MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Cognitive rules and culture
of CPSA but of course it still exists within PCS. So we're trying
to move away from that culture to one which involves
encouragement, support and trust (Interviewee O)
This can be done in several ways. First managers could open up the
topic of cultural difference:-
At all levels we get into the merger without the reality of saying
that we're not going to have a culture like the CPSA. If the CPSA
had that culture, if it had it, then let us talk about that, let us
address it. Because we never addressed it, it was actually worse
in the perception than in the reality. What I found at my team
meetings, when you had eventually thawed the ice and got
people talking and got them to realise that it was okay to say
what concerned them. And it was, you know, can we get sacked
tomorrow, if we are more than 20 minutes on a phone or we get
a memo; it was the classic command and control structure with a
hard cost driven basis. Nothing about what the outputs were so
it was a one dimensional approach. And that was a really difficult
culture but at least this diagnostic approach gave us something
to latch on to and to actually open up the boil, you might say.
(Interviewee B)
Secondly, managers could take proactive steps to challenge what was
perceived as unacceptable about particular aspects of culture:-
I think when PCS was created there were probably more than
two cultures but two prevailing cultures -- maybe three still
because we still had two cultures in PTC, two predominant
cultures, and then there was the CPSA. I think that in some
ways those of us from PTC have been challenging the amount
of controlling, hierarchical and fearful culture that certainly we
perceived to operate in CPSA. I think we have been challenging
it by rebellion in a sense by refusing to be a vehicle of (the ex
CPSA General Secretary), refusing to behave in that way,
breaking the rules, if you like, partly because we did not know
what the rules were. We came into this building from the outside,
with the Revenue very much new kids on the block -- we were
the last to come -- so that there is a critical mass of people
behaving diversely and differently. I have a sense at the minute
that there is a freedom about the place that I have not
experienced in all my previous incarnations. I think that is about
the fact that at the moment there is no prevailing culture. There
is nothing subtle or sledge hammer that you are required to
comply with. I'm sure that when things settle down and we have
a new General Secretary some new culture will assert itself but
at the minute I think that we are off the leash so to speak.
(Interviewee G)
Thirdly, managers could take some formal steps to create new cultural
values, particularly in the realm of management:-
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