ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

262 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND LEADERSHIPis clearly perceived to be less important, even if at a higher level(being “kicked upstairs”). At DEC any employee who was not brightor articulate enough to play the idea-debating game and to stand upfor his own ideas soon became walled off and eventually was forcedout through a process of benign but consistent neglect. At Ciba-Geigy a similar kind of isolation occurred if an employee was notconcerned about the company, the products, or senior management.Neither company fired people except for dishonesty or immoralbehavior, but at both companies such isolation became the equivalentof excommunication.Primary Embedding Mechanisms:Some Concluding ObservationsThese embedding mechanisms all interact and tend to reinforce eachother if the leader’s own beliefs, values, and assumptions are consistent.By breaking out these categories I am trying to show the manydifferent ways in which leaders can and do communicate their assumptions.Most newcomers to an organization have a wealth of dataavailable to them to decipher the leader’s real assumptions. Much ofthe socialization process is, therefore, embedded in the organization’snormal working routines. It is not necessary for newcomers to attendspecial training or indoctrination sessions to learn important culturalassumptions. These become quite evident through the daily behaviorof the leaders.Secondary Articulationand Reinforcement MechanismsIn a young organization, design, structure, architecture, rituals, stories,and formal statements are cultural reinforcers, not culture creators.Once an organization has matured and stabilized, these samemechanisms come to be primary culture-creating mechanisms thatwill constrain future leaders. But in a growing organization thesemechanisms are secondary because they work only if they are con-