Title: Product/process culture and change management in complex organisations

Authors: Paul Lillrank, Hanna Kostama

Addresses: Quality Management Helsinki University of Technology, PL 9500, FIN-02015 TKK, Finland. Finnair PL 15, FIN-01053 Finnair, Finland

Abstract: Attempts to understand various sub-cultures in an Airline as part of an action research project aiming at service quality improvement led to the observation that the concept of corporate culture needs links to the logic of value creating processes. This led to the development of the concept ||product/process cultures||. The essential dimensions differentiating between the cultures were found to be types of performance targets, cost of quality in single events, and the kind of logic - causal, stochastic, or contingent - used in daily reasoning. Four ideal types were identified: security, punctuality, industry and service cultures. Quality policies, evaluation and training methods need to be developed separately for each culture.

Keywords: cultural diversity in organisations; quality; service quality; cost of poor quality; airline management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTM.2001.002955

International Journal of Technology Management, 2001 Vol.22 No.1/2/3, pp.73-82

Published online: 08 Jul 2003 *

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