It's time to get practical, and tactical. Up to now we've been speaking somewhat abstract layer a little theoretically about cultural traits and cultural artifacts. Now it's time to look at specific cultural artifacts that I've identified through my research, which we are going to subject to analysis as part of your efforts to analyze and manage your culture. Here are a couple of things to keep in mind as we talk about the social cultural artifacts that appear in your organization, as well as the material and ideological artifacts. So we'll be speaking about in the next few lessons. Based on my research, some artifacts are seen only in large companies, not in small or unestablished companies.

Next, not all artifacts will appear in your organization, but many will. Your company may also demonstrate cultural traits that are unique to your organization. All cultural traits can be categorized as either social material or ideological artifacts. And there is some overlap between categories. So let's talk about the 10 social cultural artifacts and they are presented here in no particular order. But as a recap, social cultural refers to how an organization establishes roles and responsibilities for its members.

But social culture is a little broader than that, and also entails how an organization is structured, and how it makes decisions. Now let's look at the first set of social cultural artifacts. social cultural artifacts, include traits such as centralized or decentralized management, compensation and benefits, and the design of the company's functional organization. Let's look at each one. centralized or decentralized management refers to the nature of the organization structure from the standpoint of managing decision making and operational planning in the area of compensation and benefits. This refers to the general nature of specific policies related to how the organization compensates its employees.

In other words is the organization known as generous with salaries, raises and perks. And the design of the functional organization refers to the extent to which management establishes either a flat or hierarchical organizational structure with regard to employee management interactions, operations, and management reporting. Now, let's talk about the next set of social cultural artifacts that you should be considering as part of your cultural analysis. social cultural artifacts include traits such as the dissemination of corporate strategic and financial information to stakeholders, the area of employee evaluations, and the area of employee empowerment and ownership. Again, let's look at each one. The dissemination of corporate strategic and reform financial information to stakeholders relates to the issue of transparency.

This means the extent to which management regularly shares information of a strategic or financial nature with employees, so called open book management, and the way it communicates with stakeholders to maintain transparency of its operations and business performance. In the area of employee evaluations, this refers to the nature and scope of formal procedures and guidelines related to assessing employee performance, for example, for salary reviews, promotions, or disciplinary purposes. Next, employee empowerment and ownership. This refers to the degree to which employees are given authority for various types of managerial decision making. Think about the ability of a shop floor worker to quote stop the assembly line. This also relates to the area of employees having a sense of ownership in the business.

Now let's look at the final set of social cultural artifacts. should be evaluated as part of your analysis. social cultural artifacts include traits such as interpersonal relations and conflict resolution, leadership and management development policies, the level of bureaucracy in your organization and what may be known as physical manifestations of power. Let's look at each one in the area of interpersonal relations and conflict resolution. This refers to the degree to which the organization has systems in place to address issues involving employee interactions, and to deal with conflicts between an individual employees, departments or business units. In terms of Leadership and Management Development, this refers to the importance placed by management on Leadership and Management Development at all employee levels, and the comprehensiveness of such programs.

The level of bureaucracy refers to how major operational and strategic decisions are made, for example, in terms of the number of layers of approval of the involvement of money committees in making decisions. And physical manifestations of power relates to the presence of special office accommodations or personnel areas, for example, the executive gym that indicate managers or employees different levels of rank and influence in the organization. Remember, all these artifacts are simply activities that businesses undertake. It's how they do things around here. Now in the accompanying workbook for this course, you will find questions to ask about every artifact. And these are designed to help you ask the right questions and probe the right areas to determine whether or not each artifact is a cultural issue, concern or opportunity in your efforts to establish a high performance optimized culture.

Let's sum up with three key takeaways. First, social cultural traits relate to people's roles and responsibilities in an organization. But they also relate to how the organization is structured. And how it makes decisions. Second, in general, social cultural traits appear in all organizations but to greater or lesser degrees. And third, all organizations are different, and exhibit social cultural traits in very specific ways.

And the next lesson, we'll look at material culture and artifacts