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In order to remain competitive, many American businesses implement team-based work strategies. In many cases, however, teams fail in American organizations, which may be in part due to a conflict between American culture and the cooperative environment necessary for teams to function effectively. By comparing the literature regarding American culture, challenges faced by teams, and then corporate culture, it becomes evident that there are aspects of American culture that pose challenges but also that an appropriate corporate culture can mediate some areas of incompatibility. A collaborative corporate culture can induce cooperation among employees without asking employees to work in a manner that is counterintuitive, thus gaining the benefits of teams.

This in-depth study looked at a major manufacturing company during a year when management projected contract losses and massive lay-offs and terminations. The company's hourly employee culture indicated that the major automotive customers of the company were influential driving forces and would rescue the company from the dire management predictions. The principal major research question was to determine the accuracy of predictions based upon the company's hourly workers' culture versus management's predictions and actions based upon external sources.Another investigation area was the company management's actions to manifest their avowed "our employees are our most valuable resource and asset" belief statement. Similarly, would the Professional and Technician Equal Employment Opportunity job groups have the smallest percent of reduction, since the company's primary strength was purported to lie in its engineering and technical employees?Interviews, data collection and analysis, and monthly task force investigations and communications revealed the company culture was definitely more accurate than the numerous predictions made by management. As the "culture" predicted, the loss of the contracts did not occur. The company concluded the year with increases in total employment. Temporary lay-offs did occur during the year and management took numerous actions to help both retained employees and those being terminated or laid-off. Such actions included outplacement services, stress reduction programs, job placement and resume writing, and instituting communication networks and procedures and a Dispute Resolution Procedure. The company did show that the employees were valuable and important assets.The reduction numbers and percents for the Professionals (engineers) and Technicians were exactly opposite of what management typically avowed. The largest category reduced was the Technicians and the second-largest category was the Professionals.The company continued to be quite viable and the future outlook became optimistic, which coincides with the company culture that the major automotive customers will always be there needing the company's products.The company management took several steps to prevent their predictions from occurring, while hourly employees, using only history which is not a very dependable source for industry today, happened to be correct in this study.The primary conclusion was that the culture of the company's hourly workers was more accurate in predicting the future than management's predictions based on supposed knowledgeable external sources. It was recommended that internal cultural based predictions and externally based information be blended together for the most accurate predictions. This will provide all managements everywhere a better information base for making decisions, particularly strategic planning decisions. / Center for Lifelong Education

Organizational culture may be defined as the shared norms, values, and beliefs of an organization. The culture expresses itself through symbols and sagas. Organizational culture shapes the behavior of those within the organization and provides a lens through which its members can interpret reality. This study sought to define the organizational culture of the Metropolitan Academic Library. The study was guided by Schein‘s five levels of cultural assumptions: assumptions about external adaptation issues; assumptions about internal integration; assumptions about the nature of truth and reality; assumptions about the nature of time and space; and assumptions about human nature, activity, and relationships. In order to triangulate data, I gave the librarians and library technical assistants of the Metropolitan Academic Library the Martin Culture Survey. I then conducted a multi-day, on-site visit, where I interviewed members of the Metropolitan Academic Library, made observations about the library, and performed document analysis. I found the culture of the Metropolitan Academic Library to be ―in the process of becoming.‖ The culture present in the library was not deep or rich; however, I did find some shared values, symbols, and sagas. With a recent turnover in administration, change was a dominant story of the Metropolitan Academic Library. The librarians and library technical assistants valued campus engagement, the people within the library, and service to the library patrons. These values find symbolic recognition in the coffee shop located in the library, the Christmas party, and the reference desk. Popular sagas of the Metropolitan Academic Library include the story of its humble origins and the building renovation

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 271-288). / This dissertation addresses the problems and synergies of integrating paid work with other meaningful parts of life, and avoiding pernicious choices between work and family. To do so, I examine the very structure of work organization for professional and technical employees in small and medium-sized companies in a new, knowledge-based sector of the US economy. The research questions are: What dynamics at work, related to time, boundaries, and control of schedules and work process, influence satisfaction at work and home, commitment to the work organization, well-being and gender equity? Under what conditions are supportive "work-family" practices by firms, as experienced in a day-to-day context, associated with positive outcomes at home and work? The dissertation builds on relevant aspects of industrial relations, human resources, and work process research, and scholarship concerning families, gender, and work-family boundaries. Work scholarship is incomplete without a lens that incorporates the holistic lives and concerns of the people doing the work, and family scholarship is incomplete without serious consideration of the work structures that shape family schedules, resources, conflicts, and availability for caregiving. This dissertation uses both qualitative data from 80 interviews to get an in-depth picture of respondents' lives, and a broader quantitative analysis based on an original survey with 463 professional scientists and managers. These were gathered from biopharmaceutical employees in Massachusetts during 1996-99. From the interviews I find that flexibility at work, support at home, and control at work are the key factors that contribute to satisfaction outcomes given similar levels of demands. But these are not distributed evenly by gender, company, or level of job. The survey data show that it is not only the presence of workplace policies on work-family, but the employee's day-to-day experience of whether she is free to use the policies, that contributes to positive outcomes. I introduce a concept o "perceived usability" and use multivariate regression analysis to show it is linked to control of time, pace, and place of work, to organizational commitment and "integrated satisfaction." I find that gender is the strongest stress predictor in this sample. I find that biotechnology offers unusual opportunities for gender equity at work, but a combination of traditional managerial attitudes and inequity at home erects barriers to realizing this potential. In conclusion, I argue that we cannot effectively understand organizational life and work design without considering mutually interactive effects of home and family concerns. / by Susan Catherine Eaton. / Ph.D.