Organisational Culture

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE


AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE CHAPTER


By the end of the chapter you will:


Understand the relation between organizational culture and the business context. How
does culture contribute to organizational innovation and success?

Appreciate the contribution of organizational culture to the management of change;

Understand the analytic elements of organization culture, such as stories, myths, heroes
and villains;

Have reviewed some of the cultural types in organizations;

Not be too anxious about the remaining puzzles. If culture is unifying what about
multiple cultures and counter – cultures? Should we take a managerial or an
anthropological view of culture? Can culture be managed?
BRIEF OUTLINE OF CHAPTER

Introduction

Organizational culture and strategic management

Success, excellence, innovation

Culture and the management of change

Other cultures

Exploring organizational culture

Culture is symbolic

Culture is unifying

Culture is holistic

Classifying cultures?

Evaluating concepts of culture

Conflicting views of culture

Corporate culture or corporate image?

Managing culture?

Conclusion


CHAPTER SYNOPSIS


In this chapter we look first at the importance of the business context. What does
culture contribute to the bottom line? Secondly, culture is clearly a complex subject
and one we will need to explore in some detail. It refers to the totality of knowledge
in an organization or society. Thirdly we need to review the strengths and
weaknesses of the cultural metaphor – in particular the tensions that exist between
the idea that beliefs and meanings can be ‘managed’ and that of culture as a unique
set of attributes.


ANNOTATED LECTURE OUTLINE
INTRODUCTION, AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF LECTURE


Point 1 – Introduction


This sets the context for the lecture. Originally an anthropological term, culture refers
to the underlying values, beliefs and codes of practice that makes a community what
it is. The customs of society, the self – image of its members, the things that make it
different from other societies, are its culture. Culture is powerfully subjective and
reflects the meanings and understandings that we typically attribute to situations, the
solutions that we apply to common problems. The idea of a common culture
suggests possible problems about whether organizations have cultures.
Organizations are only one constituent element of society. People enter them from
the surrounding community and bring their culture with them. It is still possible for
organizations to have cultures of their own as they possess the paradoxical quality of
being both ‘part’ of and ‘apart’ from society. They are embedded in the wider societal
context but they are also communities of their own with distinct rules and values.
Point 2 – Organizational culture and strategic management
Culture has long been on the agenda of management theorists. Culture change
must mean changing the corporate ethos, the images and values that inform action
and this new way of understanding organizational life must be brought into the
management process. There are a number of central aspects of culture:
There is an evaluative element involving social expectations and standards;
the values and beliefs that people hold central and that bind organizational
groups.
Culture is also a set of more material elements or artefacts. These are the
signs and symbols that the organization is recognized by but they are also the
events, behaviours and people that embody culture.
The medium of culture is social interaction, the web of communications that
constitute a community. Here a shared language is particularly important in
expressing and signifying a distinctive organizational culture.
Point 3 – Culture and Success
Deal and Kennedy (1982) argue that culture is the single most important factor
accounting for success or failure in organizations. They identified four key
dimensions of culture:
1. Values – the beliefs that lie at the heart of the corporate culture.
2. Heroes – the people who embody values.
3. Rites and rituals – routines of interaction that have strong symbolic qualities.
4. The culture network – the informal communication system or hidden hierarchy of
power in the organization.
Peters and Waterman (1982) suggest a psychological theory of the link between
organizational culture and business performance. Culture can be looked upon as a
reward of work; we sacrifice much to the organization and culture is a form of return
on effort.
Kanter (1989) refers to the paradox implicit in linking culture with change. On the
surface culture has essentially traditional and stable qualities, so how can you have a
‘culture of change?’ Yet this is exactly what the innovative organization needs.
Point 4 – Culture and the management of change
If real change is to occur in organizations rather than cosmetic or short – lived
change, it has to happen at the cultural level. Corporate culture has many powerful
attractions as a lever for change. The problem is how to get a hand on the lever.
Firstly, cultures can be explicitly created – you have to be aware of what it
takes to change an existing culture.
The ability of companies to be culturally innovative is related to leadership
and top management must be responsible for building strong cultures.
Leaders construct the social reality of the organization, they shape values and
attend to the drama and vision of the organization.
Culture is frequently counterposed to formal rationality – in this sense culture
helps to resolve the dilemma of bureaucracy; formal procedures are
necessary for business integrity but they also stifle autonomy and innovation.
The period from the mid 70s has been one of growing uncertainty for firms and in
response to a changing environment and business crises adaptable cultures that are
responsive to change have become vital. Morgan (1977) focuses on the whole
organization, the cultivation of harmonious relations at all levels, the merging of
individual with common goals and a reliance on worker responsibility (Japanese
approaches) as success factors in organizational culture.
Point 5 – Exploring organizational culture
Attempts to define organizational culture have adopted a number of different
approaches. Some focus on manifestations – the heroes and villains, rites, rituals,
myths and legends that populate organizations. Culture is also socially constructed
and reflects meanings that are constituted in interaction and that form commonly
accepted definitions of the situation.
Culture is symbolic and is described by telling stories about how we feel about the
organization. A symbol stands for something more than itself and can be many
things, but the point is that a symbol is invested with meaning by us and expresses
forms of understanding derived from our past collective experiences. The
sociological view is that organizations exist in the minds of the members. Stories
about culture show how it acts as a sense - making device.
Culture is unifying and refers to the processes that bind the organization together.
Culture is then consensual and not conflictual. The idea of corporate culture
reinforces the unifying strengths of central goals and creates a sense of common
responsibility.
Culture is holistic and refers to the essence – the reality of the organization; what it is
like to work there, how people deal with each other and what behaviours are
expected.
All of the above elements are interlocking; culture is rooted deep in unconscious
sources but is represented in superficial practices and behaviour codes. Because
organizations are social organisms and not mechanisms, the whole is present in the
parts and symbolic events become microcosms of the whole.
Point 6 – Classifying cultures?
One way of exploring cultures is to classify them into types.
1. Role Cultures – are highly formalized, bound with regulations and paperwork and
authority and hierarchy dominate relations.
2. Task Cultures – are the opposite, the preserve a strong sense of the basic mission of the
organization and teamwork is the basis on which jobs are designed.
3. Power Cultures – have a single power source, which may be an individual or a corporate
group. Control of rewards is a major source of power.
Handy points out that these types are usually tied to a particular structure and design
of organization. A role culture has a typical pyramid structure. A task culture has
flexible matrix structures. A power culture has web – like communications structure.
Cultural analysis brings to centre stage a rich vein of behaviours and stands on its head much
of the conventional wisdom about organizations. Stories, legends, rituals and heroes are key
elements of organizational functioning and may actually serve more important objectives than
formal decision making. We need to consider in more depth the different ways in which
culture has been used in organization study. Wilson and Rosenfield (1990) distinguish two
schools of thought:
1. The analytical school stresses the context and history of the organization and how culture
acts as a socializing force controlling the behaviour of members.
2. The applicable school view culture in terms of commitment to central goals and as a
means of managing successful organizational change.
Point 7 – Managing culture?
Corporate culture is really a kind of image for the company which top management
would like to project. The image of the organization differs according to where you
view it. Even in companies with strong cultures the social distance between senior
management and shop floor reality can be very wide. Cultures are hardly planned or
predictable; they are the natural products of social interaction and evolve and emerge
over time. So is it valid to allow such a notion of culture to give way to a version of
managed consensus? Pettigrew believes that cultures can be shaped to suit
strategic ends. He has in mind the idea that organizations have the capacity to
transform themselves from within. Even if cultures can be managed is this
necessarily a good thing? Willmott (1993) has fashioned a tough challenge to what
he calls corporate culturalism. This is the tendency for culture to be promoted as a
device for increasing corporate effectiveness.
Conclusion
Culture spans the range of management thinking and organizational culture has been
one of the most enduring buzzwords of popular management. Why? What is the
appeal of the concept? Organizational culture is apparently unifying and this strongly
appeals to management’s concern with projecting an image of the organization as a
community of interests. Perhaps most importantly culture penetrates to the essence
of an organization – it almost analogous with the concept of personality in relation to
the individual and this acute sense of what an organization is – its mission, core
values – seems to have become a necessary asset of the modern company. There
is the vexed question of whether or not organizational culture can be managed.
Academics interested in understanding and analyzing culture tend to say no. While
there may be no definitive answer to the question, the critical and the managerial
sides of the debate and inform and renew each other so it remains important to
explore both.


DISCUSSION POINTS
1. As discussed, organizational culture may be perceived as different, depending on
where you are in the hierarchy. In relation to culture as holistic and unifying, do
you think this is true? Develop an argument to justify your answer using your
own personal examples where you can.
2. In addition to the types of culture discussed there is also the Person or Support culture,
which offers its members ‘satisfactions’ resulting from relationships, mutuality,
belonging and connection. Here the assumption is that people will contribute out of a
sense of commitment to a group or organization of which they feel they are truly
members and in which they have a personal stake (Harrison: 1987.) The Kibbutz, the
commune and the co-operative are all striving for the support culture in an organizational
form. In this culture, the individual themselves have almost complete autonomy over the
work they do and if power is to be exercised then this is on the basis of expertise. Other
examples of this culture are universities, barristers, architects, and doctors. In groups,
discuss this culture and identify the advantages and disadvantages of this cultural type to
organization. Do you think this culture exists in organizations?
3. How important is it for managers to be aware of organizational culture and why?
4. Sub – cultures can be the most powerful groups in organizations – discuss.
Exercise:
Hand out the reading to students who are in mixed gender groups. Ask them to
analyze an organization or their educational institution in relation to gender culture.


ORGANIZATIONAL GENDER CULTURE


Green and Cassell (1996) argue that the case for linking culture with gendered
experience is a compelling one and one which is becoming increasingly recognized
as crucial to the understanding of women’s experience in organizations.
Organizational analysis is complex in that the differentiated cultures both within and
between organizations can display diverse images of masculinity and femininity, but
nonetheless these reinforce traditional patriarchal hierarchies. Most importantly,
analyzing the impact of the gendered nature of organizational cultures on the
everyday experiences of women managers is an area ripe for further investigation.

Organisational Change

What's "Organizational Change?"
Typically, the concept of organizational change is in regard to organization-wide change, as opposed to smaller changes such as adding a new person, modifying a program, etc. Examples of organization-wide change might include a change in mission,restructuring operations (e.g., restructuring to self-managed teams, layoffs, etc.), new technologies, mergers, major collaborations, "rightsizing", new programs such as Total Quality Management, re-engineering, etc. Some experts refer to organizational transformation. Often this term designates a fundamental and radical reorientation in the way the organization operates.
What Provokes "Organizational Change"?
Change should not be done for the sake of change -- it's a strategy to accomplish some overall goal. (See Organizational Performance Management.) Usually organizational change is provoked by some major outside driving force, e.g., substantial cuts in funding, address major new markets/clients, need for dramatic increases in productivity/services, etc. Typically, organizations must undertake organization-wide change to evolve to a different level in their life cycle, e.g., going from a highly reactive, entreprenueral organization to more stable and planned development. Transition to a new chief executive can provoke organization-wide change when his or her new and unique personality pervades the entire organization.
Why is Organization-Wide Change Difficult to Accomplish?
Typically there are strong resistances to change. People are afraid of the unknown. Many people think things are already just fine and don't understand the need for change. Many are inherently cynical about change, particularly from reading about the notion of "change" as if it's a mantra. Many doubt there are effective means to accomplish major organizational change. Often there are conflicting goals in the organization, e.g., to increase resources to accomplish the change yet concurrently cut costs to remain viable. Organization-wide change often goes against the very values held dear by members in the organization, that is, the change may go against how members believe things should be done. That's why much of organizational-change literature discusses needed changes in the culture of the organization, including changes in members' values and beliefs and in the way they enact these values and beliefs.
How Is Organization-Wide Change Best Carried Out?
Successful change must involve top management, including the board and chief executive. Usually there's a champion who initially instigates the change by being visionary, persuasive and consistent. A change agent role is usually responsible to translate the vision to a realistic plan and carry out the plan. Change is usually best carried out as a team-wide effort. Communications about the change should be frequent and with all organization members. To sustain change, the structures of the organization itself should be modified, including strategic plans, policies and procedures. This change in the structures of the organization typically involves an unfreezing, change and re-freezing process.
The best approaches to address resistances is through increased and sustained communications and education. For example, the leader should meet with all managers and staff to explain reasons for the change, how it generally will be carried out and where others can go for additional information. A plan should be developed and communicated. Plans do change. That's fine, but communicate that the plan has changed and why. Forums should be held for organization members to express their ideas for the plan. They should be able to express their concerns and frustrations as well.
Some General Guidelines to Organization-Wide Change
(Note that the library topic Basic Overview of Major Methods and Movements to Improve Organizational Performance includes overviews of major methods and movements associated with organizational change. Readers would best be served to read the following basic guidelines as foundation for carrying out any of the methods associated with organizational change.)
In addition to the general guidelines listed above, there are a few other basic guidelines to keep in mind.
1. Consider using a consultant. Ensure the consultant is highly experienced in organization-wide change. Ask to see references and check the references.
2. Widely communicate the potential need for change. Communicate what you're doing about it. Communicate what was done and how it worked out.
3. Get as much feedback as practical from employees, including what they think are the problems and what should be done to resolve them. If possible, work with a team of employees to manage the change.
4. Don't get wrapped up in doing change for the sake of change. Know why you're making the change. What goal(s) do you hope to accomplish?
6. Plan the change. How do you plan to reach the goals, what will you need to reach the goals, how long might it take and how will you know when you've reached your goals or not? Focus on the coordination of the departments/programs in your organization, not on each part by itself. Have someone in charge of the plan.
7. End up having every employee ultimately reporting to one person, if possible, and they should know who that person is. Job descriptions are often complained about, but they are useful in specifying who reports to whom.
8. Delegate decisions to employees as much as possible. This includes granting them the authority and responsibility to get the job done. As much as possible, let them decide how to do the project.
9. The process won't be an "aha!" It will take longer than you think.
10. Keep perspective. Keep focused on meeting the needs of your customer or clients.
11. Take care of yourself first. Organization-wide change can be highly stressful.
12. Don't seek to control change, but rather to expect it, understand it and manage it.
13. Include closure in the plan. Acknowledge and celebrate your accomplishments.
14. Read some resources about organizational change, including new forms and structures.


Adapted from “Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development” – to obtain the entire
book, select “Publications” at http://www.authenticityconsulting.com
Copyright, Authenticity Consulting, LLC 174
Major Types of Organizational Change
Typically, the phrase “organizational change” is about a significant change in the organization, such
as reorganization or adding a major new product or service. This is in contrast to smaller changes,
such as adopting a new computer procedure. Organizational change can seem like such a vague
phenomena that it is helpful if you can think of change in terms of various dimensions as described
below.
Organization-wide Versus Subsystem Change
Examples of organization-wide change might be a major restructuring, collaboration or “rightsizing.”
Usually, organizations must undertake organization-wide change to evolve to a different
level in their life cycle, for example, going from a highly reactive, entrepreneurial organization to
one that has a more stable and planned development. Experts assert that successful organizational
change requires a change in culture – cultural change is another example of organization-wide
change.
Examples of a change in a subsystem might include addition or removal of a product or service,
reorganization of a certain department, or implementation of a new process to deliver products or
services.
Transformational Versus Incremental Change
An example of transformational (or radical, fundamental) change might be changing an
organization’s structure and culture from the traditional top-down, hierarchical structure to a large
amount of self-directing teams. Another example might be Business Process Re-engineering, which
tries to take apart (at least on paper, at first) the major parts and processes of the organization and
then put them back together in a more optimal fashion. Transformational change is sometimes
referred to as quantum change.
Examples of incremental change might include continuous improvement as a quality management
process or implementation of new computer system to increase efficiencies. Many times,
organizations experience incremental change and its leaders do not recognize the change as such.
Remedial Versus Developmental Change
Change can be intended to remedy current situations, for example, to improve the poor performance
of a product or the entire organization, reduce burnout in the workplace, help the organization to
become much more proactive and less reactive, or address large budget deficits. Remedial projects
often seem more focused and urgent because they are addressing a current, major problem. It is
often easier to determine the success of these projects because the problem is solved or not.
Change can also be developmental – to make a successful situation even more successful, for
example, expand the amount of customers served, or duplicate successful products or services.
Developmental projects can seem more general and vague than remedial, depending on how specific
goals are and how important it is for members of the organization to achieve those goals.
Some people might have different perceptions of what is a remedial change versus a developmental
change. They might see that if developmental changes are not made soon, there will be need for
remedial changes. Also, organizations may recognize current remedial issues and then establish a
Adapted from “Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development” – to obtain the entire
book, select “Publications” at http://www.authenticityconsulting.com
Copyright; Authenticity Consulting, LLC 175
developmental vision to address the issues. In those situations, projects are still remedial because
they were conducted primarily to address current issues.
Unplanned Versus Planned Change
Unplanned change usually occurs because of a major, sudden surprise to the organization, which
causes its members to respond in a highly reactive and disorganized fashion. Unplanned change
might occur when the Chief Executive Officer suddenly leaves the organization, significant public
relations problems occur, poor product performance quickly results in loss of customers, or other
disruptive situations arise.
Planned change occurs when leaders in the organization recognize the need for a major change and
proactively organize a plan to accomplish the change. Planned change occurs with successful
implementation of a Strategic Plan, plan for reorganization, or other implementation of a change of
this magnitude.
Note that planned change, even though based on a proactive and well-done plan, often does not
occur in a highly organized fashion. Instead, planned change tends to occur in more of a chaotic and
disruptive fashion than expected by participants.

Adapted from “Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development” – to obtain the entire
book, select “Publications” at http://www.authenticityconsulting.com
Copyright; Authenticity Consulting, LLC 177
Requirements for Successful Organizational Change
Cummings and Worley (Organization Development and Change, 1995) describe a comprehensive,
five-phase, general process for managing change, including: 1) motivating change, 2) creating
vision, 3) developing political support, 4) managing the transition and 5) sustaining momentum.
That process seems suitable for organizing and describing general guidelines about managing
change. Whatever model you choose to use when guiding organizational change, that model should
include the priorities and areas of emphasis described in the following five phases of change. The
collaborative consulting model described integrates highlights from all of the five phases.
Motivating Change
This phase includes creating a readiness for change in your client organization and developing
approaches to overcome resistance to change. General guidelines for managing this phase include
enlightening members of the organization about the need for change, expressing the current status of
the organization and where it needs to be in the future, and developing realistic approaches about
how change might be accomplished. Next, organization leaders need to recognize that people in the
organization are likely to resist making major changes for a variety of reasons, including fear of the
unknown, inadequacy to deal with the change and whether the change will result in an adverse effect
on their jobs. People need to feel that their concerns are being heard. Leaders must widely
communicate the need for the change and how the change can be accomplished successfully.
Leaders must listen to the employees – people need to feel that the approach to change will include
their strong input and ongoing involvement.
Creating Vision
Leaders in the organization must articulate a clear vision that describes what the change effort is
striving to accomplish. Ideally, people in the organization have strong input to the creation of the
vision and how it can be achieved. The vision should clearly depict how the achievement of the
vision will improve the organization. It is critically important that people believe that the vision is
relevant and realistic. Research indicates that cynicism is increasing in organizations in regard to
change efforts. People do not want to hear the need for the latest “silver bullet” that will completely
turn the organization around and make things better for everyone all the time. They want to feel
respected enough by leaders to be involved and to work toward a vision that is realistic, yet
promising in the long run.
Often the vision is described in terms of overall outcomes (or changes) to be achieved by all or parts
of the organization, including associated goals and objectives to achieve the outcomes. Sometimes,
an overall purpose, or mission, is associated with the effort to achieve the vision, as well.
Developing Political Support
This phase of change management is often overlooked, yet it is the phase that often stops successful
change from occurring. Politics in organizations is about power. Power is important among
members of the organization when striving for the resources and influence necessary to successfully
carry out their jobs. Power is also important when striving to maintain jobs and job security. Power
usually comes from credibility, whether from strong expertise or integrity. Power also comes from
the authority of one’s position in the organization.
Some people have a strong negative reaction when talking about power because power often is
associated with negative applications, for example, manipulation, abuse or harassment. However,
Adapted from “Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development” – to obtain the entire
book, select “Publications” at http://www.authenticityconsulting.com
Copyright, Authenticity Consulting, LLC 178
power, like conflict, exists in all human interactions and is not always bad. It is how power and
conflict are used and managed that determine how power and conflict should be perceived.
Matters of power and politics are critically important to recognize and manage during organizational
change activities. Change often means shifts in power across management levels, functions and
groups. To be successful, the change effort must recruit the support of all key power players, for
example, senior management, subject matter experts and others who are recognized as having strong
expertise and integrity.
A strong mechanism for ensuring alignment of power with the change effort is to develop a network
of power-players who interact and count on each other to support and guide the change effort.
Means to manage power can include ensuring that all power-players are involved in recognizing the
need for change, developing the vision and methods to achieve the vision, and organization-wide
communication about the status of change. Any recommendations or concerns expressed by those in
power must be promptly recognized and worked through.
Managing Transition
This phase occurs when the organization works to make the actual transition from the current state to
the future state. In consultations, this phase usually is called implementation of the action plans.
The plans can include a wide variety of “interventions,” or activities designed to make a change in
the organization, for example, creating and/or modifying major structures and processes in the
organization. These changes might require ongoing coaching, training and enforcement of new
policies and procedures. In addition, means of effective change management must continue,
including strong, clear, ongoing communication about the need for the change, status of the change,
and solicitation of organization members’ continuing input to the change effort.
Ideally, the various actions are integrated into one overall Change Management Plan that includes
specific objectives, or milestones, that must be accomplished by various deadlines, along with
responsibilities for achieving each objective. Rarely are these plans implemented exactly as planned.
Thus, as important as developing the plan, is making the many ongoing adjustments to the plan with
key members of the organization, while keeping other members up-to-date about the changes and the
reasons for them.

Sustaining Momentum
Often, the most difficult phase in managing change is this phase when leaders work to sustain the
momentum of the implementation and adjustment of plans. Change efforts can encounter a wide
variety of obstacles, for example, strong resistance from members of the organization, sudden
departure of a key leader in the organization, or a dramatic reduction in sales. Strong, visible,
ongoing support from top leadership is critically important to show overall credibility and
accountabilities in the change effort. Those participating in the change effort often require ongoing
support, often in the form of provision of resources, along with training and coaching. The role of
support cannot be minimized – despite its importance during organizational change, the role of
support is often forgotten. At this point in a consulting project, it may be wise for you to ensure you
have ongoing support (often from other consultants) that can provide you ongoing objectivity,
affirmation, provision of resources and other forms of support. Employee performance management
systems play a critical role in this phase of organizational change, including in setting goals, sharing
feedback about accomplishment of goals, rewarding behaviors that successfully achieve goals and accomplish change, and addressing performance issues.

Job Description and Job Specification

Job descriptions


are lists of the general tasks, or functions, and responsibilities of a position. Typically, they also include to whom the position reports, specifications such as the qualifications needed by the person in the job, salary range for the position, etc. Job descriptions are usually developed by conducting a job analysis, which includes examining the tasks and sequences of tasks necessary to perform the job. The analysis looks at the areas of knowledge and skills needed by the job. Note that a role is the set of responsibilities or expected results associated with a job. A job usually includes several roles
Possible Job Description Items

Job Title
Human Resources Manager
Job Summary
Managing overall center process, insuring work high performance with zero mistakes and giving a detailed daily report to the general manager.
Job Duties
May also be called Tasks Performed; may be as lengthy as necessary to fully describe each essential duty or responsibility which comprises the employee's functions, generally starting with principal duties.
Roles and Responsibilities
Includes supervisory level, managerial requirements, and any working relationships.
The position that an Individual holds in the organization.
Job Specifications or Qualifications
may include education, experience-level, knowledge and skill sets, as well as any physical limitations (such as "able to lift 30 lbs").
Is the minimum requirements that is needed for the specific job, or position.
General Guidelines
Insure that the information concerning a position is as descriptive as possible to pull viable candidates and provide guidance to the interviewer(s) when sifting through applicants. These guidelines may include items which do not easily fit under other categories, but play a part in the performance of the job.
Key Role Interactions
Defines the people and/or departments which the position will be require to relate with in the course of the job. Though not necessarily an exhaustive list, certainly will provide both interviewer and applicant a basis of understanding when discussing past positions and potential responsibilities.
Professional Skills
Describes in enough detail the key ability sets and experiences which will be required from past positions to allow a new hire to function and perform the duties of the job from day one.
Interpersonal Skills
Defines the 'softer' skills and talents which make for a well-rounded and efficient employee, as well as effective worker, regardless of the position. These may include:
- Personal Attributes,
- General Business Skills,
- Leadership Skills.



Job Specification


Job specification summarizes the human characteristics needed for satisfactory job completion. It tries to describe the key qualifications someone needs to perform the job successfully. It spells out the important attributes of a person in terms of education, experience, skills, knowledge and abilities (SKAs) to perform a particular job. The job specification is a logical outgrowth of a job description. For each job description, it is desirable to have a job specification. This helps the organization to find what kind of persons is needed to take up specific jobs. The personal attributes that are described through a job specification may be classified into three categories:
 Essential attributes: skills, knowledge and abilities (SKAs) a person must possess.
 Desirable attributes: qualifications a person ought to posses.
 Contra-indicators: attributes that will become a handicap to successful job performance.
A job specification can be developed by talking with the current jobholders about the attributes required to do the job satisfactorily. Opinions of supervisors could also be used as additional inputs. Checking the job needs of other organizations with similar jobs will also help in developing job specifications.
Job specification is useful in the selection process because it offers a clear set of qualifications for an individual to be hired for a specific job. Likewise, a well-written job specification offers a clear picture to new recruits of what they will be doing in the organization

Organisational Culture Notes

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

One of the primary responsibilities of strategic leaders is to create and maintain the organizational characteristics that reward and encourage collective effort. Perhaps the most fundamental of these is organizational culture. But what do we really mean by organizational culture? What influence does it have on an organization? How does one go about building, influencing or changing an organization's culture?

THE IMPACT OF CULTURE

Why is culture so important to an organization? Edgar Schein, an MIT Professor of Management and author of Organizational Culture and Leadership: A Dynamic View, suggests that an organization's culture develops to help it cope with its environment. Today, organizational leaders are confronted with many complex issues during their attempts to generate organizational achievement in VUCA environments. A leader's success will depend, to a great extent, upon understanding organizational culture.

Schein contends that many of the problems confronting leaders can be traced to their inability to analyze and evaluate organizational cultures. Many leaders, when trying to implement new strategies or a strategic plan leading to a new vision, will discover that their strategies will fail if they are inconsistent with the organization's culture. A CEO, SES, political appointee, or flag officer who comes into an organization prepared to "shake the place up" and institute sweeping changes, often experiences resistance to changes and failure. Difficulties with organizational transformations arise from failures to analyze an organization's existing culture.

WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE?

There is no single definition for organizational culture. The topic has been studied from a variety of perspectives ranging from disciplines such as anthropology and sociology, to the applied disciplines of organizational behavior, management science, and organizational communication. Some of the definitions are listed below:

A set of common understandings around which action is organized, . . . finding expression in language whose nuances are peculiar to the group (Becker and Geer 1960).

A set of understandings or meanings shared by a group of people that are largely tacit among members and are clearly relevant and distinctive to the particular group which are also passed on to new members (Louis 1980).

A system of knowledge, of standards for perceiving, believing, evaluating and acting . . . that serve to relate human communities to their environmental settings (Allaire and Firsirotu 1984).

The deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are: learned responses to the group's problems of survival in its external environment and its problems of internal integration; are shared by members of an organization; that operate unconsciously; and that define in a basic "taken -for-granted" fashion in an organization's view of itself and its environment (Schein 1988).

Any social system arising from a network of shared ideologies consisting of two components: substance-the networks of meaning associated with ideologies, norms, and values; and forms-the practices whereby the meanings are expressed, affirmed, and communicated to members (Trice and Beyer 1984).

This sampling of definitions represents the two major camps that exist in the study of organizational culture and its "application strategies." The first camp views culture as implicit in social life. Culture is what naturally emerges as individuals transform themselves into social groups as tribes, communities, and ultimately, nations. The second camp represents the view that culture is an explicit social product arising from social interaction either as an intentional or unintentional consequence of behavior. In other words, culture is comprised of distinct observable forms (e.g., language, use of symbols, ceremonies, customs, methods of problem solving, use of tools or technology, and design of work settings) that groups of people create through social interaction and use to confront the broader social environment. (Wuthnow and Witten 1988). This second view of culture is most relevant to the analysis and evaluation of organizational culture and to cultural change strategies that leaders can employ to improve organizational performance.

BEHAVIOR AND ARTIFACTS

We can also characterize culture as consisting of three levels (Schein 1988). The most visible level is behavior and artifacts. This is the observable level of culture, and consists of behavior patterns and outward manifestations of culture: perquisites provided to executives, dress codes, level of technology utilized (and where it is utilized), and the physical layout of work spaces. All may be visible indicators of culture, but difficult to interpret. Artifacts and behavior also may tell us what a group is doing, but not why. One cartoon which captures this aspect shows two executives sitting at their desks in an office. Both have large billed black and white checked hats. One is saying to the other, "I don't know how it started, either. All I know is that it's part of our corporate culture."

VALUES

At the next level of culture are values. Values underlie and to a large extent determine behavior, but they are not directly observable, as behaviors are. There may be a difference between stated and operating values. People will attribute their behavior to stated values.

ASSUMPTIONS AND BELIEFS

To really understand culture, we have to get to the deepest level, the level of assumptions and beliefs. Schein contends that underlying assumptions grow out of values, until they become taken for granted and drop out of awareness. As the definition above states, and as the cartoon illustrates, people may be unaware of or unable to articulate the beliefs and assumptions forming their deepest level of culture.

To understand culture, we must understand all three levels, a difficult task. One additional aspect complicates the study of culture: the group or cultural unit which "owns" the culture. An organization may have many different cultures or subcultures, or even no discernible dominant culture at the organizational level. Recognizing the cultural unit is essential to identifying and understanding the culture.

Organizational cultures are created, maintained, or transformed by people. An organization's culture is, in part, also created and maintained by the organization's leadership. Leaders at the executive level are the principle source for the generation and re-infusion of an organization's ideology, articulation of core values and specification of norms. Organizational values express preferences for certain behaviors or certain outcomes. Organizational norms express behaviors accepted by others. They are culturally acceptable ways of pursuing goals. Leaders also establish the parameters for formal lines of communication and message content-the formal interaction rules for the organization. Values and norms, once transmitted through the organization, establish the permanence of the organization's culture.

WHAT RELEVANCE DOES ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE HAVE TO LEADERS IN FEDERAL AGENCIES?

One of the most perplexing issues facing leaders within the Department of Defense and other agencies of the federal government can be classified under one rubric-change. Government organizations' responses to events such as the "re-invention of government", downsizing and defense conversion, shrinking operating budgets, acquisition reform, and the military's expanded role in operations other than war are requiring leaders to make course corrections. Leaders in these organizations are being challenged to think differently, to:

* Reconceptualize the role their organization plays in government
* Reconceptualize, the goals of their organization, and
* Reconceptualize how people in their organizations will work together to achieve these goals.

The term reconceptualize is emphasized here because the 21st century challenges for strategic leaders in this country involve interpreting what appears to be the same world in radically different ways. For example, not only must the Department of Defense work to make "jointness" achieve its potential, it must also reconceptualize how it can effectively operate with domestic and foreign civilian agencies in activities other than war. So DOD's goals of providing global deterrence and warfighting capability must be reconceptualized into simultaneously providing the capability for coalition building, peacekeeping, and humanitarian operations.

Strategic leaders have an additional set of challenges. They have to create the means and the opportunities to infuse their employees with new ways of looking at themselves and their capabilities. Leaders' new ideologies and values need to be communicated effectively, internalized by employees, and then translated into productive methods of thinking and working. The useful techniques for overcoming these challenges fall within the domains of evaluating and transforming organizational cultures.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IS ALSO A SYNTHESIS OF SUBCULTURES

Sociologists Gary Fine and Sherryl Kleinman discuss how distinct societies are composites of interacting subcultures rather than a single overarching culture. Organizations consist of subgroups that have specific characteristics and a sense of identification. Within organizations, people can easily classify themselves and others into various social categories or groups based on identification with their primary work group, occupational or professional skills, union membership, or age cohort. (Ouchi 1980, and Ashforth and Mael 1989). Subgroups in organizations can and do create subcultures that comprise specific networks of meaning; yet, at the same time, they remain associated with the ideologies and values of the organization's leadership. For example, at a macro level the culture that is attributed to the Department of Defense comprises the distinct cultures of the different military services and the corps of civil servants assigned to each service agency (Builder 1989). A closer examination of each service culture reveals still greater cultural differentiation among occupational specialties, specific units within the service, and between line and staff personnel. Yet all of these subcultures adhere to the core ideologies, values and norms of the DOD.

Numerous studies of organizational culture have highlighted that the formation and maintenance of culture requires interpersonal interaction within subgroups. For example, research led by Meryl Louis (Louis, Posner, and Powell 1983) demonstrated the benefits of subgroup interaction to newcomers "learning the ropes" of the jobs. Survey respondents in their first job experience reported that the three most important socialization aids were:

* Interaction with peers
* Interaction with their supervisor
* Interaction with senior co-workers.

Interaction with peers on the job was viewed as most important in helping newcomers becoming effective employees. Interaction is important for the acculturation of newcomers. However, to get a grasp on how cultures are formed and promulgated we need to ask: "what is the content of interpersonal interaction in work settings?"

Research conducted by John VanMaanan and Steven Barley (1984) provides some insight to this question. They discovered that the content of the interaction is behavioral and cognitive in nature. During initial interactions with newcomers, the established occupational community transmits to new members those shared occupational practices (including norms and roles), values, vocabularies and identities-all examples of the explicit social products that are indicative of culture in organizations. These findings were reinforced by Sonja Sackmann's research on subcultures in a medium sized conglomerate in the United States. She found that subcultures were found to form on the basis of functional domains; principally in their biased knowledge of events in the organization, in their biased explanations of cause and effect relationships, and in their patterns of behavior. The conglomerate's production division consisted of three subcultures: electronics production, shop floor production, and product inspection. Sackmann reported:

Each subgroup was influenced by the nature of its particular work. This "local" orientation also differentiated each group from the others. All three groupings clearly distinguished between "we" and "them". This distinction was supported by my observations of them. They dressed differently, and they worked in distinctly different work spaces that were furnished differently. They took separate breaks during the day, and the tone in which they interacted varied it its degree of roughness. The electronics group talked about "job security," "a small company," and "health and dental insurance." The shop floor production group talked about "more work," "upgrade of assembly," and "being in control of the job." [Discussion] themes in the shop floor production group were oriented toward people, growth in the division/company, and strategy. The inspection group mentioned an "expanded inspection department," "improvements in quality control," the "quality control system," or "partnership." Some [other discussion] themes in the group were growth of the division/company and orientation toward people (Sackmann 1992).

Organizations do not, however, always have homogeneous subcultures. The explicit social products produced by subcultures within organizations can be widely diverse and even result in countercultures. Such was the case of the Army Air Forces as its early proponents, such as Brig. General Billy Mitchell, tried to assert the value of airpower against the resistance of the traditional warfighting cultures of the Army and the Navy. The culmination of the airpower counter culture's assertiveness, both through word and deed resulted in the formation of the Air Force as a separate service in 1947. Similar examples of military counter cultures also exist in the Navy (e.g., Admiral Rickover's nuclear submarine counterculture) and the Army (e.g., General Hutton's skunkworks that created the armed helicopter)(Zald and Berger 1978).

In a more contemporary example, researchers Joanne Martin and Caren Siehl from Stanford University (1983) conducted an analysis of the events and stories related to John Delorean's tenure as division head at General Motors. They concluded that Delorean created a subculture counter to the corporate GM culture based in the core values of loyalty, hierarchy, and conformity. Executives were expected to show deferential respect for authority and accept deferential treatment from subordinates; openly express loyalty to the corporation; and to be conservative in their choices of wardrobe and office decoration.

Delorean took steps to create a counter culture that would try to force innovations when he could not get his ideas accepted by his superiors. Capitalizing on the support of his followers, Delorean and his people expressed a new culture with an alternative set of core values, preferring productivity to deference, objective measures of performance to subjective measures of conformity, and independence to blind loyalty. They dressed in contemporary styles, redecorated their offices in bright bold colors and modern furniture, and discarded GM's bureaucratic procedures for streamlined decision making processes. Delorean also refused to participate in the ceremonies and rituals of deference that were widely practiced in the corporation. As an ultimate rejection of GM's core values, Delorean attacked a GM icon, the Corvair (before Ralph Nader) for faulty construction, its unsafe performance and persistent maintenance problems. For a while, Delorean was able to maintain a delicate balance within the dominant culture's latitude of tolerance, but eventually met with disfavor; he was asked to leave the company and the counter culture disintegrated.

These examples illustrate that countercultures can have both productive and unproductive outcomes. Perhaps the key to a counterculture's success (i.e., the promulgation of its ideology, values and norms) is the group's ability to demonstrate how its idiosyncrasies are consonant with the core ideologies, values and norms of the dominant culture. The counter cultures in the military services still possessed the ethos of warfighters, albeit through different forms of warfighting technology. Overtime, the strategic bomber, the nuclear submarine, and the attack helicopter were embraced by their respective service cultures. The Delorean analysis illustrates how counter cultures can be dysfunctional and ultimately extinguished when they advocate a complete rejection of the dominant culture's ideology, values, and norms.

THE SYMBIOSIS BETWEEN THE ORGANIZATION'S OVERALL CULTURE AND ITS SUBCULTURES

Some people may debate which comes first in an organization: the organizational culture or the organization's subcultures. The question that is relevant to this chapter is how do the ideologies, values, and norms of subcultures compliment the organizational culture advocated by leadership? Explaining this relationship requires an understanding that cultures provide members with a reliable means to interpret a highly ambiguous environment. It is the leader's responsibility to specify the features of the environment that are relevant to the organization and then provide the supporting assumptions and rationale for its operating strategies.

The leader's cultural messages should address ambiguities that are beyond the scope of any organizational subculture to explain to employees. Returning to Sonja Sackmann's research with a U.S. conglomerate, she found that the top management team "defined and framed the slice of reality in which organizational members behaved in their role as employees." Top management consistently made highly visible business and personnel decisions that reinforced the business' ideologies, values and norms for success. Her interviews throughout the organization revealed that the functional subcultures shared the top manager's conceptualizations of how tasks were accomplished in the organization; how employees could advance; the ways employees related to each other; the ways adaptation and change were accomplished; and how new knowledge was acquired and perpetuated. The bottom line is that distinct subcultures in the organization were united in their understanding of how they had to perform to produce successful organizational outcomes.

Sackmann's findings provide important insight for leaders who are trying to influence organizational culture in light of the potential influence of organizational subcultures. Leaders should recognize that their cultural messages should specifically address cultural ambiguities associated with subculture practices within the organization, and limit their attempts to eliminate distinctions that are important to subculture's identities. In other words, leaders have a better chance of creating or transforming an organizational culture if they accept and foster productive organizational subcultures and consistently communicate how employees must perform in order for the organization to achieve its objectives.

Cultural change then relies on leaders' communication techniques that cross subcultural boundaries and carry messages about ideologies, values and norms that can be internalized by all employees. Memos and vision statements cannot achieve all of these objectives. Leaders, however, have a variety of sophisticated cultural communication techniques at their disposal to link subcultures to overarching cultural objectives of their organizations.

CULTURAL FORMS AS LINKING MECHANISMS

Cultural forms function as the linking mechanism by which networks of understanding develop among employees. (Trice, 1988) The cultural forms shown in the table on pages 293-94 act as a medium for communicating ideologies, values, and norms. Cultural forms enable leaders to transmit messages about desirable culture to influence thinking and ways of behaving. Cultural forms also address the emotional aspects of organizations that are commonly referred to as cohesion or camaraderie. Organizational scholars Janice Beyer and Harrison Trice elaborate on this point:

Cultural forms not only aid sensemaking through the meanings they convey; they also aid the sensemaking process through the emotional reassurances they provide that help people persist in their coping efforts. Forms provide a concrete anchoring point, even if the meaning they carry are vague and only imperfectly transmitted....Also many cultural forms involve the expression of emotion and, by this venting of emotions, help people to cope with stress.

Federal agencies are replete with cultural forms that serve these purposes. However the challenges facing strategic leaders of these agencies involve creating and orchestrating cultural forms that can foster change and have longevity beyond their tenure. Cultural forms that have longevity by their nature such as rites and ceremonies reaffirm the organization's core ideologies, values and norms.

HOW CAN LEADERS DETECT DESIRABLE AND UNDESIRABLE CHARACTERISTICS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE?

Productive cultural change will occur if leaders correctly analyze the organization's existing culture, and evaluate it against the cultural attributes needed to achieve strategic objectives. Consequently, leaders must first possess a clear understanding of the strategic objectives for their organization and identify the actions needed to reach those objectives. These two tasks by themselves are difficult, particularly for the federal agencies that are experiencing volatile rates of change and reorientation. Nevertheless, without these specifications, any cultural transformation is a blind exercise.

Next conduct an analysis of the organizations existing ideologies, values and norms. Two critical questions that leaders should ask are: (1) Are existing explanations of cause and effect relationships, and acceptable beliefs and behaviors applicable to the organization's achievement of strategic objectives? (2) Are organizational members facing ambiguities about the external environment and internal work processes that can only be clarified by organizational leadership?

FORMULATING STRATEGIES FOR TRANSFORMING CULTURES IN ORGANIZATIONS

Strategic leadership needs to be transformational if it is to serve the organization. Transformational leaders must operate from a foundation of high morality and ethical practices and

A List of Definitions that Distinguish

Frequently Studied Cultural Forms
Rite Relatively elaborate, dramatic, planned sets of activities that consolidates various forms of cultural expressions into one event, which is carried out through social interactions, usually for the benefit of an audience.
Ceremonial A system of several rites connected with a single occasion or event.
Ritual A standardized, detailed set of techniques and behaviors that manage anxieties, but seldom produce intended, technical consequences of practical importance.
Myth A dramatic narrative of imagined events, usually used to explain origins of transformations of something . Also, an unquestioned belief about the practical benefits of certain techniques and behaviors that is not supported by demonstrated facts.
Saga An historical narrative describing the unique accomplishments of a group and its leaders-usually in heroic terms.
Legend A handed-down narrative of some wonderful event that is based in history but has been embellished with fictional details.
Story A narrative based on true events-often a combination of truth and fiction
Folktale A completely fictional narrative.
Symbol Any object, act, event, quality, or relation that serves as a vehicle for conveying meaning, usually by representing another thing.
Language A particular form or manner in which members of a group use vocal sounds and written signs to convey meanings to each other.
Gesture Movements of parts of the body used to express meanings.
Physical Those things than surround people physically setting and provide them with immediate sensory stimuli as they carry out culturally expressive activities.
Artifact Material objects manufactured by people to facilitate culturally expressive activities.

Adapted from Trice, 1984.

have a fundamental understanding of the highly complex factors that support and make possible collective effort in an organization. They must personally act in accord with productive values and beliefs, and they must teach others to do the same. They must promulgate the culture. The key method strategy leaders should follow to transform cultures is to teach symbolically. This type of strategy involves the artful crafting of new stories, new symbols, new traditions, and even new humor so that the ambiguities surrounding organizational life can be productively managed by all members of the organization. Without collective understanding-shared networks of revised meaning- the new ways of acting and thinking cannot be internalized by organizational members.

Culture is deep seated and difficult to change, but leaders can influence or manage an organization's culture. It isn't easy, and it cannot be done rapidly, but leaders can have an effect on culture. Schein outlines some specific steps leaders can employ:

* What leaders pay attention to, measure and control. Something as simple as what is emphasized or measured, over time, can have an effect on an organization's culture. One example of this is an emphasis on form over substance. If leaders pay more attention to form, an organizational culture can develop where people start to believe that the substance of a recommendation is less important than the way it is presented. One can recall when more attention was paid to the format of viewgraphs used in a briefing than what was said; what we characterize as "eyewash."
* Where do you think people will focus their effort once it becomes accepted that a slick presentation is what the leaders are looking for? How could you go about changing that aspect of the organization's culture? Consider cultural assumptions and beliefs underlying a "zero defects" organizational mentality. "You must always be perfect; mistakes aren't allowed." If this assumption reflects a dysfunctional aspect of an organization's culture, how would you go about changing that perception?
* Leader reactions to critical incidents and organizational crises. The way leaders react to crises says a lot about the organization's values, norms and culture. Crises, by their nature, bring out the organization's underlying core values. Often, this is where rhetoric becomes apparent. Reactions to crises are normally highly visible, because everyone's attention is focused on the incident or situation. Disconnects between actions and words will usually be apparent, and actions always speak louder than words. Additionally, a crisis not only brings a great deal of attention, it also generates a great deal of emotional involvement on the part of those associated with the organization, particularly if the crisis threatens the organization's survival. This increases the potential for either reinforcing the existing culture, or leading to a change in the culture. Such a crisis can provide an opportunity for a leader to influence the organization's culture in either a positive or a negative way.
* Deliberate role modeling, teaching, and coaching. Nothing can take the place of leaders "walking their talk." The personal example of a strategic leader can send a powerful message to the members of an organization, particularly if it is ethical and consistent. Reinforcing that example with teaching and coaching will help others to internalize the desired values.
* Criteria for allocation of rewards and status. The consequences of behavior-what behavior is rewarded and what is punished-can significantly influence culture. If the organization reacts to new ideas by ridiculing the ideas and those who propose them, it won't take long before people believe that new ideas are not welcomed or desired. One belief of perceived organizational culture is reflected in the statement: "Don't raise questions or suggest improvements, because nothing will come of it and you will just get in trouble." If you were in an organization's strategic leader, what steps could you take to alter the reward system to change this aspect of the culture?
* Criteria for recruitment, selection, promotion, retirement and excommunication. One of the powerful ways of changing an organization's culture is through the type of people brought into, retained, and advanced in the organization. You should be able to establish a desired culture base in an organization by bringing in and advancing individuals with the values you want, and eliminating those with undesired value bases.

That is what organizations are attempting when they propose tightening up admissions standards to screen out undesirables. This strategy is consistent with the belief that the problems experienced by the organization result from a few "bad apples" and do not reflect systemic problems. However, if a strong culture bias exists, it may be too strong to be changed by selection alone.

The military academies are organizations which change over one fourth of their membership every year, which should provide an opportunity for changes to the organizational culture as new members are brought in. The catch, however, is that the socialization of those new members rests in the hands of those who are already part of the existing culture. How could the military academies make systemic culture changes not negated by the socialization process new members go through?

* Organizational design and structure. As we mentioned earlier, modifying the organization's basic structure may be a way of changing the existing norms, and hence the culture. For example, a culture of mistrust between the leaders and the members of an organization may be exacerbated by a "line" structure that discourages vertical communication.
* Organizational systems and procedures. The simplest definition of culture is "that's the way we do things around here." Routines or procedures can become so embedded that they become part of the culture, and changing the culture necessitates changing those routines. We can all think of organizations where a weekly or monthly meeting takes on a life of its own, becomes more formalized, lengthy, and elaborate, and becomes the only way information moves within the organization. Changing the culture to improve communication may only be possible by changing the meeting procedures or eliminating the meetings altogether.
* Design of physical space, facades, and buildings. The impact of the design of buildings on culture can easily be illustrated by considering the executive perks in an organization. Which organization do you think will have a more open and participative culture, one where top executives have reserved parking spaces, top floor offices, a special elevator and an executive dining room, or one where the executive offices are not separated from the rest of the company and executives park and eat in the same place as their employees?
* Stories about important events and people. This is a way that culture is perpetuated in an organization, in that it helps define and solidify the organization's identity. By what events and stories they emphasize, leaders influence that identity.
* Formal statements of organizational philosophy, creeds, and charts. This is the way leaders most often try and influence their organizations, and encompasses the vision or mission statement and statements of the organization's (or the leader's) values and philosophy. By themselves, however, formal statements will have little effect on the organization's culture. They must be linked to actions to affect culture.

Schein has five guidelines for the leader:

1. Don't oversimplify culture or confuse it with climate, values, or corporate philosophy. Culture underlies and largely determines these other variables. Trying to change values or climate without getting at the underlying culture will be a futile effort.

2. Don't label culture as solely a human resources (read "touchy-feely") aspect of an organization, affecting only its human side. The impact of culture goes far beyond the human side of the organization to affect and influence its basic mission and goals.

3. Don't assume that the leader can manipulate culture as he or she can control many other aspects of the organization. Culture, because it is largely determined and controlled by the members of the organization, not the leaders, is different. Culture may end up controlling the leader rather than being controlled by him or her.

4. Don't assume that there is a "correct" culture, or that a strong culture is better than a weak one. It should be apparent that different cultures may fit different organizations and their environments, and that the desirability of a strong culture depends on how well it supports the organization's strategic goals and objectives.

5. Don't assume that all the aspects of an organization's culture are important, or will have a major impact on the functioning of the organization. Some elements of an organization's culture may have little impact on its functioning, and the leader must distinguish which elements are important, and focus on those.

CONCLUDING THOUGHT

An understanding of culture, and how to transform it, is a crucial skill for leaders trying to achieve strategic outcomes. Strategic leaders have the best perspective, because of their position in the organization, to see the dynamics of the culture, what should remain, and what needs transformation. This is the essence of strategic success.

End semester Time table

I P.G. END SEMESTER University Examination
(Freshers & Repeaters): Oct/Nov - 2008
 Time : 9.30 – 12.30 PM
Date & Day MSW
28.10.2008 Tuesday Social Work Profession and Philosophy & Ideologies
30.10.2008 Thursday Sociology for Social Workers
3.11.2008 Monday Social Case Work
5.11.2008 Wednesday Social Group Work
III P.G. END SEMESTER
Examination(Freshers & Repeaters) : Oct -2008
 Time : 1.30 – 4.30 PM
Date & Day MSW
14.10.2008 Tuesday Communication for Social Workers
16.10.2008 Thursday Organisational Behaviour
18.10.2008 Saturday Elective:
● Medical Social Work
● Rural Community Development
● Human Resources Development
23.10.2008 Thursday Elective:
● Psychiatric Social Work
● Urban Community Development
● Labour Legislation

A Must Read

Keep the Spark

Inaugural Speech by Chetan Bhagat for the new batch at the Symbiosis BBA Program 2008

Good Morning everyone and thank you for giving me this chance to speak to you. This day is about you. You, who have come to this college, leaving the comfort of your homes (or in some cases discomfort), to become something in your life. I am sure you are excited. There are few days in human life when one is truly elated. The first day in college is one of them. When you were getting ready today, you felt a tingling in your stomach. What would the auditorium be like, what would the teachers be like, who are my new classmates - there is so much to be curious about. I call this excitement, the spark within you that makes you feel truly alive today. Today I am going to talk about keeping the spark shining. Or to put it another way, how to be happy most, if not all the time.

Where do these sparks start? I think we are born with them. My 3-year old twin boys have a million sparks. A little Spiderman toy can make them jump on the bed. They get thrills from creaky swings in the park. A story from daddy gets them excited. They do a daily countdown for birthday party - several months in advance - just for the day they will cut their own birthday cake.

I see students like you, and I still see some sparks. But when I see older people, the spark is difficult to find.. That means as we age, the
spark fades. People whose spark has faded too much are dull, dejected, aimless and bitter. Remember Kareena in the first half of Jab We Met vs the second half? That is what happens when the spark is lost. So how to save the spark?

Imagine the spark to be a lamp's flame. The first aspect is nurturing - to give your spark the fuel, continuously. The second is to guard against storms.

To nurture, always have goals. It is human nature to strive, improve and achieve full potential. In fact, that is success. It is what is possible for you. It isn't any external measure - a certain cost to company pay package, a particular car or house.

Most of us are from middle class families. To us, having material landmarks is success and rightly so. When you have grown up where money constraints force everyday choices, financial freedom is a big achievement.

But it isn't the purpose of life. If that was the case, Mr Ambani would not show up for work. Shah Rukh Khan would stay at home and not dance anymore. Steve Jobs won't be working hard to make a better iPhone, as he sold Pixar for billions of dollars already. Why do they do it? What makes them come to work everyday?

They do it because it makes them happy. They do it because it makes them feel alive. Just getting better from current levels feels good. If you study hard, you can improve your rank. If you make an effort to interact with people, you will do better in interviews. If you practice, your cricket will get better. You may also know that you cannot become Tendulkar, yet. But you can get to the next level. Striving for that next level is important.

Nature designed with a random set of genes and circumstances in which we were born. To be happy, we have to accept it and make the most of nature's design. Are you? Goals will help you do that.

I must add, don't just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order.

There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup. There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.

You must have read some quotes - Life is a tough race, it is a marathon or whatever. No, from what I have seen so far, life is one of those races in nursery school. Where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same with life, where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die.

One last thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. One of my yoga teachers used to make students laugh during classes. One student asked him if these jokes would take away something from the yoga practice. The teacher said - don't be serious, be sincere. This quote has defined my work ever since. Whether its my writing, my job, my relationships or any of my goals. I get thousands of opinions on my writing everyday. There is heaps of praise, there is intense criticism.
If I take it all seriously, how will I write? Or rather, how will I live? Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It's ok, bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices.

I've told you three things - reasonable goals, balance and not taking it too seriously that will nurture the spark. However, there are four storms in life that will threaten to completely put out the flame. These must be guarded against. These are disappointment, frustration, unfairness and loneliness of purpose.

Disappointment will come when your effort does not give you the expected return. If things don't go as planned or if you face failure. Failure is extremely difficult to handle, but those that do come out stronger. What did this failure teach me? This is the question you will need to ask. You will feel miserable. You will want to quit, like I wanted to when nine publishers rejected my first book. Some IITians kill themselves over low grades - how silly is that? But that is how much failure can hurt you.

But it's life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would cease to be a challenge. And remember - if you are failing at something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that's where you want to be.

Disappointment's cousin is frustration, the second storm. Have you ever been frustrated? It happens when things are stuck. This is especially relevant in India. From traffic jams to getting that job you deserve, sometimes things take so long that you don't know if you chose the right goal. After books, I set the goal of writing for Bollywood, as I thought they needed writers. I am called extremely lucky, but it took me five years to get close to a release.

Frustration saps excitement, and turns your initial energy into something negative, making you a bitter person. How did I deal with it?
A realistic assessment of the time involved - movies take a long time to make even though they are watched quickly, seeking a certain enjoyment in the process rather than the end result - at least I was learning how to write scripts, having a side plan - I had my third book to write and even something as simple as pleasurable distractions in your life - friends, food, travel can help you overcome it. Remember, nothing is to be taken seriously. Frustration is a sign somewhere, you took it too seriously.

Unfairness - this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is how our country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful faces, pedigree find it easier to make it - not just in Bollywood, but everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to make it happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some people luckier than you.

In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this speech in English means you are pretty damn lucky by Indian standards.
Let's be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what we don't. I have so much love from my readers that other writers cannot even imagine it. However, I don't get literary praise. It's ok. I don't look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are more beautiful than her. It's ok. Don't let unfairness kill your spark.

Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is isolation. As you grow older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you still are a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be different from even the people closest to you. This can create conflict as your goals may not match with others. . And you may drop some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give up something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family. But in doing that, the spark dies.. Never, ever make that compromise. Love yourself first, and then others.

There you go. I've told you the four thunderstorms - disappointment, frustration, unfairness and isolation. You cannot avoid them, as like the monsoon they will come into your life at regular intervals. You just need to keep the raincoat handy to not let the spark die.

I welcome you again to the most wonderful years of your life. If someone gave me the choice to go back in time, I will surely choose college. But I also hope that ten years later as well, you eyes will shine the same way as they do today. That you will Keep the Spark alive, not only through college, but through the next 2,500 weekends. And I hope not just you, but my whole country will keep that spark alive, as we really need it now more than any moment in history. And there is something cool about saying - I come from the land of a billion sparks.

Thank You.

Research Notes - SAMPLING

Sampling In Research

Mugo Fridah W.

INTRODUCTION

This tutorial is a discussion on sampling in research it is mainly designed to eqiup beginners with knowledge on the general issues on sampling that is the purpose of sampling in research, dangers of sampling and how to minimize them, types of sampling and guides for deciding the sample size. For a clear flow of ideas, a few definitions of the terms used are given.

What is research?

According Webster(1985), to research is to search or investigate exhaustively. It is a careful or diligent search, studious inquiry or examination especially investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws, it can also be the collection of information about a particular subject.

What is a sample?

A sample is a finite part of a statistical population whose properties are studied to gain information about the whole(Webster, 1985). When dealing with people, it can be defined as a set of respondents(people) selected from a larger population for the purpose of a survey.

A population is a group of individuals persons, objects, or items from which samples are taken for measurement for example a population of presidents or professors, books or students.

What is sampling? Sampling is the act, process, or technique of selecting a suitable sample, or a representative part of a population for the purpose of determining parameters or characteristics of the whole population.

What is the purpose of sampling? To draw conclusions about populations from samples, we must use inferential statistics which enables us to determine a population`s characteristics by directly observing only a portion (or sample) of the population. We obtain a sample rather than a complete enumeration (a census ) of the population for many reasons. Obviously, it is cheaper to observe a part rather than the whole, but we should prepare ourselves to cope with the dangers of using samples. In this tutorial, we will investigate various kinds of sampling procedures. Some are better than others but all may yield samples that are inaccurate and unreliable. We will learn how to minimize these dangers, but some potential error is the price we must pay for the convenience and savings the samples provide.

There would be no need for statistical theory if a census rather than a sample was always used to obtain information about populations. But a census may not be practical and is almost never economical. There are six main reasons for sampling instead of doing a census. These are; -Economy -Timeliness -The large size of many populations -Inaccessibility of some of the population -Destructiveness of the observation -accuracy

The economic advantage of using a sample in research Obviously, taking a sample requires fewer resources than a census. For example, let us assume that you are one of the very curious students around. You have heard so much about the famous Cornell and now that you are there, you want to hear from the insiders. You want to know what all the students at Cornell think about the quality of teaching they receive, you know that all the students are different so they are likely to have different perceptions and you believe you must get all these perceptions so you decide because you want an indepth view of every student, you will conduct personal interviews with each one of them and you want the results in 20 days only, let us assume this particular time you are doing your research Cornell has only 20,000 students and those who are helping are so fast at the interviewing art that together you can interview at least 10 students per person per day in addition to your 18 credit hours of course work. You will require 100 research assistants for 20 days and since you are paying them minimum wage of $5.00 per hour for ten hours ($50.00) per person per day, you will require $100000.00 just to complete the interviews, analysis will just be impossible. You may decide to hire additional assistants to help with the analysis at another $100000.00 and so on assuming you have that amount on your account.

As unrealistic as this example is, it does illustrate the very high cost of census. For the type of information desired, a small wisely selected sample of Cornell students can serve the purpose. You don`t even have to hire a single assistant. You can complete the interviews and analysis on your own. Rarely does a circustance require a census of the population, and even more rarely does one justify the expense.

The time factor.

A sample may provide you with needed information quickly. For example, you are a Doctor and a disease has broken out in a village within your area of jurisdiction, the disease is contagious and it is killing within hours nobody knows what it is. You are required to conduct quick tests to help save the situation. If you try a census of those affected, they may be long dead when you arrive with your results. In such a case just a few of those already infected could be used to provide the required information.

The very large populations

Many populations about which inferences must be made are quite large. For example, Consider the population of high school seniors in United States of America, agroup numbering 4,000,000. The responsible agency in the government has to plan for how they will be absorbed into the differnt departments and even the private sector. The employers would like to have specific knowledge about the student`s plans in order to make compatiple plans to absorb them during the coming year. But the big size of the population makes it physically impossible to conduct a census. In such a case, selecting a representative sample may be the only way to get the information required from high school seniors.

The partly accessible populations

There are Some populations that are so difficult to get access to that only a sample can be used. Like people in prison, like crashed aeroplanes in the deep seas, presidents e.t.c. The inaccessibility may be economic or time related. Like a particular study population may be so costly to reach like the population of planets that only a sample can be used. In other cases, a population of some events may be taking too long to occur that only sample information can be relied on. For example natural disasters like a flood that occurs every 100 years or take the example of the flood that occured in Noah`s days. It has never occured again.

The destructive nature of the observation Sometimes the very act of observing the desired charecteristic of a unit of the population destroys it for the intended use. Good examples of this occur in quality control. For example to test the quality of a fuse, to determine whether it is defective, it must be destroyed. To obtain a census of the quality of a lorry load of fuses, you have to destroy all of them. This is contrary to the purpose served by quality-control testing. In this case, only a sample should be used to assess the quality of the fuses

Accuracy and sampling A sample may be more accurate than a census. A sloppily conducted census can provide less reliable information than a carefully obtained sample.

BIAS AND ERROR IN SAMPLING A sample is expected to mirror the population from which it comes, however, there is no guarantee that any sample will be precisely representative of the population from which it comes. Chance may dictate that a disproportionate number of untypical observations will be made like for the case of testing fuses, the sample of fuses may consist of more or less faulty fuses than the real population proportion of faulty cases. In practice, it is rarely known when a sample is unrepresentative and should be discarded.

Sampling error

What can make a sample unrepresentative of its population? One of the most frequent causes is sampling error.

Sampling error comprises the differences between the sample and the population that are due solely to the particular units that happen to have been selected.

For example, suppose that a sample of 100 american women are measured and are all found to be taller than six feet. It is very clear even without any statistical prove that this would be a highly unrepresentative sample leading to invalid conclusions. This is a very unlikely occurance because naturally such rare cases are widely distributed among the population. But it can occur. Luckily, this is a very obvious error and can be etected very easily.

The more dangerous error is the less obvious sampling error against which nature offers very little protection. An example would be like a sample in which the average height is overstated by only one inch or two rather than one foot which is more obvious. It is the unobvious error that is of much concern.

There are two basic causes for sampling error. One is chance: That is the error that occurs just because of bad luck. This may result in untypical choices. Unusual units in a population do exist and there is always a possibility that an abnormally large number of them will be chosen. For example, in a recent study in which I was looking at the number of trees, I selected a sample of households randomly but strange enough, the two households in the whole population, which had the highest number of trees (10,018 and 6345 ) were both selected making the sample average higher than it should be. The average with these two extremes removed was 828 trees. The main protection agaisnt this kind of error is to use a large enough sample. The second cause of sampling is sampling bias.

Sampling bias is a tendency to favour the selection of units that have paticular characteristics.

Sampling bias is usually the result of a poor sampling plan. The most notable is the bias of non response when for some reason some units have no chance of appearing in the sample. For example, take a hypothetical case where a survey was conducted recently by Cornell Graduate school to find out the level of stress that graduate students were going through. A mail questionnaire was sent to 100 randomly selected graduate students. Only 52 responded and the results were that students were not under strees at that time when the actual case was that it was the highest time of stress for all students except those who were writing their thesis at their own pace. Apparently, this is the group that had the time to respond. The researcher who was conducting the study went back to the questionnaire to find out what the problem was and found that all those who had responded were third and fourth PhD students. Bias can be very costly and has to be gaurded against as much as possible. For this case, $2000.00 had been spent and there were no reliable results in addition, it cost the reseacher his job since his employer thought if he was qualified, he should have known that before hand and planned on how to avoid it. A means of selecting the units of analysis must be designed to avoid the more obvious forms of bias. Another example would be where you would like to know the average income of some community and you decide to use the telephone numbers to select a sample of the total population in a locality where only the rich and middle class households have telephone lines. You will end up with high average income which will lead to the wrong policy decisions.

Non sampling error (measurement error)

The other main cause of unrepresentative samples is non sampling error. This type of error can occur whether a census or a sample is being used. Like sampling error, non sampling error may either be produced by participants in the statistical study or be an innocent by product of the sampling plans and procedures.

A non sampling error is an error that results solely from the manner in which the observations are made.

The simplest example of non sampling error is inaccurate measurements due to malfuntioning instruments or poor procedures. For example, Consider the observation of human weights. If persons are asked to state their own weights themselves, no two answers will be of equal reliability. The people will have weighed themselves on different scales in various states of poor caliberation. An individual`s weight fluctuates diurnally by several pounds, so that the time of weighing will affect the answer. The scale reading will also vary with the person`s state of undress. Responses therefore will not be of comparable validity unless all persons are weighed under the same circumstances.

Biased observations due to inaccurate measurement can be innocent but very devastating. A story is told of a French astronomer who once proposed a new theory based on spectroscopic measurements of light emitted by a particular star. When his colleques discovered that the measuring instrument had been contaminated by cigarette smoke, they rejected his findings.

In surveys of personal characteristics, unintended errors may result from: -The manner in which the response is elicited -The social desirability of the persons surveyed -The purpose of the study -The personal biases of the interviewer or survey writer

The interwiers effect

No two interviewers are alike and the same person may provide different answers to different interviewers. The manner in which a question is formulated can also result in inaccurate responses. Individuals tend to provide false answers to particular questions. For example, some people want to feel younger or older for some reason known to themselves. If you ask such a person their age in years, it is easier for the idividual just to lie to you by over stating their age by one or more years than it is if you asked which year they were born since it will require a bit of quick arithmetic to give a false date and a date of birth will definitely be more accurate.

The respondent effect

Respondents might also give incorrect answers to impress the interviewer. This type of error is the most difficult to prevent because it results from out right deceit on the part of the respondee. An example of this is what I witnessed in my recent study in which I was asking farmers how much maize they harvested last year (1995). In most cases, the men tended to lie by saying a figure which is the reccomended expected yield that is 25 bags per acre. The responses from men looked so uniform that I became suspicious. I compared with the responses of the wives of the these men and their responses were all different. To decide which one was right, whenever possible I could in a tactful way verify with an older son or daughter. It is important to acknowledge that certain psychological factors induce incorrect responses and great care must be taken to design a study that minimizes their effect.

Knowing the study purpose

Knowing why a study is being conducted may create incorrect responses. A classic example is the question: What is your income? If a government agency is asking, a different figure may be provided than the respondent would give on an application for a home mortgage. One way to guard against such bias is to camouflage the study`s goals; Another remedy is to make the questions very specific, allowing no room for personal interpretation. For example, "Where are you employed?" could be followed by "What is your salary?" and "Do you have any extra jobs?" A sequence of such questions may produce more accurate information.

Induced bias

Finally, it should be noted that the personal prejudices of either the designer of the study or the data collector may tend to induce bias. In designing a questionnaire, questions may be slanted in such a way that a particular response will be obtained even though it is inacurrate. For example, an agronomist may apply fertilizer to certain key plots, knowing that they will provide more favourable yields than others. To protect against induced bias, advice of an individual trained in statistics should be sought in the design and someone else aware of search pitfalls should serve in an auditing capacity.

SELECTING THE SAMPLE

The preceding section has covered the most common problems associated with statistical studies. The desirability of a sampling procedure depends on both its vulnerability to error and its cost. However, economy and reliability are competing ends, because, to reduce error often requires an increased expenditure of resources. Of the two types of statistical errors, only sampling error can be controlled by exercising care in determining the method for choosing the sample. The previous section has shown that sampling error may be due to either bias or chance. The chance component (sometimes called random error) exists no matter how carefully the selection procedures are implemented, and the only way to minimize chance sampling errors is to select a sufficiently large sample (sample size is discussed towards the end of this tutorial). Sampling bias on the other hand may be minimized by the wise choice of a sampling procedure.

TYPES OF SAMPLES

There are three primary kinds of samples: the convenience, the judgement sample, and the random sample. They differ in the manner in which the elementary units are chosen.

The convenient sample

A convenience sample results when the more convenient elementary units are chosen from a population for observation.

The judgement sample

A judgement sample is obtained according to the discretion of someone who is familiar with the relevant characteristics of the population.

The random sample

This may be the most important type of sample. A random sample allows a known probability that each elementary unit will be chosen. For this reason, it is sometimes referred to as a probability sample. This is the type of sampling that is used in lotteries and raffles. For example, if you want to select 10 players randomly from a population of 100, you can write their names, fold them up, mix them thoroughly then pick ten. In this case, every name had any equal chance of being picked. Random numbers can also be used (see Lapin page 81).

TYPES OF RANDOM SAMPLES

A simple random sample

A simple random sample is obtained by choosing elementary units in search a way that each unit in the population has an equal chance of being selected. A simple random sample is free from sampling bias. However, using a random number table to choose the elementary units can be cumbersome. If the sample is to be collected by a person untrained in statistics, then instructions may be misinterpreted and selections may be made improperly. Instead of using a least of random numbers, data collection can be simplified by selecting say every 10th or 100th unit after the first unit has been chosen randomly as discussed below. such a procedure is called systematic random sampling.

A systematic random sample

A systematic random sample is obtained by selecting one unit on a random basis and choosing additional elementary units at evenly spaced intervals until the desired number of units is obtained. For example, there are 100 students in your class. You want a sample of 20 from these 100 and you have their names listed on a piece of paper may be in an alphabetical order. If you choose to use systematic random sampling, divide 100 by 20, you will get 5. Randomly select any number between 1 and five. Suppose the number you have picked is 4, that will be your starting number. So student number 4 has been selected. From there you will select every 5th name until you reach the last one, number one hundred. You will end up with 20 selected students.

A stratified sample

A stratified sample is obtained by independently selecting a separate simple random sample from each population stratum. A population can be divided into different groups may be based on some characteristic or variable like income of education. Like any body with ten years of education will be in group A, between 10 and 20 group B and between 20 and 30 group C. These groups are referred to as strata. You can then randomly select from each stratum a given number of units which may be based on proportion like if group A has 100 persons while group B has 50, and C has 30 you may decide you will take 10% of each. So you end up with 10 from group A, 5 from group B and 3 from group C.

A cluster sample

A cluster sample is obtained by selecting clusters from the population on the basis of simple random sampling. The sample comprises a census of each random cluster selected. For example, a cluster may be some thing like a village or a school, a state. So you decide all the elementary schools in Newyork State are clusters. You want 20 schools selected. You can use simple or systematic random sampling to select the schools, then every school selected becomes a cluster. If you interest is to interview teachers on thei opinion of some new program which has been introduced, then all the teachers in a cluster must be interviewed. Though very economical cluster sampling is very susceptible to sampling bias. Like for the above case, you are likely to get similar responses from teachers in one school due to the fact that they interact with one another.

PURPOSEFUL SAMPLING

Purposeful sampling selects information rich cases for indepth study. Size and specific cases depend on the study purpose.

There are about 16 different types of purposeful sampling. They are briefly described below for you to be aware of them. The details can be found in Patton(1990)Pg 169-186.

Extreme and deviant case sampling This involves learning from highly unusual manifestations of the phenomenon of interest, suchas outstanding successes, notable failures, top of the class, dropouts, exotic events, crises.

Intensity sampling This is information rich cases that manifest the phenomenon intensely, but not extremely, such as good students,poor students, above average/below average.

Maximum variation sampling This involves purposefully picking a wide range of variation on dimentions of interest. This documents unique or diverse variations that have emerged in adapting to different conditions. It also identifies important common patterns that cut across variations. Like in the example of interviewing Cornell students, you may want to get students of different nationalities, professional backgrounds, cultures, work experience and the like.

Homogenious sampling This one reduces variation, simplifies analysis, facilitates group interviewing. Like instead of having the maximum number of nationalities as in the above case of maximum variation, it may focus on one nationality say Americans only.

Typical case sampling It involves taking a sample of what one would call typical, normal or average for a particular phenomenon,

Stratified purposeful sampling This illustrates charecteristics of particular subgroups of interest and facilitates comparisons between the different groups.

Critical case sampling> This permits logical generalization and maximum application of information to other cases like "If it is true for this one case, it is likely to be true of all other cases. You must have heard statements like if it happenned to so and so then it can happen to anybody. Or if so and so passed that exam, then anybody can pass.

Snowball or chain sampling This particular one identifies, cases of interest from people who know people who know what cases are information rich, that is good examples for study, good interview subjects. This is commonly used in studies that may be looking at issues like the homeless households. What you do is to get hold of one and he/she will tell you where the others are or can be found. When you find those others they will tell you where you can get more others and the chain continues.

Criterion sampling Here, you set a criteria and pick all cases that meet that criteria for example, all ladies six feet tall, all white cars, all farmers that have planted onions. This method of sampling is very strong in quality assurance.

Theory based or operational construct sampling. Finding manifestations of a theoretical construct of interest so as to elaborate and examine the construct.

Confirming and disconfirming cases Elaborating and deepening initial analysis like if you had already started some study, you are seeking further information or confirming some emerging issues which are not clear, seeking exceptions and testing variation.

Opportunistic Sampling This involves following new leads during field work, taking advantage of the unexpected flexibility.

Random purposeful sampling This adds credibility when the purposeful sample is larger than one can handle. Reduces judgement within a purposeful category. But it is not for generalizations or representativeness.

Sampling politically important cases This type of sampling attracts or avoids attracting attention undesired attention by purposisefully eliminating from the sample political cases. These may be individuals, or localities.

Convenience sampling It is useful in getting general ideas about the phenomenon of interest. For example you decide you will interview the first ten people you meet tomorrow morning. It saves time, money and effort. It is the poorest way of getting samples, has the lowest credibility and yields information-poor cases.

Combination or mixed purposeful sampling This combines various sampling strategies to achieve the desired sample. This helps in triangulation, allows for flexibility, and meets multiple interests and needs. When selecting a sampling strategy it is necessary that it fits the purpose of the study, the resources available, the question being asked and the constraints being faced. This holds true for sampling strategy as well as sample size.

SAMPLE SIZE

Before deciding how large a sample should be, you have to define your study population. For example, all children below age three in Tomkin`s County. Then determine your sampling frame which could be a list of all the chidren below three as recorded by Tomkin`s County. You can then struggle with the sample size.

The question of how large a sample should be is a difficult one. Sample size can be determined by various constraints. For example, the available funding may prespecify the sample size. When research costs are fixed, a useful rule of thumb is to spent about one half of the total amount for data collection and the other half for data analysis. This constraint influences the sample size as well as sample design and data collection procedures.

In general, sample size depends on the nature of the analysis to be performed, the desired precision of the estimates one wishes to achieve, the kind and number of comparisons that will be made, the number of variables that have to be examined simultaneously and how heterogenous a universe is sampled. For example, if the key analysis of a randomized experiment consists of computing averages for experimentals and controls in a project and comparing differences, then a sample under 100 might be adequate, assuming that other statistical assumptions hold.

In non-experimental research, most often, relevant variables have to be controlled statistically because groups differ by factors other than chance.

More technical considerations suggest that the required sample size is a function of the precision of the estimates one wishes to achieve, the variability or variance, one expects to find in the population and the statistical level of confidence one wishes to use. The sample size N required to estimate a population mean (average) with a given level of precision is:

The square root of N=(1.96)*(&)/precision Where & is the population standard deviation of the for the variable whose mean one is interested in estimating. Precision refers to width of the interval one is willing to tolerate and 1.96 reflects the confidence level. For details on this please see Salant and Dillman (1994).

For example, to estimate mean earnings in a population with an accuracy of $100 per year, using a 95% confidence interval and assuming that the standard deviation of earnings in the population is $1600.0, the required sample size is 983:[(1.96)(1600/100)] squared.

Deciding on a sample size for qualitative inquiry can be even more difficult than quantitative because there are no definite rules to be followed. It will depend on what you want to know, the purpose of the inquiry, what is at stake, what will be usefull, what will have credibility and what can be done with available time and resources. With fixed resources which is always the case, you can choose to study one specific phenomenon in depth with a smaller sample size or a bigger sample size when seeking breadth. In purposeful sampling, the sample should be judged on the basis of the purpose and rationale for each study and the sampling strategy used to achieve the studies purpose. The validity, meangfulness, and insights generated from qualitative inquiry have more to do with the information-richness of the cases selected and the observational/analytical capabilities of the researcher than with sample size.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, it can be said that using a sample in research saves mainly on money and time, if a suitable sampling strategy is used, appropriate sample size selected and necessary precautions taken to reduce on sampling and measurement errors, then a sample should yield valid and reliable information. Details on sampling can be obtained from the references included below and many other books on statistics or qualitative research which can be found in libraries.