them. Such asynchronous online delivery is especially suited to geographically separated employee groups and those who find it a challenge to fit learning into an already full work schedule. Can also be adapted for on-site delivery.

Customization

Every organization faces a unique set of challenges and opportunities. The FutureU team can customize this module or any other FutureU module or program to address your real workplace concerns and integrate case study material based on your organization's experience. This course can also be modified for "blended" delivery integrating a mix of face-to-face and online work to ease those with little technology experience into the world of online learning.

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Copyright © 1997-2004 by Gail Terry Grimes and Claude Whitmyer. All rights reserved. Published by FutureU.