ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

368 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND LEADERSHIPhis prior experience, was familiar with the expectations of seniorline management. Kunz met with me at MIT for many hours somemonths prior to the seminar to plan for the materials to be used, theexercise to be designed to involve the participants, the schedule,and so on.In this process I observed firsthand how carefully Ciba-Geigymanagers planned for every detail of an activity for which they wereresponsible. I had to provide a plan that showed virtually minute byminute what would happen during the two days, and the companywas clearly willing to commit all the time and energy it might taketo design as nearly perfect a meeting as possible. Not only was Ciba-Geigy’s high degree of commitment to structure revealed in thisprocess, but, in retrospect, it also revealed how basic the assumptionwas about managerial turf. Kunz had clear responsibility for the conductof the meeting, though he was two levels below the participantsin the hierarchy. He had formed a review committee, includingKoechlin and some members of the executive committee, to reviewthe seminar plan and to obtain their involvement, but this groupgave considerable freedom to Kunz to make final decisions on seminarformat. Thus, both at DEC and at Ciba-Geigy, the culture wasdisplaying itself in the manner in which I encountered the organization,but I did not know this at the time.The participants at the Ciba-Geigy annual meeting were thechairman of the board, Koechlin’s boss, several board members whoshowed up as visitors, the nine-person executive committee, all thesenior functional and divisional managers, and the most importantcountry managers; a total of forty-five. This group met annually forfive days or less, depending on the specific agenda to be covered.Though I did not know it at the time, the meeting served amajor integrative and communication function in that it legitimizedduring the meeting what culturally did not happen in dayto-dayoperations—a high level of open and lateral communication.It also reflected the hierarchical emphasis, however, in that thissharing across units took place in public under the scrutiny of theexecutive committee and board members. Moreover, there was still