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Organizational culture determines much of what we can do as we attempt to manage change. Effective change strategies and interventional practices will both reflect culture and eventually modify it. Change occurs in and by culture. Change, therefore, must be culturally sensitive. Practitioners need to not only appreciate what organizational culture is and is not, but also to appreciate how alternative types of change are related to culture and the roles that can be performed. This is the thrust of this article.

This research highlights the scenarios that might serve as a strategic vision to describe a future beyond the current library, one which both guides provosts and creates a map for the transformation of human resources and technology in the university research libraries. The scenarios offer managerial leaders an opportunity to envision new roles for librarians and staff which brings a much needed focus on the development of human resources as well as a thought-stream to understand decisions which effectively and systematically move the organization toward a strategic vision.

These scenarios also outline possible future directions research libraries could take by focusing on perspectives from library directors, provosts, and administrators for human resources. The four case study scenarios introduce potential future roles for librarians and highlight the unsustainability of the current scholarly communications model as well as uncertain factors related to the political, social, technical, and demographic issues facing campuses. Given the changes institutions face, scenarios allow directors to include more uncertainty when developing and articulating a vision. These scenarios may start a discussion, before a strategic planning process, to sharpen the evaluations and measures necessary to monitor achievements that define the value of the library.

The study aims to explain the process of management accounting practices and organizational change aspects in the public sector’s response to environmental pressures. Specifically, it discusses the interaction process between management accounting practices from one side and culture, leadership and decentralization from the other side.

This study adopts qualitative research approach and an interpretive case study. The study uses the triangulation method of data collection, including interviews, annual reports, documents and archival records. A theoretical lens informs it of the contextual/processual approach for interpreting interaction processes between management accounting and organizational change aspects, including culture, leadership and decentralization.

The findings confirm that a change in organizational culture has an important impact on accounting change, which has played a central role in the desire to initiate and accept such changes by the organizational members. Similarly, the new leadership style created a unique culture that was considered a solid platform to introduce new accounting systems by enhancing the trust between IT staff and management accountants and their trust in themselves to accept the change. The paper concludes that the relationships between the change aspects at the organizational level, and accounting practices at the inherent organizational and accounting levels are both recursive and two way, with the two concepts inextricably interwoven.

The study has some limitations as the data is limited to only a single country – more explanation for Jordanian Customs Organization quantitative understandings of governance improvement. The study has important implications for practitioners and customs officials by showing that different government regulations and customs reforms have varied influences on the public sector. These reforms have included most modifications to the accounting and organizational configurations. This study contributes to institutional theory development and refinement by exploring the interface between external influences and internal origins in the accounting change process.

This study uses a categorical association between organizational changes and accounting in the public sector as most prior studies have been conducted on the private sector due to competitive and technical pressures. It also contributes to organizational change and accounting literature by discussing the relationship between accounting from one side and culture and leadership from another side.

Multiculturalism is now one of the greatest challenges in the Western society. It supposes a deeper awareness of the various cultures involved in a given society. Of course, the well‐known cultural and ethnic groups must basically be involved in such a social change. But, since the arising and growth of business ethics as a field of research, the business world as a social institution has revealed itself as a complex network of subcultures. So, the “organizational culture” has become an “a priori concept” in business ethics. Although many researches deal with corporate culture, very few authors emphasize its structural elements. A systemic view of the organizational culture expresses how we cannot develop a corporate ethics without at least a “fore‐understanding” or, at best, a critical judgment on the organizational culture of a given corporation. I will describe the four subsystems of the organizational culture and their ethical implications.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how organisational culture has changed between 2011 and 2016 in a higher education institution (HEI) that has been faced with both significant internal and external changes. There are three areas to be examined: the change in culture on an organisational level, the demographic changes in the workforce, and the changes in values and perceptions of the workforce over time.

This is an explorative study and a repeated cross-sectional study of the organisation. The authors used the same methodology and approach for both the 2011 and 2016 studies, namely, the Organisational Culture Assessment Instrument was used to ascertain respondents values and perceptions. The instrument was distributed in printed format to all members of staff and approval was received prior to distribution. Results were tested for significance using Cronbach’s α and ANOVAs.

There were demographic changes in the workforce primarily for age, occupation and tenure of staff, but little change in gender. Despite these changes in the workforce, on an organisational level perceptions and values have changed little over the five-year period, despite a multitude of external and internal developments. Although there were statistically significant differences between culture types and demographics (age, tenure, gender and occupation), there was no single demographic with a statistically significant difference for a particular culture type, either in values or perceptions.

The study questions the concept of organisational culture being affected by internal integration and external adaptation over time. Results indicate that culture is, by itself, either slow to react change, or does not react at all. A high response rate would be best for getting a clear picture of the culture of the organisation and a qualitative study is necessary (and planned) to develop the findings further, as well as triangulate the findings of this study.

This study should be of interest to practitioners as it presents the caveat that organisational culture of this study cannot be expected to change on its own, and highlights the need for a planned change process for the organisational culture to adapt to the changing needs of both the external and internal environments. The potential for resistance to change in this organisation appears is high and values and perceptions appear unrelated to any particular demographic.

Although the authors cannot generalise from this longitudinal case study, the authors can consider some potential social implications, especially if further studies confirm the findings. First, despite government attempts to develop higher education in Hungary, staff perceptions and values within the institution are harder to change. Second, any attempts to revitalise the organisation from the inside (such as in this case with the forced retirement of older employees) seem unfruitful. Finally, the HEI is struggling to survive, and yet employees seem to not be a part of that struggle.

Although there are studies of organisational culture in HEIs, very few have undertaken a longitudinal approach. The study takes place in a unique situation: just before and just after extreme changes – both internally and externally – have taken place. Few studies question the organic and evolving nature of culture as it is difficult to predict when changes will occur. The study is in the unique position of having been able to do so.

This work seeks to offer a greater understanding of Lean healthcare implementation challenges conceptually taking a situated cultural organizational change perspective.

A descriptive model of healthcare organizations’ Lean adoption trajectories is built using ripple and bridging modelization strategies from elements of three classic organizational change theories and knowledge from Lean, organizational culture, healthcare and operations management literature.

The “contingent Lean culture adoption” (CLCA) model suggests five theoretical trajectories the healthcare organizations may experience when conducting a Lean transformation. These trajectories evolve from a new concept of Lean cultural friction (LCF) which represents cultural friction that a healthcare organization encounters toward an ultimate Lean culture proficiency state through time. From high to low initial LCF, a healthcare organization may in its Lean proficiency course end up in three states: lower, similar or higher LCF situation.

The CLCA model demonstrates the potential to be developed into a framework and possibly a Lean cultural friction theory pending further qualitative and quantitative validation.

The CLCA model may help healthcare managers to use more appropriate cultural change strategies during their organization’s Lean journey.

This work enriches the concept of Lean cultural change which may apply not only to healthcare organizations but also to other ones. It suggests the existence of a healthcare organization Lean culture proficiency archetype and introduces the notion of Lean cultural friction.

The construction industry has struggled with efficiency issues for decades. Organizational culture is identified as one of the biggest hindrances for the enhancement of efficiency in a highly labor-intensive sector such as construction. Based on recent academic studies, Finnish construction industry professionals would embrace clan and adhocracy culture features to achieve a better level of construction efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the promoters and the barriers for making the desired culture change happen in the case company.

The paper presents a semi-structured theme interview case study, including 12 in-depth interviews. The interviews were recorded, and later, transcribed into text, which forms the empirical data of this paper.

The Finnish construction industry must adopt a holistic approach to enhance its prevailing level of efficiency through the culture change. Basic learning and knowledge management processes seem to be missing from the industry and organizational levels. Better knowledge management in the case company would be the first step to start fixing this problem.

Because of the nature of a case study, the research results can be generalized only with caution in the Finnish construction industry. Generalizing the findings in another country would require further studies in a different cultural environment, e.g. in another European country.

The paper includes implications for the development of the organizational culture on the Finnish construction industry level and on an organizational level.

The found influencers are discussed through Engeström’s activity model for the first time in the construction culture context.

Future organizations must focus on their ability to change to be sustainable, and this calls more attention to sustainability as an organizational issue. However, change initiatives often fail because of a lack of employee commitment. The purpose of this study is to examine how organizational culture and individual readiness for change (IRFC) relate to types of commitment to change.

Survey data from a sample of 259 employees in a Norwegian public organization undergoing major strategic changes were used to test the hypothesized relations.

The results show that flexible and stable organizational cultures did not relate differently to types of change commitment. This may indicate that the strength, rather than the type, of organizational culture is vital for change commitment. Nevertheless, a flexible organizational culture had a clearer relation to positive change commitment; in part through its positive relation with both change self-efficacy and negative personal valence. These are important dimensions of IRFC.

The study contributes to a nuanced understanding of the role of contextual and individual factors in explaining various types of commitment to organizational change, in particular, by examining the distinction between flexible and stable organizational culture, as well as separate dimensions of IRFC. A flexible culture together with both of the included dimensions of IRFC is shown to be of importance in fostering affective commitment to change – the gold standard of change commitment. Recognizing sustainability as an organizational issue underscores the need for creating a culture conducive to change.

Despite considerable conceptual interest in the relationship between organizational culture and various types of organizational change, empirical evidence regarding this relationship at different levels and types of change is surprisingly absent. This study examines whether organizational culture perceptions differ in frequently versus infrequently changing organizations, and whether this relationship is moderated by members' hierarchical level in the organization (i.e. staff, manager, executive).

Study includes culture survey data for 904 staff, managers and executives from one frequently changing and two infrequently changing organizations in the education sector.

Results show multiple non-monotonic organization-by-organizational level interaction effects on cultural style scores. In the frequently changing organization, executives report lower constructive cultural style scores and higher defensive cultural style scores than do managers and staff. In the infrequently changing organizations, executives, managers and staff report similar constructive and defensive style scores.

In frequently changing organizations, leaders are more likely to be discontent with the status quo and continuously encourage change efforts, while lower level members' have considerable experience with change and are empowered to continuously create change. The result is systematic differences in culture perceptions across levels, but also an agile organization capable of pursuing opportunities to improve organizational performance.

The authors’ findings show that systematic differences in perceptions of cultural styles across organizational levels relate to organizational change frequency. This contrasts with existing literature emphasizing the importance of culture perceptions being pervasive throughout the organization.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the impact of organizational culture on the conflict handling style in non-profit organizations. Conflicts in non-profit organizations and especially in associations are more numerous, mainly because of the search for compromise in the decision-making phases and the high level of loyalty in mission that strongly stimulates the voice of one’s opinion. The authors observe that a modification of the organizational culture, through symbolic changes, can resolve the conflicts sequence.

Culture is measured through the organizational culture profile tool and the culture deciphering technique. The authors detail two cases of non-profit organizations, in which conflicts sequence resolution was handled through organizational culture change while conflicts resolution at the individual level could not bring an end to the conflicts sequence.

These cases highlight how organizational culture shapes behaviors and conflicts handling styles. These cases also give insights on how an organizational culture can be changed to setup new default conflict handling styles in an organization. The cultural change management only worked when it was planned on critical cultural change readiness factors with a strong enforcement of the change by the governing bodies.

This study complements research studies on how organizational culture shapes attitudes and behaviors and shows how and under which conditions a cultural change could resolve a conflict sequence. This study also presents a conflict resolution method when the roots of conflicts are embedded in the existing organizational culture. In such conflicts situation, interpersonal conflict resolution technique did not solve the conflicts sequence and only cultural change finally brought an end to the sequence.

A combined search on two levels, the individual level and the organizational culture level, will thus show convergent conflict sources and get a great deal of knowledge before solving individual-level conflicts.

The non-profit sector is sometimes subject to high-conflict situation and this research contributes to more efficient conflict resolution protocols with an applicable method of conflict analysis, change management and conflict resolution.

The work showed how the organizational culture is a key element in the explanation of conflict sources and conflict handling in case of high and repeated conflict situation. It is thus possible to resolve conflict sequence by changing a carefully chosen cultural trait. Nevertheless, the culture change management program is complex and risky. In a high-conflict situation, the authors identified several key conflict resolution factors: the careful identification of the organizational culture traits explaining conflict handling style; the alignment of the management team on the cultural change plan to raise up the intensity of the new set of behaviors; and the selection of the most efficient symbolic change decision.