Option #1: Corporate Fundamentalist Culture and Sustainability (attached are example papers- Not to be copied) You are the senior organizational development strategist for ABC, Inc. ABC is known for

Running head: ABC FUNDAMENTALIST CULTURE AND SUSTAINABILITY 0

ABC Fundamentalist Culture and Sustainability

Jakob Hutter

ORG 561 – Examination of Modern Leadership

Colorado State University – Global Campus
Dr. Gail Townsend

August 3, 2020

ABC Fundamentalist Culture and Sustainability

ABC, Inc (ABC) has established itself as an organization that has a commitment towards having a strong corporate culture. ABC has relied on this strong corporate culture to be successful and has allowed the organization to be able to meet strategic objectives effectively. However, companies like ABC may have a model that is no longer able to attract new employees based on this type of culture. In a recent conversation with a career center director of a major university that ABC was gaining a reputation of “behaving more and more like a cult.” This concern is more noteworthy when the director noted that soon-to-be graduates, and our potential employees, expressed concerns on whether or not they would be able to feel included in our organization. Looking forward, ABC must reflect on our current culture to see how our current may improve in order to maintain are standing as a good reputation with future hires to feel included in our culture.

ABC Organizational Synopsis

This paper will outline the detrimental effects a fundamentalist culture has in the workplace. This will help provide insights to issues that ABC may be blind to and understand the negative impact this type of culture takes on our employees. Furthermore, this paper will offer the limits that transformational leadership has towards ABC. Despite our society looking towards transformation leaders to provide the answers and solutions to an organization’s failings may no longer be an effective approach that our organization needs to maintain success. Finally, it is important to factor that this is not a lost cause for the organization. We have the ability to improve our organization with a new leadership approach that will allow us to maintain a competitive edge and continue to satisfy our internal and external stakeholders for the better. Our organization must keep an open mind in order to take the necessary steps to improve.

Detriment of Fundamentalist Culture in the Workplace

The key to any successful organization is to have a culture on shared beliefs that are supported by a structured environment that strengthens the organization’s strategic objectives. As previously mentioned, ABC is receiving more negative attention of taking this type of culture to the extreme, being referred as a “behaving more and more like a cult.” This can be due to the fact that ABC is becoming more and more like a fundamentalist organizational culture. Western (2019) depicts this type of culture as a paradox; to create a dynamic and conformist culture where employees deliver diverse, expert, and knowledgeable skills to the workplace, but in internalized culture of control (p. 139-140). As an organization, ABC has looked to its leadership for guidance to drive change that will impact our stakeholders. However, this dynamic is similar to the Christian fundamentalism that appear in churches that develops a controlling narrative of the Bible to condone or forbid behavior among attendance goers (Antonenko, Willer, & Keltner, 2013). The challenge for our leadership team is to understand that this forceful touch in a corporate environment can be effective for leaders who are adept to energizing employees to stay with the organization, this reputation that ABC is receiving demonstrates that this type of culture will ultimately destroy itself from internal factors, such as employees being passive aggressive to self-interests instead of the organization. Finally, a factor that is at play that this team should strongly consider that is unique to fundamentalist cultures is a demand for unconditional obedience from a workforce. If ABC continues on an unsustainable path of corporate fundamentalism, the organization will soon find itself with employees leaving and the organization eventually going under. The organization must pursue different strategies and processes that are currently in use to ensure that our employees, even our customers, are welcomed in a diverse and inclusive environment.

Limits of Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership is one of the most prominent and studied leadership approaches leaders utilize. The underlying premise that the leader and follower dynamic should be a team to meet a common objective lead to organization effectiveness, there are constraints that this approach has the potential to be abused due to how it affects followers. While ABC wants to provide a culture that empowers employees to develop to their best potential, the organization should be cautious on how to conducts this vision. The four factors that concern transformational leadership are idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Northouse, 2019). Transformational leaders take their followers needs seriously while acting as an ethical role models to articulate a vision using appropriate risks. Despite some positive qualities that can make this leadership approach effective in many organizations, it appears that this style is no longer applicable at ABC. When our workforce risk fulfilling the organization’s vision regardless of how impractical, vague, or perhaps deceptive it may be and no guarantee that the new direction is more promising proves problematic (Lee, 2014). The likelihood where leaders could make decisions and followers acting on that guidance can have negative implications for ABC. This is not to say that followers should not listen to the leaders above them, but to acknowledge that this approach can be exploited to negatively impact an organization. This abuse of powers leads to the conclusion that this leadership approach is not suitable for ABC to continue to implement in the organization. With the potential for a transformational leader to abuse their power that can negatively impact the reputation of the organization further through exploiting followers is not sustainable. Ultimately to have our workforce, and our organization as a whole, have a threat that allows them to lose more than they gain is not the way forward to remove this perception of a cult.

Advancement of ABC’s Organizational Culture

In a competitive environment, long-term success for effective organizations includes developing processes that ABC can implement that includes valuing continuous improvement. To accomplish this the organization must look to establishing an adaptive leadership approach. This approach provides a practical framework that can help our organization transition from a cult-like environment to one that can adapt and thrive in a diverse and changing world. While research on this approach is fairly new, the core concept revolves around leadership being able to modify their selected behaviors to be relevant for the situations in which they are used. Followers, on the other hand, provide diversity that goes beyond surface level attributes that affect how each would like to be led (Yuki & Mahsud, 2010). Unlike our current cult-like framework we have at ABC, this adaptive leadership approach is also able to provide a simple and effective approach leaders throughout our organization can use to diagnose issues at the lowest level, plan an effective course of action to correct or mitigate the issue, and action that plan effectively. If implemented, adaptive leaders will be able to set the conditions in which dynamic teamwork is able to thrive in an environment that able to adjust to the unpredictable. Its no doubt that ABC finds itself in a situation that, left unchecked, will allow itself to fold over to our competitors and left on the side of the road. A culture of an adaptability will be vital to transition towards that allows employees to become empowered to take more ownership of the organization and the freedom to improvise (Useem, 2010). It is important to understand that the changes ABC needs to make will not happen overnight, but that does not mean that there is no hope in trying to change course towards a better future for the organization. ABC should look at the benefits that an adaptive leadership approach can provide to the organization moving forward in order to encourage future employees of ABC to join our team.

Conclusion

As a result, ABC has a crucial opportunity to change its current strategy that creates perceptions of our organization “behaving like a cult” into one that is able to adapt to an ever-changing environment. Furthermore, appropriate actions need to be taken to ensure that we are able to recruit future employees that are highly qualified and able to bring fresh ideas into our organization. Consequently, the current culture dynamics within ABC has created a fundamentalist culture in the workplace that has been demonstrated to be no longer an effective strategy to continue conducting business. In addition, a transformational leadership approach does have its ability to be attractive for some organizations to implement effectively. Yet this approach has the ability to become abused by those in power that can influence followers to blindly follow their orders. Evidently, ABC must look at implementing a new leadership approach by utilizing an adaptive leadership approach. Doing will help curb the reputation we are increasingly getting of being compared to a cult to a standing as an organization that can effectively tackle any and all issues effectively.

References

Antonenko Young, O., Willer, R., & Keltner, D. (2013). “Thou shalt not kill”: Religious fundamentalism, conservatism, and rule-based moral processing. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 5(2), 110.

Lee, M. (2014). Transformational leadership: is it time for a recall?. International journal of management and applied research, 1(1), 17-29.

Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: theory and practice. Los Angeles: SAGE.

Useem, M. (2010). Four lessons in adaptive leadership. Harvard business review, 88(11), 86-90.

Western, S. (2019). Leadership: a critical text (3rd ed.). London: Sage Publications.

Yukl, G., & Mahsud, R. (2010). Why flexible and adaptive leadership is essential. Consulting Psychology Journal: practice and research, 62(2), 81.