Culture through the lens of sociology

Organisational culture is the set of values, beliefs and understandings shared by an organisation's employees and it ranks among an organisation's most powerful tools. But the same values and beliefs that can mobilise an organisation to action can be a liability if they are inconsistent with the organisation's needs. You must understand organisational culture and needs in intimate detail before a judgment can be made about the strategic role of humour.

British academics, Goffee and Jones, view culture as an outcome of how people relate to one another. They believe organisations rest on intricate patterns of social interaction that sustain them over time or contribute to their undoing. Their sociological perspective divides community into two distinct types of human relations-sociability and solidarity^[11], where:

• sociability is a measure of emotional relations among individuals in a community who consider themselves friends and who share attitudes, interests and values. A strong espirit de corps is in evidence in environments of high sociability, where teamwork, sharing of information and cooperation are the norm.

• solidarity is a measure of a community's ability to pursue shared goals, regardless of personal ties. High-solidarity environments do not rest on a network of close friendships. They generate a high degree of strategic focus, a swift response to competitive threats and intolerance of poor performance. Cooperation tends to occur when the advantage to the individual is clear.

Goffee and Jones plotted these dimensions against each other to create four types of communities: networked, mercenary, fragmented and communal. They emphasised that none of these cultures is necessarily the ideal in itself, but that each may be appropriate for a different business environment.^[12]

Those who use this sociological filter to objectively assess the culture of their organisation are in a strong position to determine whether the culture they have is the culture they want; and whether it fits the competitive situation in which they find themselves or in which they hope to place themselves. Only then can they consider the use of such a delicate technique as humour to enhance, transform or realign the culture.