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Organizations and their effectiveness-2016/Key concept definitions
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== Culture == === Dan W === '''Definition:''' An enduring system of widespread beliefs and values in a given society that guides individuals’ expectations and behavior in everyday social life. (Inspired by: Geertz (1973), DiMaggio and Powell (1983), Morris (2015)) ''Important elements of my definition:'' - “enduring” - culture can change, but it changes slowly. - “widespread beliefs and values” - subjective notions about what is appropriate behavior and important to living a good life (in Cicero’s sense!) that are shared by some non-trivial proportion of a bounded population. - “guides” - important that culture only guides instead of enforcing conformity. People have various degrees of attachment to a given culture. - “expectations” - how one ought to feel about a certain action based on what is appropriate in a given culture. - “everyday social life” - culture pervades every social interaction because it delineates the terms by which we come to a shared understanding through communication. ''Example:'' - Guiso, Pistaferri, and Schivardi (2015) (EIEF Working Paper 1512) — How might one detect culture? Well, here's how. The authors in this paper find that Italian adults who moved from a more entrepreneurial region (i.e., higher % self-employed) to a less entrepreneurial region (i.e., lower % self-employed) as adolescents are more likely to become entrepreneurs than the average resident of the current less entrepreneurial region in which they live. === Bob === As mentioned last week, I would distinguish between an external culture that might seep into an organization versus an organizational culture that might arise or be built within an organization. See the Martinez et al. (2015) short essay in AER P&P from the readings for my second session for more on this distinction. On the former, in addition to the Hofstede (1980) and Bloom, Sadun, and Van Reenen (2012) papers mentioned last week and cited in Martinez et al., there is also Ichino and Maggi (QJE 2000) about absenteeism by Northern and Southern Italians who move between northern and southern branches of a large Italian bank. On the latter, Schein (1985) is a key reference and gives a definition of organizational culture quoted in Martinez et al., and I would offer the unpublished paper mentioned last week by the Martinez team plus additional co-authors as first-differenced evidence: analyzing ICUs in Michigan in 2004 and again in 2006, the bloodstream-infection rate fell the most in ICUs where the nurses' answer improved the most to the statement "I frequently have trouble expressing disagreement with staff physicians in this ICU." === Bo === Culture: Collection of norms, see above. Norm: We are in a relational contract that grants us both discretion. But we usually follow some rule (the norm) even though we technically have discretion to do whatever. Following the norm decreases our coordination costs. === Ameet === Definition: Culture as those customary beliefs and values that ethnic, religious, and social groups transmit fairly unchanged from generation to generation. While not comprehensive, this definition focuses on those dimensions of culture that can impact economic outcomes. In addition, by restricting the potential channels of influence to two standard ones -beliefs (i.e, priors) and values (i.e, preferences)-, this definition provides an approach to identify a causal effect from culture to economic outcomes. --> From Guiso, Sapienza & Zingales, Does culture affect economic outcomes? Journal of Economic Perspectives (2006)
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