Organizational culture can be defined as a pattern of assumptions common to one workgroup; these assumptions worked well for them in the past until they considered it the right way to do their business. In this paper, I will discuss part of the contributions of the scientist (Edgard Schein) in defining the levels of organizational culture, and I will apply each level of them to the organization concerned with the study (Bechtel Corporation).
Levels of Organizational Culture
The scientist (Edgard Schein) had many contributions to the field of organizational development, including career development, group counseling, and organizational culture (Schein, 1983); the most prominent thing that was dealt with is his theory of the levels of organizational culture, which he divided after a long search into three levels, they are as follows:
Artifacts Values:
According to Schein, the cultural aspects that can be distinguished by everyone when seeing the organization and its employees with the naked eye are called surface culture because they appear to everyone (Dijoux, 2015).
Example: It can be seen in both (the dress code for employees and workers - the shape of the office furniture and the organization's behavior of most employees - the oorganization'svision...etc.).
Espoused Values:
The second level may be hidden from the first, as it is the organization's conscious strategies and philosophy (Dijoux, 2015).
Example: This can appear in the employee's mind, including what things should go, what is true in this organization, and what is not implicitly valid.
Basic Assumptions and Values:
Finally comes the essence of organizational culture: values that are difficult or impossible to reach even from the organization's owners. Schein described them as a set of assumptions based on the unconscious centers of the workers in the organization without any reference to them (Dijoux, 2015).
Example: It can be felt through: (the relationship between the organization and its external environment - the coherence of work between individuals internally - who assume authority implicitly without a written order..etc.).
Application on Bechtel
According to (Denton, 2016), the organization's culture has changed a lot over time according to its leaders' policies, goals, and strategies and in line with the surrounding conditions. Still, if we look at the organizational culture of Bechtel at the present time, it can be interpreted according to organizational levels as follows:
Bechtel Artifacts Values:
Bechtel has a yellow and black uniform for workers on construction sites, whether engineers or workers. What distinguishes them is only the color of the hard hat. According to BBechtel's Current vision, it seeks to implement the principles of sustainability, environmental preservation, community participation, and emphasizing the company's professional identity in the construction sector (Bechtel, 2022).
Bechtel Espoused Values
According to Indeed (2022), with the participation of current and former members of the company, most commentators refer to an almost unified approach to working in the company in terms of workers' efficiency and their ability to join teams with highly professional capabilities capable of completing major projects efficiently and proficiently.
Bechtel Basic Assumptions and Values:
This may appear in the integration of work teams, and some of them complete projects with a relatively long time schedule; for example, there are open projects for construction and maintenance that started in the seventies and are still continuing now, such as (Jubail Industrial City Project) in Saudi Arabia (Smith, 1991), as 2 or 3 generations of American and British engineering departments have succeeded since 1975 to date.
https://www.bechtel.com/about-us/vision-values-covenants/
https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Bechtel/reviews?fcountry=ALL&ftopic=culture
Conclusion
It is possible to know the organizational culture in the personality of the organization itself, which makes it unique in its characteristics and advantages in the eyes of customers and employees, as it is what reflects the values and beliefs of the organization and what shows its current position and what it will be in the future. According toSSchein's definitionn, aScheinn is a set of fundamental principles that individuals discover and work on to develop and use to solve their problems, and it is the best way for them to realize and understand these problems (Dijoux, 2015).
References
Bechtel. (2022). Vision, Values & Covenants
Denton, S. (2016). The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World. Simon and Schuster.
Dijoux, C. (2015). Edgar Schein: Organizational Culture and Leadership. Retrieved from Thehypertextual.
Indeed. (2022). Bechtel Culture reviews
Schein, E. H. (1983). The role of the founder in creating organizational culture. Organizational Dynamics, 12(1), 13-28. Retrieved from EBSCO multi-search in the TUW Library. *While this resource is dated, it is still relevant and vital.
Smith, J. C. (1991). Mega-project construction management--the Corps of Engineers and Bechtel Group in Saudi Arabia (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).