Organizational Culture in a Public Entity

Interview with Mike Temple, Workforce Program Manager

 The Houston-Galveston Area Council is a region-wide voluntary association of local governments in the 13-county Gulf Coast Planning region of Texas.

H-GAC provides many tools: information, region-wide plans, and services to support the region’s local governments.  Key H-GAC governmental services include transportation planning, cooperative purchasing, homeland security, air and water quality planning, forecasting, and mapping.  H-GAC also serves the region through workforce development, criminal justice, 9-1-1, small business finance, and other programs contributing to the region’s quality of life and economic competitiveness.

Mike Temple is the Workforce Program Manager for the Houston-Galveston Area Council and afforded me an expeditious interview where he speaks briefly about the organizational culture at H-GAC. Although the interview wasn’t very long I feel Mike made some key points relative to our readings this past week.

Audrey: Mike, tell me a little about the organizational culture at H-GAC….is it good, not so good, effective, what is your perception?

Mike:  H-GAC’s culture is effective for the organization’s work.  I would say that it is “good” and has both positive and negative aspects.

Audrey:  How would you think someone from the outside would describe the culture at H‑GAC?

Mike:  I think it depends on how someone from the outside touches or knows the organization and that H-GAC can be described as bureaucratic and slow and also responsive and flexible.

*Because H-GAC provide services in so many capacities it was difficult for Mike to identify how outsiders viewed them. I will speak to this as one of their vendors. On one hand they provide services and financial aid to consumers for unemployment and childcare, which may make them seem more bureaucratic like the government and on the other hand other departments, provide transportation planning services whereas engineering firms may find them an instrumental source of funding for road work. From the outside I see two cultural traits, involvement and adaptability as discussed by (Denison and Mishra, 1995). H-GAC has to manage many funding streams for the region increasing their need to be flexible and responsive to the political constituents they serve as well as to the broad range of consumers from white-collar executives to welfare recipients. Their governmental nature requires them to be transparent. Internally they have adapted the same cultural traits of adaptability and involvement. Because of their customer satisfaction nature their staff is flexible to the needs of the markets they serve. The following answer by Mike speaks to these cultural traits.

Audrey:  Do you believe your organizational culture has an effect on the performance of H-GAC? If yes, how? If no, why?

Mike:  Yes.  H-GAC’s culture is one that promotes internal flexibility and individual effort.  This contributes to the organization’s ability to respond quickly to new policy issues or different opportunities for service to its members. This same flexibility and emphasis on individuals also sometimes results in less attention to on-going activities and a lack of regular teamwork.  All of this affects performance.

Audrey:  What affect do you believe turnover has on an organization’s culture?

Mike: Generally high turnover makes for a less stable or defined culture in an organization.  However some businesses with consistently high turnover (because of the nature of the business) manage to maintain defined cultures and transmit those cultures to employees.  (Think retail.)

*One lesson, (Sorensen, 2009) learned from Zucker’s experiment, was that organizations can “define the situation” for their members through transmitting beliefs from employees to new hires but he also learned that you can’t depend on transmission of those beliefs alone. Mike makes a point about those organizations that consistently have turnover as a part of the business maintaining their cultures. Perhaps H-GAC’s culture is strong and transmitted consistently through management to new hires. In this interview Mike agreed that the organization’s core values play a part in shaping the H-GAC culture.

Audrey: Lastly, what approach should an organization take to build a good organizational culture?

Mike: Usually if the organization has been in existence for some time, it already has a culture.  To strengthen it or make it better, I think the organization should be clear about what its values, mission and vision are; be able to communicate those to its employees; and support its mission in all its activities.  Listening to employees’ comments and concerns about the organization and investing their employees’ skills also helps build a solid and respected culture.

While wrapping up, Mike said he believes an organization’s culture can motivate employees and enhance performance as also noted by (Sorensen, 1995). A point he brought up in his previous answer regarding communication and skills investment may be a big factor in employee motivation and performance.

References

Sorenson, J. (2009) Note on Organizational Culture, Harvard Business School,

pp. 1-6

Denison, D.R. & Mishra, A.K. (1995) Toward a theory of organizational culture and effectiveness, Organization Science, 6, 204-223.