Organisational culture and cultural change: A network perspective

Abstract

Organisational culture is a complex and heavily contested concept. Not only is it difficult to define what organisational culture is, but it is also very difficult to analyse how it guides and constrains behaviour, and whether and how organisational cultures change. The central argument of this article is that organisational networks can effect cultural change and that the terms ‘structural’ and ‘relational’, which are commonly used to conceptualise the properties of networks, may also provide a useful conceptual framework for understanding cultural change. While there has been some attention directed to the effects of organisational culture for networks, there has been very little attention placed on the potential for networks to shape organisational culture. Based on a detailed qualitative study of networks in the field of ‘high’ policing in Australia, the article draws on interviews with senior members of police and security agencies to explore organisational culture and cultural change. The article puts forward a network perspective on cultural change and aims to advance our knowledge of how security nodes can experience cultural change as they work together in and through networks.

Keywords

Cultural change organisational culture organisational networks police culture security networks

Introduction

Organisational culture is a difficult concept to define. While the term has a relatively long history (Selznick, 1957), it was really not until the early 1980s that organisational culture became popular (Deal & Kennedy, 1982; Smircich, 1983). Since then, however, organisational culture has been defined and studied in many different ways. For Schein (2010), one of the most influential scholars in the field, culture is to an organisation what personality is to an individual, a conception that is not unsympathetic to Skolnick's (1966) classic notion of the police ‘working personality’. Schein refers to personality to emphasise that organisational culture is a deeply embedded phenomenon that is pervasive in its influence and not easily changed (see also Schein, 1999). Schein (2010) also likens culture to personality to call attention to the problematic relationship between organisational culture and behaviour, suggesting that although we can see behaviour, we often cannot see the underlying forces that cause certain behaviours. However, while many have studied organisational culture and whether and how organisational cultures change, there is much scope to advance our knowledge of this topic, particularly in relation to organisational networks.

Networks have received much attention in the organisational and criminological literature. Much of the criminological literature has concentrated on networks of public, private and hybrid security nodes. In recognising that the governance of security is pursued by a host of agencies that include, but are not limited to, those of the state, many scholars have called attention to the prominence of networks in security governance (e.g. Brewer, 2014; Dupont, 2004, 2006, 2014; Fleming & Rhodes, 2005; Fleming & Wood, 2006; Johnston & Shearing, 2003; Palmer & Whelan, 2006, 2014; Shearing & Johnston, 2010; Whelan, 2012, 2014; Wood & Dupont, 2006; Wood & Shearing, 2007). For the most part, this literature uses the network concept as a metaphor to describe the shifting relationships between security nodes. This is very different from what network researchers refer to as ‘goal-directed’ networks (Kilduff & Tsai, 2003), or deliberately structured organisational forms in which agencies are required to work together to achieve their own goals and also a collective goal (Provan, Fish, & Sydow, 2007; Provan & Kenis, 2008; Raab, Mannak, & Cambre, 2015).

Organisational networks involve two sets of basic properties: structural and relational. Structural properties include such attributes as the design, size and level of goal consensus between network members. One important consideration in relation to network design is how networks are internally governed, with some being brokered by a central actor or lead organisation and others sharing control relatively equally between actors (Provan & Kenis, 2008). As networks increase in size and decrease in goal consensus, formal approaches to internal network governance are likely to be needed, which may require a lead organisation to be appointed. Relational properties refer to the relationships that take place between actors, including among individuals, work units and organisations (e.g. Brass, Galaskiewicz, Greve, & Tsai, 2004). Network relationships may be formal or informal and involve varying degrees of cooperation and conflict.

Organisational culture is one of the most significant relational properties of organisational networks. While conflicting organisational cultures can cause problems for networks, particularly in the field of ‘high’ policing due to the different outlooks or mindsets of ‘cops’ and ‘spooks’ (Brodeur, 2010), there has been limited attention placed on the potential effects of networks on organisational culture. The central argument of this article is that organisational culture and networks can have an effect on each other, meaning we should be sensitive to the ways in which organisational culture shapes networks and networks shape organisational culture. We also need to be mindful in drawing conclusions on this subject from the literature on ‘police culture’, because the overwhelming majority of this literature approaches police organisations as independent units of analysis.

This article examines this subject and aims to outline the foundations of a dynamic network perspective on cultural change. It presents organisational culture as fundamentally a relational variable that has the potential to change over time as network members work together. The structure of this article is as follows. The first section provides an overview of the concept of organisational culture based on the organisational literature. In the ‘Culture and the governance of security’ section, I attempt to identify some of the lessons from the organisational literature for our understanding of organisational culture in the field of policing and security. I also consider some of the leading frameworks for conceptualising police culture, particularly that put forward by Chan (1996), and the similarities and differences between that and a network-based approach. The ‘Methodology’ section outlines the research design of this project, which is based on qualitative interviews with senior members of police and security agencies across the field of high policing in Australia. In the ‘Cultural change and security networks’ section, I use interview data to analyse cultural change as something that can take place through structural processes, such as broader developments in the security field, and relational processes, which are both potentially unstructured and unpredictable. Interview data are principally used in an exploratory context to examine how security nodes understand organisational culture and reflect on how such cultures change. No attempt is made to empirically trace any particular organisational culture. The final section concludes the article and considers its main findings regarding our knowledge of organisational culture.

Organisational culture

Organisational culture is a heavily debated concept. Debate exists between those using culture as a variable and those using the term as a metaphor for understanding organisational life (Martin, 2002). The first tends to take the view that culture is something an organisation has, whereas the second takes the more anthropological position that culture is something an organisation is, making it quite difficult to determine what is and is not ‘culture’. However, the dominant view in the organisational and management literature is that culture is a variable in organisations. That is, culture is something that exists within organisations, can be identified and analysed using appropriate techniques and can be linked to various outcomes of an organisation such as organisational performance.

There is also considerable debate with regard to the levels at which culture is shared. A number of perspectives have been identified on this subject (Martin, 2002). One is the ‘integration’ perspective in which culture refers to the beliefs, values and attitudes shared across members of an organisation. It is in this context that the managerial literature argues that a so-called strong culture can enhance organisational performance (e.g. Deal & Kennedy, 1982). A strong culture is one that is shared by most – if not all – members of the organisation and is closely aligned to the goals and espoused values of that organisation's senior executives. Another is the ‘differentiation’ perspective in which it is argued there is usually no integrated organisational culture, with consensus on beliefs, values and attitudes occurring only within subcultural boundaries such as units within organisations. A third is known as the ‘fragmentation’ perspective, which asserts that organisational cultures are generally too ambiguous and diverse for researchers – and organisational participants – to be able to understand culture as a meaningful construct. Advocates of the fragmentation perspective would generally invoke culture as a tool for engaging in ‘thick’ descriptions (Morgan, 2006) of organisational life.

Schein (2010) suggests that some organisations will experience an integrated culture, some will be characterised more by differentiated organisational subcultures and some will have both integrated and differentiated cultures. For example, the larger the organisation and more functionally differentiated and/or geographically dispersed that organisation is, the more likely that organisation is to be characterised by various subcultures rather than an integrated organisational culture. A definition of culture must be open to both perspectives as the extent to which culture is shared or differentiated within an organisation is fundamentally an empirical question. Schein's (2010, p. 17) definition of culture provides this flexibility by using the term ‘group’, defined as any ‘social unit that has some kind of shared history’, as the basis from which to approach organisational culture. The strength of any particular group's culture will depend on many factors, including the length of its history, the stability of its membership and the types of experiences its members have shared. Culture refers to the shared beliefs, values and attitudes – or what Schein (2010, p. 18) calls ‘basic underlying assumptions’ – which form over the course of a group's history and which influence how it thinks and acts in relation to all aspects of its functioning.

Defining organisational culture in this way enables us to better examine the sensitive subject of cultural change. Leaving aside what Alvesson and Sveningsson (2008) call the ‘pop-management’ literature (which can be taken to include much of the literature on ‘strong’ cultures), the organisational literature tends to put forward three different perspectives on the possibilities of managing culture and promoting cultural change. The first is that organisational culture can, under certain conditions, be intentionally changed through a range of interventions from senior management. A second perspective is that changing organisational culture by design is very difficult, especially when one takes a deeper (rather than surface level) conception of organisational culture. The third perspective is that organisational culture is beyond control, with proponents of this position using the concept as only a metaphor for understanding organisational life (Martin, 2002). While there are many guidebooks on changing organisational culture, the more reflexive literature is far from optimistic about the prospects of intentional cultural change. Not only is it the case that many internal and external variables are involved in changing organisational culture, but it is often very difficult to even determine whether and to what extent cultural change has occurred. There is, however, an important difference between managing cultural change by design and viewing cultural change as an emergent process that happens over time without conscious direction.

Culture and the governance of security

While networks are the dominant organisational paradigm reflecting broader shifts in the governance of security (Wood & Dupont, 2006), there has not yet been commensurate attention towards the impact of networks or nodal governance on traditional conceptions of culture. Wood (2004) pointed out over a decade ago that working in and through networks may lead to cultural change, as security nodes take on the sensibilities of other nodes, but there have so far been very few attempts to analyse how cultures change as security nodes work together (O'Neill & McCarthy, 2014). Culture also continues to be studied almost exclusively in relation to the public police rather than other potential security nodes. Not unlike organisational culture, the concept of ‘police culture(s)’ has been defined and studied in many different ways (Cockcroft, 2012; Loftus, 2009; O'Neill, Marks, & Singh, 2007; Paoline, 2003; Reiner, 2010). Some authors have almost cautioned against attempting to establish a consensus definition of the term, suggesting that police culture can best be summarised as the ‘way things are done around here’ (O'Neill & Singh, 2007, p. 2). However, while there is a general agreement that police culture is important and can shape many aspects of police practice, it is not clear which aspects of this literature are helpful in advancing our knowledge of how networks shape culture. I suggest that there are two key interdependent reasons for this conclusion that become clearer after drawing on the organisational culture literature.

First, the literature on police culture almost exclusively focuses on police organisations as independent units of analysis. This is partly understandable since the main task of this literature was to better understand the beliefs, values and attitudes underpinning the worldview of rank-and-file police that influenced the way they performed their function (Manning, 1997). If we were to make inferences from this literature in relation to networks, we may conclude that police organisations tend to be somewhat distrusting and suspicious of ‘outsiders’ (Reiner, 2010). Although the reference point underlying this conclusion is not always clear, it seems apparent that this reference point matters. Police organisations are surely likely to be more or less suspicious of some outsiders than others, with any number of variables influencing such an outlook. Moreover, this only applies to how police organisations may approach their relationships with others in networks, rather than the potential for networks to shape police culture. The more recent literature on the concept tends to invoke the term ‘police cultures’ to reflect the potential for cultural differences (Ingram, Paoline, & Terrill, 2013; Manning, 2007; Waddington, 1999). But this concept is mostly used to refer to differentiated organisational cultures rather than differences between police organisational cultures; it is, as such, also used in relation to police organisations as independent units of analysis.

Second, it is arguably the case that much of the literature on police culture is limited in its use of culture as a variable in that it overstates the relationship between organisational culture and behaviour. Police culture has been directly linked to many aspects of police behaviour (see Reiner, 2010). Further, apart from acknowledging that police culture may act as an informal support mechanism for police officers – or, more recently, a cultural ‘resource’ (Campeau, 2015) – the overwhelming majority of these behaviours are undoubtedly negative. In fact, as some police researchers have noted, it is not unfair to suggest that the term police culture has been used less as a tool to understand police organisational life or as a variable shaping outcomes but more as an inherently negative variable from which to analyse various aspects of police organisations (Waddington, 1999). Although the merits of this argument are beyond the scope of this article to address, the important point to emphasise is that as a result of both approaching police organisations as independent units of analysis and viewing culture as an inherently negative variable, the existing police culture literature is limited when it comes to understanding how organisational culture shapes networks and, more particularly, how networks shape culture.

This argument also applies to the policing literature directly addressing the subject of cultural change. As Cockcroft (2012) notes, much of the police culture literature is implicitly or explicitly reformist in nature, suggesting that police culture either needs to be changed or inhibits other efforts at effecting organisational change. It is often suggested that a crucial role of new leaders is to change police culture through ‘transformational leadership’, which is rightly understood to be a formidable task for many reasons. While this is understandable given the negative outcomes that have been attached to police culture, it is not insignificant to point out that such a focus is quite different from much of the organisational culture literature, which is much more balanced when assigning values to culture and the context for cultural change. There are also debates concerning whether and how police culture changes – either through deliberate efforts to effect change or through serendipitous change overtime – with many arguing that police culture is highly resistant to change. Loftus (2009), for example, argues that the classic traits of police culture remain fundamentally the same because the principal role of police has not changed, even if broader social changes have occurred.

Although studies of police culture might find otherwise, if we are to use police culture as a concept then, as with organisational culture, it is neither integrated nor differentiated, neither positive nor negative and neither static nor changing. These are empirical questions that can differ from one context to the next and, furthermore, based on who is observing that particular culture. One of the best conceptual frameworks of police culture that has the potential to address these limitations continues to be that put forward by Chan (1996, 1997). Drawing on the work of Bourdieu (1990), Chan poses that culture is a product of the interplay between the ‘field’, known as the structural conditions of police work, and the ‘habitus’, or different forms of cultural knowledge or dispositions. While it is in no way insignificant that this conception of police culture allows for variation within and between police organisations, Chan's main contribution is arguably in better understanding the relationship between police culture and police behaviour and the conditions leading to cultural change. The concepts of field and habitus can only be understood in relation to each other, meaning that the structural conditions of the field may shape culture and the underlying cultural dispositions of agents have the potential to moderate the field. Chan offers various explanations of field – including government policies shaping what the police do, the population that is being policed and how police organisations are internally organised – but it is fundamentally the habitus that constitutes what organisational theorists such as Schein (2010) would understand to be ‘organisational culture’. In relation to cultural change, the implication is that intentional efforts to change culture should likely target both the field and habitus, although Chan rightly argues that the effects of such measures are completely unpredictable. Cultural change can also occur through broader shifts in the field as they shape the underlying habitus.

This model has the potential to apply to security networks as working in and through networks represents a change to the field. However, based on the organisational literature and the limitations of police culture, I suggest two qualifications to this model are needed for it to better apply to security networks. First, the definition of ‘field’ is too limited. A field is defined as ‘a social space of conflict and competition’ (Chan, 2001, p. 118) in which actors struggle to maximise their position in the field. In relation to networks, it is not necessarily the case that a field is characterised by conflict and competition; organisational networks can also be sites of cooperation and collaboration (Whelan, 2014). There should, as such, be no value attached to the concept of field. Second, the concept of ‘habitus’, which is understood as being much closer to ‘culture’, is possibly overly functionalist because of its explicit focus on police practice. The four forms of cultural knowledge – dictionary, directory, recipe and axiomatic – are indeed helpful in understanding how agents develop a ‘feel for the game’. But defining culture in terms of shared beliefs, values and attitudes – or basic assumptions (Schein, 2010) – means it is necessary to account for broader possibilities than these four forms of knowledge allow. There is no way to know in advance what and how members may learn to think and feel as part of the socialisation process.

A different perspective would be to replace field and habitus with the terms structural and relational. Structural properties include the broader operational conditions shaping the security field and those that are unique to particular networks and nodes. That is, structural properties capture all of those conditions identified in relation to the concept of field but do not assign any value to these conditions. This category also encompasses those deliberate efforts to effect cultural change though whether and how well they work is another question altogether (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2008). Relational properties are the underlying processes of socialisation as members interact and share experiences over time. Organisational culture develops through this dynamic relational process (Schein, 2010) and has the potential to change as a result of such processes, as security nodes serendipitously take on the cultural sensibilities of others.

Methodology

This article is based on a larger project analysing the internal properties of security networks and the conditions shaping their operations. It draws on in-depth interviews with senior members of police and security agencies in Australia. Interviewees were recruited through writing to heads of the most important organisations, or relevant sections of organisations, involved in security intelligence and counter-terrorism, outlining the details of the project and requesting to interview senior members. The federal agencies that approved these requests include: the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service (Customs – now Australian Border Force), the Office of Transport Security (OTS), Protective Security Coordination Centre (PSCC – now Emergency Management Australia, EMA) and the National Security and International Policy Group of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Some requests were not approved such as those made to members of the Australian Intelligence Community (see Australian Government, 2011). However, in building relationships over time some interviewees helped to arrange interviews with former members of certain agencies who were active until at least the end of 2004. These interviewees included senior members of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Interviews were also undertaken with members from intelligence and counter-terrorism divisions of Victoria Police. The project is therefore based on a purposive sampling design with the addition of snowball techniques in the recruitment of interviewees.

A total of 20 in-depth interviews were undertaken for this project. Interviews took place in late 2006 and up to 2008, were between 45 and 90 min long and were typically conducted with between two and four members of each organisation. In accordance with the terms of the research agreements, interviewees cannot be identified by name but only as members of their respective organisations.¹ All interviewees have extensive experience working in, and in most cases managing, security networks. Interviews were semi-structured. The first part involved open-ended questions. Interviewees were asked to share their understanding of the term ‘network’ and their experiences of working in networks. The second part of the interview involved more specific questions pertaining to various network properties. For example, interviewees were asked to explain how they believe culture – defined as the beliefs, values and attitudes shared among members of a group (Schein, 2010) – shapes security networks and networks shape organisational culture. Interviews were transcribed and interviewees were given an opportunity to amend the transcript principally to ensure no sensitive information was inadvertently released in the interview. There were consistent commonalities with interview data. The quotations used in this article were selected because of their informative value rather than their distinctiveness within the representative sample.

There are two principal methodological limitations to this approach. The first, which applies to most interview-based research, is that the potential exists for there to be a significant difference between what respondents say in an interview and what they actually think and do. It should go without saying that, while it is one thing for respondents to report that they have experienced cultural change, it is another thing for cultural change to have taken place. The second concerns the level of depth that is reached when interviewing participants about cultural change. It is perhaps unlikely that interviewee responses will address the deepest level of culture, which Schein (2010) reserves for basic underlying assumptions, because this tends to operate at an unconscious level. However, this research is exploratory in nature; it aims to enhance our knowledge of the underlying processes of cultural change rather than provide an empirical analysis of any particular culture.

Cultural change and security networks

This article now analyses organisational culture and cultural change by drawing on interview data with network members. The findings are organised under three sections. The first briefly maps the cultural terrain of security networks and considers how network members understand organisational culture and cultural change. The second concerns the structural properties underpinning cultural change, including ways of attempting to change culture by design and broader developments in the security field. The third explores cultural change as a dynamic, relational process that takes place as members share experiences over time. Finally, as there are multiple levels of analysis with which we can conceptualise culture in the context of networks (Whelan, 2015), it should be stated that this analysis focuses exclusively on organisational culture rather than occupational cultures within and between organisations.

Organisational culture and cultural change

Organisational culture was often discussed by interviewees while reflecting on the different beliefs, values and attitudes among network members. When describing organisational cultures, most interviewees initially tend to emphasise the main points of difference between police and security agencies. A member of the AFP outlines some of these as follows:

There are a number of different cultures inside networks. So, for example, if you are looking in a policing context, the AFP and the Victoria Police are basically policing organisations. And we would have, what people would say, are ‘police cultures’, which are informed by our perspective over the history of our organisations. But our cultures are different; if you are inside the AFP and VicPol [Victoria Police] you can see there are cultural differences between the organisations. That is exacerbated when you have policing agencies then dealing with the intelligence community…. Police are all about public order, presenting matters before the court, evidence and have been very open to scrutiny for a long time from the courts whereas intelligence agencies, because of their nature, work in a totally different way.

Network members appear to be well aware of the significant problems that can result from conflicting organisational cultures, referring often to the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 2004) and the so-called culture wars (Lerner, 2006) between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency. Interviewees recognise that cultures can be problematic for networks and express a level of commitment towards changing culture where needed. For instance, a member of the OTS states: ‘different cultures add to the debate, but they can also be divisive unless you can get people to lower their territorial roles and engage in broad ambit issues’. But many interviewees also demonstrate a strong understanding of the complexities of cultural change. This is explained by a member of the AFP, who expresses a level of cynicism at much of the pop-management field implying quick solutions to cultural change:

Culture is shaped by history. It is shaped by peoples' experiences. … All of the organisations involved in counter-terrorism have histories and they have histories with each other – some have good experiences, some have bad experiences. … You do not change cultures overnight. If you talk to a CEO of any organisation, they would have, as one of their goals, creating a high performance culture. You can go on the speaking circuit and make lots of money if you can come up with an easy way to do that.

This interviewee goes on to state:

I think there is a culture, and it is a growing culture, that people recognise the need to change and are fostering the change. But change does not happen overnight and it is an issue that will never be good enough – you will always need to improve the interaction between the various cultures.

In sum, interviewees tend to distinguish between intentional efforts to effect cultural change on the one hand and unintentional cultural change on the other hand, referring to cultural change as a dynamic and largely haphazard process that occurs as security nodes work together.

Structural properties and cultural change

Structural properties include those intentional efforts to effect change as well as broader conditions shaping the security field. Cultural change by design can also be examined in relation to leadership. According to Schein (2010), leadership and culture are largely two sides of the same coin. While acknowledging that many variables shape culture, Schein argues that culture defines leadership – both in terms of who will be appointed leaders and who will receive attention from followers – and that leaders can, under certain conditions, create and change culture. Schein distinguishes leadership from management by suggesting that leaders can create and change culture whereas managers act within a culture.

There are two key levels of leadership to consider in organisational networks: leadership at the level of organisations and leadership at the level of networks. A senior member of the AFP explains the role of organisational leaders with reference to the high ‘failure costs’ associated with counter-terrorism (Brodeur & Dupont, 2008; de Bruijn, 2006):

There has to be leadership from the senior leadership in organisations about the need for cooperation, getting past self-interest and looking at collaboration and … have that culture be informed by the fact that you cannot afford to be complacent and that you are dealing with very serious, potentially catastrophic issues if they are allowed to go through to fruition. And the way you get that out is to enshrine that in your processes, so where there is conflict over issues you put a premium on honest dealing and addressing issues rather than historical baggage. … You build culture by the way you setup your processes. For example, if you look at our focus on collaboration, that is very clearly stated in us setting up our Joint Counter-Terrorism Teams. We have gone out to all the jurisdictions and set these teams up where we work jointly with state police and the intelligence agencies as required. … So, organisationally, we are sending a strong message in terms of how we see our culture going, or where we want our culture to be at, and you have to do that. You have to match your rhetoric with your actions.

According to this interviewee, leaders need to articulate the importance of working in networks, create policies and procedures that promote working in networks and be actively seen working in networks. Through sustained efforts over time, some interviewees suggest that these strategies could change culture.

Another approach concerns the role of lead organisations working to modify the organisational cultures of network members (Provan & Kenis, 2008). A lead organisation may be the organisation that founded the network, in which case it may be in a privileged position to shape organisational culture (Schein, 2010), or it may adopt a central position in a network and thereby coordinate the activities of others. A former senior security intelligence officer addresses this topic with regard to Australia's National Threat Assessment Centre, hosted by ASIO, and suggests that an important goal of management is to design a ‘network culture’:

What you want to achieve is a ‘network culture’. That is to say, all players have to understand why they are in the network, where they fit in the network, what their contribution is, and how important their contribution is … in order to give meaning to their activities. So that is one level of culture. … And certainly a challenge in a range of threat assessment centres that I am familiar with in different countries has been to create this new culture for this new organisation. Because, coming back to the second element of culture, you face the challenge that everybody involved … all come from a position in which their culture has developed over a long period of time focusing on the objectives of the organisation.

There are a number of potential lead agencies in security networks in the field of counter-terrorism in Australia. One that has been restructured since the time of interviews is the PSCC in the Attorney-General's Department (now EMA). The PSCC coordinated Australia's preparedness and response to a major terrorist attack, should one occur. When reflecting on the different organisational cultures among members of security networks, a member of the PSCC explains: ‘one of the things that we try to do here, from our perspective within the Australian Government, is to merge those cultures so that no one culture predominates over any issue. We try to have as diverse a range of beliefs and values as possible’.

The ‘merging’ of cultures refers to managing cultural differences so that network members come to, in the words of this interviewee, ‘a compromised position’. The interviewee goes on to explain that this is a learned experience that occurs over time and is shaped by many structural factors other than leadership. For example, as explained in the following quote, it is suggested that broader changes in the security field underpinning the importance of inter-agency relationships have reduced cultural differences:

Culture is shaped to a larger extent by the environment. Pre 9/11, you could say there was probably more of a culture difference or a culture gap. Post 9/11, that difference or that gap has significantly lessened and that is simply because of the need to work together. … While we try to influence people to work together effectively through networks, having people see those networks work effectively also acts as a means of, I guess, shaping culture. But it is not like it is something that we focus on. It is something that just happens.

A member of the AFP also suggests that some of the broader structural factors shaping the field of counter-terrorism foster a merging of organisational cultures. In particular, the interviewee refers to the blurring boundaries between criminal justice and security:

In a counter-terrorism environment, you have policing agencies having to become more like intelligence agencies and you have intelligence agencies in some cases having to become more like policing agencies…. In the AFP, over the last few years it has been a steep learning curve for us in dealing with classified information – not that we never dealt with it but we did not deal with it to the extent that we do now. … ASIO are now finding that a lot of what they are doing is being subject to legal scrutiny and court processes, which has not been the case before. So it has an impact on their culture. It has an impact on our culture.²

The views of the last two quoted interviewees can also be understood in relation to approaching cultural change as a dynamic, relational process that occurs haphazardly as security nodes work together over time.

Relational properties and cultural change

Relational properties moderate the effects of structural ones, including efforts to create cultural change by design and broader developments shaping the security field. Nonetheless, some interviewees speak more directly to the significance of relational aspects of cultural change with regard to informal processes of socialisation.

An interviewee from Customs suggests that working in networks haphazardly promotes cultural change:

The members of the network bring with them the cultural aspects of their own agencies. … [But] any group of people that come together form a culture; they form based on how people get along, based on the ideas, the beliefs, the values, which those people bring to that space. … What I have noticed a lot, particularly in the space of counter-terrorism, is that you have got a lot of agencies with very deeply ingrained culture. Some of those agencies have a culture of sharing; others have a culture of not sharing for good reasons. … So there is sometimes a little friction in trying to make that happen, but when it happens, there is a changing of cultures over time. And there have been gradual shifts in the cultural environment as well in the sense that people have seen agencies that have never interacted come together in ways they never anticipated.

A member of Victoria Police expresses a similar view while emphasising the broader structural changes in the security field that have created the context for cultural change:

Each organisation and agency is different so they will have their own cultures. … But, in the counter-terrorism environment that culture has evolved because of our common aims and common objectives. … I think that the different types of cultures have forced themselves to get on. It has also been a big education too. In times gone by, a lot of those cultures would never have interacted but now they interact more than they ever would have. I mean, in general policing I would never have found myself interacting with Canberra bureaucrats and would never have had to make adaptations. I would never have had to understand the way that they work and they would not have had to understand the way that I work.

A member of the AFP provides a similar view, reflecting on the role of common objectives in shaping culture:

Every organisation has its own culture. There is a police culture, ASIO culture and so on. Everyone has their own culture depending on what type of work it is. But in CT (counter-terrorism) generally everyone is doing the same sort of thing; we are down to the same aim. A lot of those cultures are therefore breaking down because of CT.

Other interviewees discuss the significance of sharing experiences and forming positive relationships on a less formal level. For example, a member of the PSCC outlines the importance of relationships – interpersonal and inter-organisational – in creating and changing culture:

It [culture] is about shared experiences and it is based very heavily on relationships between the national counter-terrorism community. That community interacts in one-way or another almost continuously throughout the year; some part of that community is meeting every day. …. So how is the culture developed? The culture is developed by the network's level of activity and interaction. So you get to know people and you can talk to people and you get to like people.

In a similar way to Schein (2010), interviewees also explain that the types of experiences that are shared are notably important in shaping culture. For example, some interviewees from the AFP were directly involved in Australia's response to the 2002 and 2005 attacks in Indonesia. Those interviewees refer to the emotional intensity accompanying that experience as being particularly powerful in shaping culture among those involved. There are, as such, many levels in which relational properties can effect cultural change, although they require considerably further analytical attention.

Discussion and conclusion

Organisational culture is a complex and heavily contested concept. Not only is it difficult to define what culture is, but it is also incredibly difficult to identify within organisations as well as analyse how it guides and constrains behaviour. For these reasons, some scholars prefer to use culture as a tool for understanding organisational life rather than as a variable shaping organisational behaviour (Martin, 2002). There are strong grounds for adopting such a perspective, but there is also much to be gained from better understanding culture as a variable. While there is an extensive body of literature addressing organisational culture, there has not yet been adequate focus on organisational culture in the context of networks. The overwhelming majority of the literature views organisations as independent units of analysis. It is also argued that much of the policing literature is limited in its use of culture as a (negative) variable directly shaping police practice. As Schein (2010) argues, determining whether and how organisational culture shapes behaviour is a challenging task, particularly because culture is not a visible, constant or equally shared phenomenon. It is, as such, time to move on from debates about whether police culture is integrated or differentiated, static or changing, and engage in detailed assessments as to how and why cultures differ and change. Networks, I argue, have the potential to effect cultural change in ways we are yet to properly appreciate.

This article provided the conceptual foundations of a network perspective on organisational culture and cultural change. Based on Schein's (2010) definition of organisational culture, which refers to culture as the underlying beliefs, values and attitudes shared between members of a group, and Chan's (1996) work that positions cultural change in relation to the concepts of ‘field’ and ‘habitus’, I used the structural and relational properties of networks to explore cultural change. Structural properties include those deliberate efforts to effect cultural change as well as shifts in the broader security field. Relational properties refer to the ways in which security nodes relate to one another within networks. Not only is this approach value neutral on organisational culture, but also I argue that it accounts for the many structural contingencies that have the potential to shape culture, and that relational properties better reflect the underlying processes of socialisation. It is also possible that the structural and relational framework could apply within organisations such as to account for the interactions between occupational subcultures (Manning, 2007). Using interview data from members of security networks in the field of high policing, I explored how network members understand organisational culture and cultural change, and some of the structural and relational processes of cultural change.

The findings of the article, as one would expect, suggest that there are different organisational cultures within security networks. Interviewees emphasised the cultural differences between the AFP and Victoria Police, for example, based on the very different mandates, objectives and histories of these police organisations. The overwhelming majority of research on police culture has concentrated on municipality or state-based police organisations, suggesting there is much scope to advance our knowledge of federal police organisational cultures. However, many interviewees argued that the similarities between police organisations become much clearer when they were compared to agencies from other professional disciplines such as intelligence agencies, which underscore the importance of acknowledging one's reference point in approaching organisational culture. Interviewees were also quite open about the challenges associated with intentional cultural change. Many implied that short-term approaches to cultural change are nothing more than imaginations of pop management. All interviewees maintained that cultural change takes time and depends on many factors other than leadership and management.

Structural properties shaping organisational culture include those deliberate efforts to effect cultural change by leaders and broader developments shaping the security field. Many interviewees referred to intentional mechanisms of changing culture, including strategies used within organisations to promote the importance of inter-agency cooperation and collaboration as well as efforts by central actors to merge or moderate cultural differences. Interviewees emphasised developments in the security field as being equally important in shaping organisational culture. In the field of high policing at least, these were identified as having a greater effect on cultural change than efforts by leaders and managers as security nodes work closer together and, moreover, recognise the need to work together in order to achieve individual and shared goals.

Relational properties refer to the interaction between security nodes. Clearly, structural and relational properties are inextricably linked. Structural properties shaping the security field have led to the formation of security networks and shape the level of commitment actors have to networks. Informal processes of socialisation can effect cultural change as security nodes work together over time. As security nodes come to better understand the organisational cultures of partner agencies, they may intentionally and unintentionally adapt their own ways of thinking and acting, resulting in something close to a ‘merging’ of organisational cultures. That is, actors become more similar in their cultural outlooks the closer and longer they work together. We can therefore understand cultural change as an emergent, haphazard process as much – if not more – than one that can be intentionally controlled or managed by design. However, it must be emphasised that much further research is needed in this field to advance our knowledge of organisational culture and cultural change.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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