ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

94 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND LEADERSHIPSenior management could not define clear goals because of lackof consensus on the meaning of key functions and how those functionsreflected the core mission of the organization. Senior managementhad to come to agreement on whether it was better todevelop the company through being well known in the technicalcommunity or through being recognized nationally as a brand namein their industry. The deeper shared assumption that came to dominatethis debate was derived from the identity that most seniorDEC people had as electrical engineers and innovators. As engineersthey believed that good products would sell themselves, thattheir own judgment of goodness was sufficient, and that one shouldnot waste money on image building.At Ciba-Geigy there was a clear consensus on the mission toremain in the pharmaceuticals business because it fitted the broadself-concept of senior management and was profitable, but therewas considerable disagreement on goals, such as the rate of returnthat should be expected from that division and the length of timeover which its growth and performance should be measured.Because operational goals have to be more precise, organizationstypically work out their issues of mission and identity in the contextof deciding annual or longer-range goals. If one really wants to understandcultural assumptions, one must be careful not to confuseassumptions about goals with assumptions about mission. Ciba-Geigy’s concern with being only in businesses that make sciencebased,useful products did not become evident in their discussionsabout business goals until they hit a strategic issue like whether ornot to buy another company. In fact, one way of looking at what wemean by strategy is to realize that strategy concerns the evolution ofthe basic mission, whereas operational goals reflect the short-run tacticalsurvival issues that the organization identifies. Thus, when acompany gets into basic strategy discussions, it is usually trying toassess in a more fundamental way the relationship between its senseof its mission and its operational goals.In summary, goals can be defined at several levels of abstractionand in different time horizons. Is our goal to be profitable at the end