Service Culture

Developing a service culture, maintaining one, or changing an organization into a company with a service culture is crucial to the functioning of service organizations. The first step to understanding how to develop a service culture is to understand what we mean by culture in the first place and some of the pitfalls involved in understanding any organization as a culture.

Organizational culture is generally studied using methods drawn from anthropology which is the study of cultures. Originally many anthropological studies were conducted on 'Other' cultures (non-European) but this is no longer the case. Now anthropologists and ethnographers look at a wide variety of organizations as social systems, using the lens of culture. For instance, a favorite of mine is a study about heavy metal music by a young anthropologist and heavy metal fan and made into a film - the trailer is below. 

 

One way to understand culture is to understand some basic characteristics of culture; the things or the words used to describe cultures. Shein's is a commonly cited model; it describes three levels of culture from the most basic ideas people have about time, space, the environment, ideas about God and so on. These underlying assumptions lead to espoused (spoken) values including ritual and origin stories which tell us more about these underlying and often unspoken value systems. At the third level is the level of behaviors and artifacts,  that is, the ways people behave towards each other, things and others, and the artifacts that can be seen and touched that symbolize their culture. 

The image below shows these levels diagrammatically and then, as it may be easier to understand these characteristics with an example we look at the difference between 'surfing' culture and 'surf lifesaving' culture.

In organizations the focus is often on change - how to change an organization from a manufacturing to a service-focused firm for instance (see Gronroos Chapter 14 on this topic). Change models like Lewin's change model (unfreezing and then refreezing) are often cited. The role of leadership is incorporated into this model in the diagram below. That is, service leadership is crucial in the process of bringing about change in a service-focused firm. Organizational structure A (present service) is changed to organizational structure B (service vision) through the operation of service visionary leadership and the influence this has on the operational aspects of processes, people and culture. The service leader's role is to communicate and enthuse people and systems with this vision.

Another way to understand organizational culture and the impact it has on behavior is to look at very strong cultures. A good example is prisons and their cultures. Using Schein's levels of culture above and the cultural web model below we can easily identify aspects of prisons that make up their cultures (in a typical stereotypical prison).

Use the following set of images to help you imagine what prison might be like ...

But are strong cultures a problem or are they the solution? Strong cultures can be a problem if their leadership is a problem (not ethical or no vision) or if they cannot change. Generally speaking a strong culture today would be seen as flexible, not rigid, and organic warm and living, not static and rigid (like an iceberg!).

How do companies maintain and develop a shared culture? Corporate culture is a pattern of shared values and beliefs that give members of an organization meaning and provide them with rules of behavior.