Primary Contents of the Latent Culture - Latent Vs. Manifest Culture

Primary Contents, Effects, and Manifestations of the

Latent Culture: A Socio-Psychological Perspective

Latent vs. Manifest Culture

Every organization has a latent (hidden) culture that is distinct from its reported or superficially observed and measured manifest culture. The latent culture is causally significant to organizational performance. Essentially, it consists of the hidden motivational structure of the organization, including both the nature of those governing beliefs that operate beneath the surface of awareness (or beyond the pale of discussability) to shape the perceptions, attitudes, emotions and related actions and behavior in the workplace, and the tacit logic of such beliefs , i.e. the cognitive basis of their formation, confirmation, reinforcement, and justification. Here, at the deeper levels of the collective psyche of the organization, is where both the creative and destructive power of the company exists. In companies that fit the profile presented in Exhibit A, the content of the latent culture becomes the impetus of meta-resistance, which is a negative and often passive-aggressive reaction to management, and the various perceptions, attitudes, and counter-productive reactive mechanisms in the workplace that constitute such meta-resistance. Whether the stimulus of creative or destructive forces, the latent culture of the organization is what is essentially running the show.

Conversely, the manifest culture - the "culture" that is typically assessed, measured and worked with by leaders and consultants - has no causal significance to organizational performance. At one level, the manifest culture is merely how the latent culture manifests itself (or shows up) behaviorally in the workplace. At another level it consists of how top-of-mind values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior are generally or non-specifically reported and interpreted by members of the organization when asked, profiled, or surveyed. At both levels, however, what remains unknown is, again, the underlying and specific nature and logic of the governing motives, beliefs, and related psychosocial dynamics at play within the organization that causally account for manifested attitudes and related actions and behavior, and provide the necessary knowledge needed to contextually lead (or interact) within the organization to effectuate the necessary or desired change in the belief structure from the inside-out.

Meta-Resistance

The distinction between resistance to change and a reaction to management alluded to in the first paragraph above is crucial. In the former, anxiety related to change, and the cognitive basis of such anxiety, is the basis of the resistance. Leaders can do much to facilitate change in such cases by effectively managing transition. In the latter, the problem is not with the specific change per se, or with anxiety related to such change, but with a deeply embedded reaction to management. Consequently the more leaders, including new leaders, try to drive the change, the stronger the reaction and resulting resistance becomes (see case studies in the paper "Meta-Strategy for Organizational Change in a 'Reset' Global Economy"). Because of the sui generis nature of meta-resistance, it might or might not be discernable by management, and is often not distinguishable as such. Moreover, by its very nature, meta-resistance is resistant to both self-awareness and admission; a fact that makes subjective, anecdotal reporting of its existence in response to typical "single-loop" inquiry and the instrument-based profiling and assessment of leaders and the culture very likely problematic at least, if not utterly ineffectual.

Whether active or dormant, the motivational structure of meta-resistance can be identified by the existence of a certain likewise latent doxastic structure in certain pockets of the organization, or in the organization at large. This "doxastic structure" (or primary motivational belief system) is, like the overt manifestation of meta-resistance itself, likewise resistant to awareness and admission. More specifically, it includes those beliefs held toward management specifically in relation to:

(i) how congruent (or incongruent) leaders' actions and behavior are perceived to be in relation to their own and the company's espoused values and principles;

(ii) what management's motives are perceived to be in relation to decisions made or actions taken that affect both management and employees personally; and

(iii) how competently (or incompetently) management is perceived to be in relation to how the company is being directed and managed.

These negative or critical beliefs, together with their unique, subjective logic and related justification, are indicative of latent ambivalence toward management, and certain reactive dynamics triggered by such ambivalence. Moreover, they ultimately define the particular reaction to management derived from such ambivalence, and provide, as briefly touched on in Exhibit D, the essential "cultural lens" that informs leaders how to more effectively engage the organization as the primary objects of such meta-resistance.

Ambivalence, as understood psychodynamically, is the simultaneous experience of opposing and conflicting attitudes toward the same person or personified group. Such a phenomenon is rooted in primary human relationships, most notably between parents and children and among siblings, and is extended to others through projection, or transference. When such projective transference occurs in the workplace between and among, for example, the CEO and employees , managers and their reports, or various competing groups within the organization, a state of overt or covert conflict (and internal conflictedness) will ensue, irrespective of the particular individuals involved. Depending on organizational conditions and circumstances at a given point in time, one or the other aspect (e.g. trust or distrust; respect or disdain) will manifest attitudinally and behaviorally as either apathy or some type of compliance (i.e. grudging, formal, genuine) or non-compliance, or in culture surveys and verbal reporting as 'positive,' 'negative' or mixed and/or inconsistent feedback. Alternatively, both might manifest simultaneously, likely resulting, in the first instance, in a misrepresentative reading of leaders and the culture, and in the second instance, an inconsistent reading. This