Organizational Folklore - Understanding Organisation Better #Organisation identity

Organizational Folklore - Understanding Organisation Better

“In a faraway Indian village lived a Hindu family. The Head of the family was performing 'Sharddha' to pay respects to its elders. He used to call priests to conduct the ceremony. As the ceremony went on for a long time and children kept disturbing. They were asked to play upstairs with the kitten. After a few hours, the children were called back and given a good lunch. As time passed, the head grew old and passed away. The children, who had become sufficiently old had performed "Shraddha" for their father. They remembered the "practice" as was done by their father, Thus they also asked their children to play upstairs with a kitten. The priest was called and asked to wait for a few hours. Children were then called and given good lunch. They did so, as they knew only this, the priest was surprised as he had come to perform the 'ritual' but had to go without doing anything”.

This story above tells us how cultural symbols, while transferred from one generation to another need to carry their meaning and spirit. Many a times, whether it is in the case of societies, communities or organizations the meanings of the cultural form are not transferred, thus resulting in either the forms losing their significance or remaining as dead entries. We know the present status of important national celebrations such as Independence day.

This has much more significance in the case of an organization, as there is a need for transferring the message of objectives, vision, and mission and also to develop a culture aimed at achieving these. One of the effective ways that the espoused culture is reinforced in the organization, is by translating the meanings and deep spirit behind various artifacts of the espoused culture into each and every member of the organization. This may be achieved through imbibing the same in induction programs, vision-mission workshops, or for that matter, in day to day organizational routines.

"Organizational folklore", an umbrella concept, facilitates percolating the espoused cultural meanings. This framework also helps in eliciting the soft and tacit knowledge of the organization and in making necessary cultural interventions in the organization. "Organizational folklore", an umbrella concept, facilitates percolating the espoused cultural meanings. This framework also helps in eliciting the soft and tacit knowledge of the organization and in making necessary of the interventions in the organization.

Organizational Folklore:

What the phrase "organizational folklore, otherwise known to mean is the village art forms, is being compounded with the organization. “Folklore" means the wisdom of a community or group, if the lore or wisdom is shared or exists among the members of the organizational folklore. Among any group, either folk-forms/folk symbols or vice versa. Folklore is generated in first-hand interaction, not legislated and its character and meanings are determined in a large measure by immediate contact of participants and their experiences, attitudes, and relationships.

They are examples of symbolic interaction and communication, evoking strong images, emotions and physiological sensations in teller and listener alike, narrated in a dramatic performance that highlights and selectively portrays some aspects of an event. Rituals are repeated acts invested with special significance recalling a host of associations and dramatically conveying sentiments and values. In each instance, something visible stands for the invisible- particularly ideas, qualities, and feelings. Therefore folklore may serve as a source of information about culture/ identity, social relation and psychological states of employees. The essence of culture lies in unstated premises or ethos that are taken for granted, and so, are largely implicit. Thus, studying organizational culture must be done with a careful search for subtle and elusive meanings which are not overt. It is precisely here organization folklore approach gains importance.

What are the Organization Folklore Forms?

“Each organization is a treasure trove of a large number of folklore forms, some created by the organization (top management such as logo vision mission statement, the decor, ceremonies, and rituals) and some contributed by the members of the organization like the lingo, riddles, and even graffiti sketched around .”

The following is a detailed discussion of various organization folklore forms with necessary illustrations.

Logos

A logo is the primary and fundamental folklore form of an organization. Many a time, the top management of the organization makes a conscious effort in creating a particular logo. Logos will contain the meaning representing the purpose of the organization, ambiance and maybe the target group. If an organization is claiming to have a shared culture and "oneness" like a family, everyone must have a common understanding about the meaning percolation of the logo may not just stop with the members with of the organization may like to speak to its target group through a logo.

 If the face is the Index of mind for a human being, the logo is the index for the organization. In recent times we have seen some companies like ICICI Limited taking the significant initiative in informing the meaning of its logo and various colors in it.

Vision and mission statements

Developing vision and mission statements for the sake of having them for adorning the walls have become merely a fashion more than a powerful activity. The case of one of the modern organization' given in the box speaks [Box 1] about this folk-form.

 Physical Artefacts

The physical artifacts are the manifestations of the organizational folklore. If one goes around the different organization, these are the most tangible and visible manifestations. One can notice each organization's culture form are different in tens of their physical layout and décor, nature of availability and the use of facilities, centralization or dispersion of common utilities, the format of office stationery and so on. This uniqueness is neither merely incidental nor meant for serving some rational functional purpose it rather represents symbolic expressions of an underlying value or belief which is shared by people in the organization. Organizational artifacts, shared office space or availability of recreational facilities in the working place, intentionally or unintentionally communicate information and ways of doing things, one of the distinctive features of cultural artifacts is their symbolic nature.

Their value lies not in what they are, but what they mean to people. In fact, often from a rational point of view, they may even appear to be nonfunctional old Photographs adorning the walls, gossips sessions in which almost invariably similar stories are told, a room occupied with useless files which nobody needs to consult. But they survive and are cherished because they are symbolically important.

As Ott noted: Symbols embody and represents wider patterns of meaning and cause people to associate conscious unconscious ideas that in turn endow them with their deeper, fuller, and often emotion-evoking meaning.

This symbolic nature of cultural artifacts is most apparent in behaviors patterns, which are typical to each organization. In their normal life, all organizations are characterized by recurring themes, which are expressed through what their members talk about how they do things. Thus artifacts can also be non-material (behavioral) in nature.

Language, Jargons, and Metaphors

Language, jargon, and metaphors are an integral part of any organization's culture. While the language is a means of universal communications most organizations tend to develop their own unique terminology phrases and acronym. For instance, in one organization, members of corporate office were referred to as 'nawabs' similarly, in another organization, the acronym J.I.T (Just-ln-Time) was jokingly used to describe all badly planned firefighting jobs. Thus in the organizational linguistic code, "Kremlin" may mean the headquarters, " special assignment" may be a corporate euphemism for Siberia, "early retirement" may donate being fired from the job, and, all new recruits may have to be "broken in" . Such specialized and idiosyncratic usage of words and phrases makes an organization's language incomprehensible to thus who donate being to that culture. Thus, language becomes a means of distinguishing members from non-members, and of reinforcing a group's unique cultural identity.

Stories, Myths, and Legends

The organizational stories, myths, and legends are, in a way, an extension of organizational language. Like language, they optimize the unwritten values and serve to validate unspoken thoughts, intentions, and feelings of its members — only they do it in a more elaborate and effective manner. If one collects the various stories, anecdotes, and jokes that are being shared in an organization, they often read like plots and themes, in which nothing changes except the characters. Even the protagonists (the heroes and the outlaws) represent similar characteristics, though their names may change. One may find, for instance, that organization invariably narrate a situation in which a subordinate to get a promotion or how a new department was formed to accommodate a relative, or a new procedure was promoted to benefit the superior secretary. All these stories predictably revolve around a decision- making a situation in which irrationality and violation of formal rules and procedure are encouraged.

What is most remarkable about these stories is that often they depict pure fantasy: people know that they are factually inaccurate but continue to narrate and listen to them with relish. "Myths", are too important for people to be embarrassed about factual inaccuracy." Their importance lies not in the factual information they impart, but in the thematic coherence, they provide to the members also very effectively and implicitly communicate important cultural assumptions, beliefs values and norms to the new members. In fact, their effectiveness lies in the fact that often the followed.

Boje identified for basic functions which organizational myths fulfill.

a) They create, maintain and legitimize past, present or future actions and consequences:

b) They maintain and conceal political interests and value systems

c) They help explain and create cause and effect relationships under conditions of incomplete knowledge; and

d) They rationalize the complexity and turbulence of activities and events to allow for predictable action-taking.

Ceremonies and Celebration.

Ceremonies and celebrations are consciously enacted behavioral artifacts, which help in reinforcing the organization's cultural values and assumptions. For instance, every year Tata Steel celebrates "Founders Day" to commemorate and reiterate its adherence to the company' its adherence to the company's original values. Similarly, in the early '90s, the sixty-odd senior managers of INDAL went into a " retreat ", closeting themselves in a hotel for a week, with the sole agenda of thrashing out a strategic plan for the company, People vividly remember such events. They put the culture on display, and help the organization to celebrate their values, heroes, myths, and symbols.

As Deal and Kennedy noted, "without expressive events, any culture will die ", Ceremonies are to culture, what movie is to script, the correct is to score, or dance is to values that are difficult to express in any other way.

Memoirs

These are documented experiences and learning of a person usually an important person in an organization. The possible use of this form of folklore is that it helps the reader to know what had made that particular person great in that organization, what were there values beliefs that have helped them in becoming so. In a way, these memoirs tell the people in the organization the acceptable and rewarding behavior and values in the organization. These also act as a reference to the employees and continuously work towards those "espoused" values. Larsen & Toubro Nagarjuna are some of the companies in the country, which publish memories of the founding fathers and distribute these among employees and also to their clientele.

Organization Folklore: How to Facilitate

Organizational may facilitate not only by establishing and developing of 'desirable' folklore forms but also encourage and give support to capture and document the folklore that exists at different pockets in the organization. May it be the long-serving peons of the organization who may have a lot to say about different organizational stories or the certain "academic" employees who believe in writing organizational dairies (potential memories). Narratives such process reports on various activities could be documented which help in assessing the learning ability of the organization.

Building Corporate Images

Facilitating certain select organizational practices help in contributing towards developing sound corporate images. Onboarding welcome kits to all the "associates". [ containing a T-shirt, a smart bag, and a cap] help in creating a unique identity for the associates of the organization.

Learning Organization Diagnosis through a process Report

Each organization will have its distinct features in terms of activities carried on, the methodology adopted and achievements earned. These are the ones, which speak about organizational personality. Understanding the unique characteristics of the organization and images of these characteristics will help in "selling the organizational identity "in a better way.

Facilitating the Riddles for effective induction

Riddles represent the "community ego", ie. the 'we feeling' of the community. Each community keeps telling newcomers that unless they break the riddle and understanding the inner meaning, they cannot accept him or her as part of their community. We see this happing in traditional marriages or make efforts to document riddles that float around in the organization and utilize some of them in the induction process. Thus helping better enculturation of the newcomers.

Facilitating Graffiti for Capturing Members Feelings

Graffiti is the pretext we use quite often to give vent to our feelings. Emotions, aspirations and even ideas. Often the vulgar expression of these emotions gets manifested in the form of graffiti on the walls of secretive places like toilets. An organization can encourage to express their feeling in official way which certainly reduces the vulgar expressions.

The above-discussed points are only the tip of the iceberg. An organization can look for innovative ways to capture the entire iceberg and thus understand, assess and manage organizational identity.

Organizational folklore as a framework is certainly powerful and has wide-ranging potential in Talent Acquisition, Talent Management and organization development practices.

Box: 1

Vision & Mission of an Organization:

"Pratap Rana HR manager of a big corporate met Daniel, management consultant and asked for his help in organizing a "vision mission workshop ", as they would like to compete with the world in having futuristic technologies being adopted. Daniel asked Pratap whether the workshop is a ritual to be formed or his their agenda and purpose for this "Not just that, we would like to have this workshop essentially to facilitate all the members of our organization to have shared vision and to make them part of the mission", Pratap said.

Daniel knew that Pratap represents an organization which in fact was established by a renowned technocrat and a visionary and first CEO who ran the organization a powerful leader and a missionary in the true sense of the term. Daniel was curious to know how many of the 500-odd employees of their organization know about the vision and contributions of the one who established the organization and also of the first CEO. Pratap who himself skeptical of his own knowledge of these two said

"See. ... we have portraits of these two gentlemen, hanging in our front office. Other than that many of us don't know a great deal about them. A large part of our staff are in their early thirties with very little experience in our organization and their knowledge of the two 'legends' is at the best minimal".

Daniel could understand the real problem that Pratap's organization was suffering from and suggested Pratap drop the idea of "vision —mission workshop" and to immediately initiate steps to resurrect the images of the visionary and the missionary of the organization (certainly not just the portraits) by "documenting" their ideas, aspirations and importantly, the actions which resulted in the shape of this organization from various sources and many such similar actions.

PS: What do you think we must be looking at for organization identity? Let me know your thoughts.

Guided by Late Dr. Ravi Paturi

 My project work with AHRD, Hyderabad; India