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Culture is the Behavior You Reward and Punish

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tomos:
The word culture, rarely defined when used, has many meanings.

Culture is the Behavior You Reward and Punish talks about the values of a work environment. So you may have grand values, or a wonderful image of your work culture, but it boils down to what is rewarded, and punished. The idea isn't taken beyond the work place, but the way I see it, the article applies to society, the family, the individual even.

It's a simple straight-forward idea, but I guess it's easy enough, at any level, to think things are different from the reality.

Also some interesting thought there about how you can have an influence.

IainB:
@tomos:
This could be a very interesting discussion. However, if one is going to be able to meaningfully discuss a thing such as "workplace culture" or "corporate culture" in any meaningful way, then I would suggest that some definition would be in order.
"…it all depends what you mean by..."
 - Dr C.E.M. Joad on BBC TV "The Brains Trust".
_______________________

--- End quote ---
So, some definition that may be useful: my emphasis)
culture
· n.
1 the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively. Ø a refined understanding or appreciation of this.
2 the customs, institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or group.
3 Biology the cultivation of bacteria, tissue cells, etc. in an artificial medium containing nutrients. Ø a preparation of cells obtained in such a way. Ø the cultivation of plants.
4 [in combination] denoting cultivation or husbandry: aviculture.
· v. Biology maintain (tissue cells, bacteria, etc.) in conditions suitable for growth.
– ORIGIN C17 (denoting a cultivated piece of land): the noun from Fr. culture or directly from L. cultura ‘growing, cultivation’; the verb from obs. Fr. culturer or med. L. culturare, both based on L. colere (see cultivate).
– WORD FORMATION -culture ‘cultivation or husbandry, especially of a specified animal or plant’
(More in the spoiler below)

Spoiler Ø -culture words in current use (full entries and definitions to be found in this dictionary):
agriculture
farming
L. ager, agri- ‘field’
apiculture
bee-keeping
L. apis ‘bee’
aviculture
rearing of birds
L. avis ‘bird’
floriculture
cultivation of flowers
L. flos, flor- ‘flower’
horticulture
gardening
L. hortus ‘garden’
mariculture
cultivation of sea fish or other marine life
L. mare, mari- ‘sea’
pisciculture
breeding of fish
L. piscis ‘fish’
pomiculture
fruit-growing
L. pomum ‘apple, fruit’
sericulture
cultivation of silk and silkworms
L. sericum ‘silk’
silviculture
cultivation of trees
L. silva ‘wood’
viniculture
less common term for viticulture
L. vinum ‘wine’
viticulture
cultivation of grapevines
L. vitis ‘vine’

 Ø Archaic or less common -culture words:
boviculture
cattle-rearing
L. bos, bov- ‘ox’
caniculture
breeding of dogs
L. canis ‘dog’
demoniculture
demon worship
based on demon1
domiculture
housekeeping
L. domus ‘house’
menticulture
cultivation of the mind
L. mens, ment- ‘mind’
olericulture
cultivation of vegetables
L. oleri-, olus ‘pot-herb’
ostreiculture
breeding of oysters
L. ostreum ‘oyster’
urbiculture
development of cities and towns
L. urbs, urb- ‘city’

Most -culture words were first used in English in the 19th century, though a few, notably agriculture and horticulture, are recorded earlier (17th century).
- Concise Oxford Dictionary (10th Ed.)
__________________________

--- End quote ---

For "work/workplace culture" or "corporate culture" though, I would suggest #2: the customs, institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or group.

Unfortunately, from experience, most of the talk about "the corporate culture" or somesuch - including the seemingly half-baked article you link to - is elementary at best and arguably mostly BS and corporate cliché. This would be because many (if not most) business processes - which implicitly and de facto form the bulk of any given workplace culture - are generally ephemeral, due to them mostly being at CMM (Capability Maturity Model) Level 1 (Ad hoc/Chaotic) or Level 2 (Repeatable). The processes in these organisations are thus in a state of constant dynamic change  - churning their processes - and thus their corresponding identifiable cultural standards are likely to be in a state of dynamic change also (by definition).

However, this situation is not necessarily immediately intuitively understood and it is difficult to demonstrate/prove until one shows the evidence of it by logical modelling of the corporate business processes using the IDEF0/IDEF3 methods showing ICOMs (Inputs, Controls, Outputs, Mechanisms) and Data Flows, and applying an Activity-Based Costing approach, at which point it becomes glaringly obvious. Using something else - (say) BPMN (Business process Modelling Notation) methods, for example - could not really show this with such clarity as it is mostly a drafting standard and does not force a sufficiently logical/rigorous relationship model structure on the processes, for more in-depth analysis.

What this suggests is that the only corporate cultures that are arguably worth spending one's cognitve surplus on are those that are specifically more persistent (non-ephemeral) - i.e., those at CMM Level 3 or above. These will fall into a relative minority though.

If one didn't use this as the key criterion to test for a useful candidate as a culture/process to discuss, then one could end up going round in circles futilely discussing a culture based on a group of processes at CMM Level 1 or 2 - e,g., (say) the Uber business processes/culture (which really rather seems to be at CMM Level 1, judging from its recent reported fiascos).

Some of the most constructive developmental thinking and research carried out on the re-engineering of corporate processes and culture was documented in two books that brought together a theory and an implementation approach for organisational development using a culture definition called "The Learning Organisation":

* The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization (1994) By Dr. Peter M. Senge.
* The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization (1994) By Dr. Peter M. Senge.
Again, unfortunately in my experience - though I am a great fan of the 5th Discipline - attempts to implement the 5th Discipline generally tended to be undermined or frustrated by management that was corrupt, or driven by specific religio-political ideologies - e.g., MBO (Management By Objectives) - either of which could generally tend to run counter to and destructive of the Learning Organization approach and its inherent principles -  including, for example, openness, honesty, integrity and what was defined as a "safe" (non-toxic in a physical and psychological sense) cultural working environment for all employees.

The most recent and classic example of this sort of toxicity existing - and in this case being endemic in the highest organisational levels in state sector organisations - would be the driving forces behind (giving rise to) Edward Snowden's whistleblowing and the treatment meted out to him subsequently by a repressive regime, despite the POTUS' apparent lip service to the protection of whistleblowers because of "the importance to our society of what they do", etc.
(Yeah, I know, right?)

Thus, the Learning Organization approach would seem to remain a very good (if not beautiful) idea only, with no real practical or demonstrable, or even potential for, implementation successes, So the 5th Discipline could be rather like the Algol programming language - a fading star.

tomos:
@IainB, interesting post, although a share of it goes over my head, being fairly ignorant of the topic.
The original article jumped out at me because of the dichotomy between the idea and the reality. I see that a lot: I see it in individuals, myself included, and in groups.

This did jump out at me as being related to that:
Again, unfortunately in my experience - though I am a great fan of the 5th Discipline - attempts to implement the 5th Discipline generally tended to be undermined or frustrated by management that was corrupt, or driven by specific religio-political ideologies - e.g., MBO (Management By Objectives) - either of which could generally tend to run counter to and destructive of the Learning Organization approach and its inherent principles -  including, for example, openness, honesty, integrity and what was defined as a "safe" (non-toxic in a physical and psychological sense) cultural working environment for all employees.
-IainB (March 07, 2017, 09:44 PM)
--- End quote ---

The Fifth Disciplinew sounds interesting.

6DecadesOld:
One thing I am very bad about on the Net is not letting too much about myself get out and about.  That hinders me in some discussions and this would be one of those types of discussions.

But I can state a few things and still sort of hide.

Let me see, I have to think ... since the very early 70s I have lived outside the U.S. of A. for all but a couple of years -- maybe three, if memory serves correctly -- and in the case of two countries those years added up to about 8 years or so in one and about 30 in another.  At one time I was determined to never return to this part of the world, but a certain president fella pulled a stunt on a special group he put together and we all ended up being sent back into this area.  That president fella got mighty angry at us all, too.  After we were informed of the president fella changing our orders so many of us were calling friends to get transferred that he came down to us and chewed us out good and shipped us off anyway.

Anyway, what I find interesting so far in this discussion is how limited in scope it is.  You get yourself out and about on this planet and you will find that culture can have a really interesting meaning.  And I really mean "really interesting" but I am sort of in a bind because I don't even want to explain about the two countries I have lived in for a long time, nor that other one where I learned to hate a certain race of people.  Lucky for me I unlearned that hate business.

And I'll be trusting the admin and mods here not to let out about my User Agent.

But if you folks really want to get into a serious discussion about culture please start thinking about a big round thing with all these weird four-limbed creatures living on it that seem to think they should be called humans.  Them weird creatures have a whole lot of interesting ways to go about doing that thing they seem to like to call living.  Unfortunately, them life forms that call themselves humans also have some serious hate stored up in their brains that they sometimes use to justify the stamping on cultures they don't like.

And it is when those cultures clash when you really begin to understand what culture means.

Another thing, the "humans" that live in that place called the U.S. of A. really don't know how lucky they are.  The "culture" of freedom is something a whole mess of folks all over this planet would love to be allowed to live in.  And, more importantly, raise their kids in.  That is a culture I would like to see spread all over this big round thing called Earth.

Yep, "culture" is one heck of a subject to discuss, but spread the idea out and away from just the corporate world, or your own country.

By the way, I fully understand that many other countries have fine traditions of a culture of freedom, but I only feel proper in pointing to the country I was born and raised in, even though I know we in the U.S. of A. aren't the sole guardians of freedom.  And please don't ever forget that you have to guard freedom.  It don't come for free.  There's a price to pay.  Sometimes your life.

But it is definitely a culture.  The culture of freedom.  It can't be ignored if you are going to discuss culture.  Just like you can't ignore the many, many, so many cultures of all sorts of interesting "humans" that live on this giant ball that is racing around that huge star.

And that reference to the star should then point us to the idea of the culture we haven't met, yet -- the one of the creatures that live on that planet way, way, way over there.

tomos:
hi 6DecadesOld,
not having any background in corporate anything, I was a little surprised by the use of the word culture in the original article. I know outside the corporate world it has many different usages and meanings. But what caught my attention in that article was not so much the usage of the culture word, as the difference between our perception of how we are, and the reality of how we are.

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