The Influence of Work on Organizational Subcultures

Hatch states in her discussion of culture "employees have already been influenced by multiple cultural institutions such as family, community, nation, state, church, educational systems, and other work organizations, and these associations shape their attitudes, behavior and identity." (p. 200) I think she has missed one important influence: the kind of work that a person does.

Paul Glen wrote a book named Leading Geeks [0], in which he describes how geeks, whom he defines as "the knowledge workers who specialize in the creation, maintenance, or support of high technology", think, work, and interact with other people in their organization. Essentially, he's describing a geek subculture, where it comes from, and how geeks can be managed in ways to increase innovation and decrease conflicts with other parts of their organization.

On page 12 of Leading Geeks Glen says, "Not only are geeks different from other employees, but their work is quite different as well. Although it may not be obvious at first, the nature of geekwork imprints itself on the relationship between the leader and geeks just as much as the personality of geeks and leaders does.... The structure of day-to-day tasks imposes its own patterns of thinking on those who engage with them on an ongoing basis, and the assumptions induced by the work permeate the relationship among manager, leader, and follower. All are affected by the influence of the work. And in this case, geekwork imparts its own unique behavioral and cognitive patterns on the leadership relationship."

Glen describes "geekwork" as being characterized by creative problem solving, a high occurrence of ambiguity and failure, the work is all about what you don't know rather than what you do, and subordinates know more than their superiors. The work, in turn, helps create a geek subculture that values creativity and play, technical skills, a cavalier attitude toward policies and procedures, loyalty to the profession rather than the company, and a desire to organize along democratic and meritocratic lines. This is in direct conflict with classical styles of management, and can cause a great deal of misunderstanding and argument.

The idea that work influences culture has profound implications for organization theory. Our world is one where innovation is seen as a primary competitive advantage. Geeks are not the only creative, innovative workers; perhaps it is in geeks that the subcultural differences between creative and innovative workers and command-and-control-style managers is most obvious. What we learn from managing geeks we can then apply to bringing artists and other creative, independent personalities into the organization. Creativity enables innovation, which can mean the survival of the organization.

What are the implications for libraries? For one, librarians are people who enjoy dealing with information, and we should consider how that affects our personalities and values. It seems obvious to us that free access to information is a fundamental human right, that the first place to look for information is the library or bookstore, and that people are generally pretty smart. It can be difficult for us to realize that lots of other people don't share those assumptions.

Another way this helps libraries is that it opens up a way for us to bring more creative people into the library organization. Libraries are pretty conservative organizations, dedicated to peace and order. This has hurt us because we are less open to creativity and innovation than we need to be. Librarians need to bring more creative people into our profession; even the ones whose subcultures appear weird, frightening, or flat-out incompatible with ours. Instead of forcing these people into our way of thinking, we can figure out how to carve out a cultural niche within the library for them to thrive. The library will be much richer for it.

Aspen Junge

[0] Glen, Paul. (2003). Leading Geeks: How to Manage and Lead People Who Deliver Technology. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.