Organizational Culture and Dynamics

Internal Design & Dynamics

How many of the estimated 35,000 or so decisions made by an average person on daily basis are truly individual, given the profound role played by organizations in modern society? While it may not be feasible to arrive at a sound numeric estimate, it is safe to assume that a significant proportion of small and big choices is made in a group setting. Taking up a large proportion, even the majority of an average person's functioning time, engagement with school, work, social, or professional organizations should be expected to account for a proportional share of daily decisions. Thus, many of the 35,000 daily decisions are likely made in a group setting, and many other choices are affected, directly or indirectly, by group dynamics. Understanding those dynamics is important to the decision-making value of the Empirical & Experiential Evidence (3E) framework.

Organizational culture is one of the perhaps most celebrated and at the same time most elusive manifestations of group dynamics, often described in terms of a combination of physical features and behavioral norms. Pixar, a well-known movie animation studio, offers its animators and engineers a host of enviable physical amenities at its 22-acre Emeryville, California campus including gourmet cafeteria with a cereal bar, a soccer field, a swimming pool, billiards and foosball tables, whereas organizations such as Kayak, a travel company, place more emphasis on somewhat less visible perks such as flexible hours, travel bonuses, team excursions and games. Some organizations' design features only implicitly address decision-making, as is the case with Kayak, where employees are hired on the basis of being smart and then encouraged to think 'outside of the box' and put their ideas to work, while in case of others, best illustrated by Zappos, an online retailer, altogether eschew traditional management structure in favor of organizational designs such as holacracy, where employees define their own job titles, everyone has a voice, and rather than reporting to individual managers, employees work in groups and are accountable to groups.

Structure, culture and management philosophy shape which information an organization uses and how it learns from decisions. These internal conditions affect evidence-based practice, including the 3E framework. Here, culture means the shared assumptions, values and beliefs that guide behavior; organizational dynamics includes the practices used to support learning.