CIP Organisational Cultures

in the context of career
planning

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What is Organisational culture?
 Values and norms shared by people or groups in an
organisation that affect the way in which
individuals interact with each other within and
outside of the organisation.
 ‘Organisational cultures' are complex and multi
dimensional thus ‘Members
of organisations may have
goals that are contradictory
to senior management’.
(Thompson 2003 p8)

Image by : Netalloy

From an academic point of view understanding
organisational culture helps us appreciate:
 why organisations might have particular
goals,
 why organisations employ particular
working practices,
 why organisations are sometimes not
particularly effective or efficient,
 how different organisations might work
together, or not!

Image by : warszawianka

From a personal point of
view, understanding organisational
cultures and issues related to this can:
 Help you show a greater
understanding of an organisation
in a job application or interview.
 Help you to understand what the
organisation might be looking for
in its workforce.
 Help you to reflect on whether you
would feel comfortable working
within such an organisation.
Image by : feraliminal

Former students experience
 ‘The reason why I resigned after two months after finishing
training was that it was a completely let down. Equality and
human rights were non-existent and I often found myself
on the receiving end of sexually harassing comments and
sexism. The attitude from other team members completely
eroded the confidence that I gained whilst at university. I
was the youngest in the office and the only one with a
degree and found myself completely isolated and
disjointed from the team.
I got absolute no support or encouragement; but criticism
was plenty. I am completely gutted with my short
experience within the police and feel embarrassed that I
have given up such a good job’.
Image by : Liftarn

Link between expectations and a
‘successful’ career:
 Success may be measured not just by status
and earnings. Other factors might include:

 personal influence,
 being recognised for one’s achievement,
 a sense of accomplishment or
achievement,
 enjoyment,
 working with integrity
 achieving an
acceptable work/life balance
(Sturges 1999 cited in
Arnold et al 2005) Image by : Merlin 2525

 Point 1: It is important for you to reflect on what
you think is important to you in respect of career
success as it might help you to choose an
appropriate career that will satisfy you.
Image by : zeimusu

Image by :

Overview of current inky2010
Used under a
Creative

trends in careers: Commons
licence

 No jobs for life Kandola et al (2003)
 Job situation is affected by the
economy, global markets, new technology
and government legislation.
 You are likely to have to re-train at sometime in your life.
 Employers expect new graduates to take on more
responsibility and ‘add value’ from the start. (ibid)
 Employers seek graduates who ‘want to be challenged right
from day one’ (Schlumberger Organisation cited in
Kandola et al (2003).

 Point 2: Employers are looking for ‘work savvy’. This is
why experience of being in the ‘work place’ is an
essential attribute for graduates along side their
degrees.

Some features of the current employment scene
include:
 Increasing workload for individuals
 Organisational changes
 More global competition
 More team-based work
 More short-term contracts
 Frequent changes in skills required
 More part time work
 Changing workforces
 More self employment
 Working from home
 Increased pressure on pension
schemes.
Arnold et al (2005) Image by : Onsemeliot

Implications for you:
 Greater need to look ahead and
update skills in order to remain employable.
 Greater need to make an effort to build up
and maintain a network of contacts. Image by : 1Percent Revolution
 Greater need to initiate, cope with and accept
change.
 Greater need to handle uncertainty
 Greater need for individuals to be flexible in terms of the
work that you are prepared to do.

 Point 3: Understanding and being positive about the
employment scene will help you to be realistic about
your employment aspirations and will enable you to
use the situation to your best advantage.

Career Anchors? Image by :

(Schein 1993) bogdanko
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Creative Commons
licence
 An area of your self concept that you
would not give up:
 Managerial competence: responsibility, leadership and
income.
 Technical/Functional competence: specialist
skills, knowledge and expertise. Identity is built around
work
 Security: Need for a reliable and predictable environment.
 Autonomy and independence: Freedom from restrictions,
 Entrepreneurial creativity: Want to run own business etc.
 Pure challenge: Wants to win against strong competition.
 Service/Dedication: need for work that expresses
social, political, religious or other values,
 Lifestyle integration: Life balance between
work, family, leisure and other activities is maintained.

What is your career anchor?
 Point 4: You could think about
what is your main ‘career
anchor’ in order to consider
what you can and cannot
compromise on in terms of
your career.

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Used under a Creative
Commons licence

Professionalism:
 Many of the types of work that you might
look at would be broadly described as a
Professional Job:
 This is not a neutral description but the
term is value laden McCulloch and Tett
(1999).
 Professions are controlling and legitimising
structures operating in the interests of Image by : anonymous
members of the particular professional Commons licence
group:
 ‘The Professional has knowledge which
other people do not have’ (Holdsworth cited
in McCulloch and Tett 1999 p38).
 This is quite empowering if you are ‘one of
the group’, and conversely can be
exclusionary for those who are not ‘in the
know’.

Jargon-speak!
 MAPP’s, CARAT’s, YOT’s NOM’s
SATs. SOCO, ARV, RTA.
Image by :
IC1. DLA, IC, merzok
Used under a
 Point 5: Professional jobs often have a Creative
Commons

professional language, have particular licence

procedures and are affected by governmental
policy and legislation. It helps to know
something about this so that you can give the
impression that you are the type of graduate
who will ‘hit the ground running’ if they
employ you.

Managerialism:
 Since the 1980’s Corporatism, with its emphasis on
management, performance and cost effectiveness has
affected the employment scene.
 Corporatism means the process of putting together different
organisations with the aim of identifying and dealing with a Image by :
tavin
common goal. Used under a
 Kirton 2005 identifies that whilst for critics, corporatism is Creative
Commons
seen as a repressive force using state power to increase licence
surveillance and control over those who deliver and receive
services, for those who support this, it would seem to offer
the potential for ‘joined up’ responses, so that agencies can
work together towards a common goal.

 Point 6: Its worth knowing something about
the types of performance indicators agencies
have to adhere to and what outcomes they are
trying to achieve.

Inter-agency Partnerships:
 According to Newman (cited in Wood and Kemshall 2008)
Partnerships as a mode of governance began to gain ground
throughout the 80’s and 90’s building on a historical
tradition of attempts to create ‘joined up’ government.
 This was due to the increased fragmentation and
complexity of the public sector.
 Neo-liberalism encourages rolling back state control and
bringing in market forces to underpin public services
 See new models of partnership ranging from public/private
partnerships across central and local public service delivery
to local community based partnerships often led by the
voluntary sector.

Lateral thinking:
 Lots of partnerships can equate to lots of different
ways of getting the job that you want.
 Look at other agencies if the one that you are
interested in is not recruiting
 Remember that the voluntary or private sectors are
a good place to look apart from the public sector.
 Look at multi-agency teams to find out about
different agencies and organisations that may be
involved in dealing with a particular problem or
common goal that interests you. Image by :
anonymous
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Creative
Commons
licence

Pluralisation of ‘policing’
(Crawford 2008)
MI5 and MI6; Ministry of Defence Police;
Civil Nuclear Constabulary British Transport Police
Port/Docks Police Serious Fraud Office
Customs and Border Police Benefit Fraud
Health and Safety Executive Environment Agency
Street Wardens Anti-soc Behaviour teams
Housing Officers Community Safety Partners
Traffic Wardens Ofcom; Ofwat, Ofgem
Audit Commission.

 Point 7: Show lateral thinking: see the existence
of multi agency partnerships as an opportunity to
be able to get into areas that you are interested in,
by different routes.
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ryanlerch
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Commons licence

Problems: Wikipedia commons
This file is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-
Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

 Collaboration is sometimes difficult because differences
between cultures may arise:
 ‘much collaboration is ‘phantom’ because different workers
and different organisations continue to work in parallel
rather than by changing practices’ (Milburn cited in
McCulloch and Tett 1999 p41)
 Point 8: you might like to think how some of the skills
that we encourage in the course such as qualitative
research methodologies and also group work, might
prepare you for the difficulties of working in inter-
agency partnerships in the ‘real world’.

Getting to grips with work culture.
 Considerable documentation on the issue of police
culture: Skolnick; Westmarland, Reiner etc.
 But other organisations have cultures too.
 Many corporate disasters, miscarriages of justice and
other problems have occurred due to problematic
cultures within organisations, but organisational
cultures are often complex, don’t necessarily have
100% acceptance from workers and can sometimes be
positive.
 Chan (1996) challenges the idea that the police are
passive by-standers in the culture.
 Foster (2004) talks about there being multiple
cultures in the police, which is the case in other
organisations too.

Culture as a coping mechanism
 According to Reiner
(2000) whilst for police
culture, things like
machismo, intolerance,
prejudice and
conservatism are
known as important
aspects of the
culture, he also
identifies that Police
culture helps officers
cope with the tensions By Chris Brown

and pressures facing This file is licensed under
the Creative Commons
them. Attribution 2.0 Generic
license.

Image by : worker

Pressured jobs? Used under a
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licence

 It was very daunting at first. It was a big step
coming to work in a prison … A very big step. I
remember the first morning here … I was that
nervous I couldn’t stop shaking. Obviously I was
scared stiff, like. …it suddenly hit me how
outnumbered we were, and they [the prisoners]
were shouting ‘Rookies! Rookies!’ I was terrified
then. You had to keep your hands in your pockets
so that they couldn’t see your hands shaking. I was
that frightened! (Prison Officer in Crawley 2004 p
92).

Official and un-official cultures:
 Whilst equality is officially promoted in all
professions, this might not be the case in reality as can
be seen in this comment from Crawley’s research:
 As soon as they knew there was women on the course
some of the blokes said ‘Oh no, fucking splits! I hope I
haven’t got one on my team’. They were looking for
mistakes all the time. If the women fell over running
up the stairs with their shields, they’d get called a
stupid bitch, but if a bloke fell over they just laughed.
 (cited in Crawley 2004 p91)

Image by : omerta

You and your work…

About the Police:
 “you drive along and you see things or read things
differently to your wife or friends and invariably
matchboxes and cheques are covered with car
numbers and this sort of thing. You go to the
football, and you tend to be more aware, to keep
your eye on the yobs, or you notice odd
things…”(Reiner 1978)
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Commons licence

Work influences:
 Like police officers, prison officers are specifically trained
to be suspicious; … the ability to ‘read’ people and
situations is crucial for the maintenance of order and
indeed for his or her own safety …Summing up the advice
of the trainers, a female officer commented that ‘at training
college, you’re taught never to trust the bastards!’ …
 the development of a suspicious ‘mindset’ has certain
knock-on effects for officers’ relationships outside as well
as inside the prison. …‘You get to think that everybody is
out to do you harm if they get the chance … You get to
think, well, they’re all scroats. That’s it. End of story’
(senior officer, Lancaster Farms). (Crawley 2004 p86).
Image by : worker

Conclusion:
 Point 9: Understanding organisational
culture and being able to reflect on what is
important to you in a job, and also how you
might cope with organisational cultures
may help to make you more informed in
your choice of career.

CIP Organisational Cultures

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