Middle managers` stories: understanding culture in a Malaysian organisation

Abstract

This is a study of using middle managers’ stories to understand the culture of a Malaysian organisation. Using Schein’s (2010) organisational culture theory, a qualitative methodology using semi-structured in-depth interviews was conducted to obtain the stories of middle managers from XYZ organisation about their organisation and its livelihoods. There were 18 middle managers altogether, however only 14 respondents agreed to participate until the end of the study. The researcher prepared verbatim transcripts of the in-depth interviews and analysis of the data generated to seven main themes which portrayed the culture established at XYZ organisation. The themes were (1) the three leaders, (2) work routines and relationships, (3) the puppet master, (4) the cold fish, (5) stingy management, (6) heroes and (7) hopes and dreams. The themes built from the respondents’ stories also exposed XYZ organisational culture dimensions. From the respondents’ stories, it is found that XYZ organisation has a miasmic and toxic culture. This study suggests XYZ organisation can cure its miasmic and toxic culture by hiring a consultant to help XYZ management to cure their organisation’s culture, use confrontation and survey assessment to deal with toxic employers or employees, eliminate toxic employees from organisation, and lastly report to a person that has higher authority in the organisation. This study shows the importance of Malaysian organisations to listen to their middle managers’ stories because it can help to improve leadership skills and employees’ productivity which in turn cause the organisation to be more prosperous and healthy. This research also contributes to the enrichment of the existing body of knowledge in the area of organisational communication. Lastly, this work can serve as future reference for Malaysian organisational practitioners and academic researchers on the subjects of organisational culture, organisational stories and the relationship between these two areas.