The Dynamics of the Organizational Culture in a Municipality

Although the organizational culture is one of the main issue of organizational studies, very few research has tried to explore the organizational culture change process through a systemic and dynamics perspective. This paper explore the dynamics of the organizational culture in a municipality over time, trying to show that: (1) the dynamics of the four typologies of organizational culture in the municipality can be better described and explained through a causal loop diagram, that allows to put on evidence the hidden structure (feedback loop structure) responsible for the dynamics of the considered phenomenon; (2) the process of the cultural change in an organization is characterized by nonlinear dynamics; (3) a programme of change management focused on organizational culture in such municipality is be significantly affected by the role of the information delay that characterizes the relationship between the exogenous and endogenous variables of the system at a organizational level of analysis; (4) the efficacy of the policies adopted by the management of the municipality could be widely reduced if they don't take into account the feedback loop structure underlying the organizational culture dynamics over time.