Organizational Culture: Centre College Makes the Grade

Okay, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to tout my alma mater, Centre College, and highlight its recent appearance at number 14 overall on Forbes 2009 list of best colleges. Say what you will about college ranking systems—they tend to be highly subjective and often based upon questionable criteria—but when taken in the proper context, they can serve as a useful tool for comparative analysis. What’s pleasantly surprising about Centre College’s ranking is not that it is so high—indeed its educational quality has been Kentucky’s worst kept secret for decades—but that its small size didn’t take it out of contention. Centre College is tiny, smaller than a lot of high schools, and located in a small town on a small campus, but what it does have is a big world view and a powerful learning culture. Last fall, in an Organizational Behavior class at the University of Alaska, we studied the influence of organizational culture in business and educational institutions. Our professor challenged us to evaluate UAA’s culture, attempt to understand its development and brainstorm some potential improvements. Centre’s inclusion in the Forbes list reminded me of this exercise and again underscored just how critical organizational culture is to organizational success. Despite the clear differences between UAA and Centre, the importance of culture does not seem to be directly tied to size or scale; rather both large and small organizations must have some clear method for institutionalizing knowledge, values and practices. Consider the following excerpt from an essay I wrote on organizational culture, in which Centre College and UAA’s cultures are discussed:

Organizational culture is, in part, an organic aspect of any well-established group, but it is also a calculated choice designed to perpetuate shared values and beliefs that normalize certain behaviors. Strong organizational cultures have distinct advantages when implemented broadly, yet there are some clear disadvantages as well.

The advantages of a strong organizational culture are that it effectively creates an identity for the organization as a whole and provides a set of guiding norms for individuals within that organization. A strong culture has the ability to perpetuate the organization’s values, beliefs and attitudes as well as provide the foundation for organizational learning and a shared sense of purpose. An organization with a strong culture can more easily identify individuals who fit a particular mold and provide a network of socialization, rewards and incentives. Strong cultures also serve as established communication networks which spread relevant information and convey managerial expectations. Strong cultures tend to contain measures of distributive and social justice and they have defined processes for perpetuating the culture through stories, tradition, socialization, ceremonies, language and symbols, etc... Organizations with strong cultures tend to be equipped for success under specific conditions and tend to cultivate long term employees with a high level of loyalty and shared values. However, strong organizational cultures can have some distinct disadvantages as well. Within strong cultures there is often a pressure to conform, which can isolate individuals and limit creativity. Also, strong cultures can be resistant to change which can complicate growth, particularly regarding mergers. Furthermore, the risks of conformity within a strong culture can make an organization prone to group dysfunctions such as groupthink and group polarization, which can further complicate the decision-making process and creates an element of organizational risk.

In my view, The University of Alaska Anchorage organizational culture is challenged by the fact that very few students live on campus. My undergraduate degree is from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, a very small college with a very strong culture. During my time there, well over 90-percent of students lived on campus and the culture at Centre College was characterized by a rich history, strong traditions, and values crafted by storied generations of families and individuals over time. A thorough orientation process bonded classes together and the small town semi-rural setting, coupled with a campus-dwelling student body, put the College at the social and educational center of every student’s life. Education came first and, as easily distracted eighteen-year-olds showed up each fall, they were shaped by a culture focused on positive, productive learning amid an extremely demanding educational environment. This is the benefit of a strong culture at an educational institution and I believe that the most successful institutions have administrators who understand that a school’s culture plays a huge role in the educational mission. To be sure, it is more than sports teams and social events, rather at its core it has to be about a high standard of educational excellence. In my opinion, this begins with communication. For example, UAA’s hallways are littered with information boards, which indicates to me that (a) people want to communicate and (b) there is a lack of fully formed outlets for communication—instead individuals are left to tack their claims to a hopeful void. The larger issue here is that UAA does not have a very advanced system of connecting its students to the University or to other students. UAA could gain ground in this area by cultivating a compelling narrative for itself, a tradition based upon the accomplishments of current students, faculty and alumni and by making communication a priority, through regular publications, educational functions and forums, online networking websites and a functional email system, etc... Could UAA’s lack of a strong culture challenge its ability to fulfill its educational mission and serve as a leading-edge institution for the state of Alaska? Perhaps, but thus far UAA has managed to maintain high educational standards without deep organizational culture. I wonder if the lack of a fully formed culture is, in part, due to the fact that the University isn’t dependant on alumni giving as a major funding source. Centre College, a private institution, worked hard to create a strong culture, in part to cultivate a lifelong bond between alumni and the institution, a practice that has been very effective and lucrative, as Centre is regularly cited as one of the top colleges in the nation for alumni giving rates. Indeed, I suspect that nationwide there is at least a loose correlation between university culture and alumni giving. Centre’s administrators clearly believe that in order to stimulate giving, you must create a holistic, unique and lasting educational and social experience. UAA doesn’t seem to have the same incentive, perhaps because it is funded by the state. Nevertheless, a strong culture is an integral part of accomplishing the educational mission and the goal should be to make students feel more connected to their University in order to facilitate the positive feedback loop that exists between learning and a strong university culture.

In summary, strong organizational cultures can have significant advantages and disadvantages. A strong culture can effectively perpetuate a system of values and cultivate a workforce with shared goals and a rich organizational identity. However, strong cultures can contain pitfalls such as constrained growth, the suppression of individual creativity and resistance to change. Organizations wishing to establish strong cultures must be certain that the values they impose are ethical, reasonable and flexible enough to encourage success without blurring the overall mission of the organization.