Distance higher education: could it communicate the university corporate culture?Vlaskina Natalya

First of all let’s explain the term “distance education”. Distance education is defined as a formal educational process in which the majority of the instruction occurs when student and instructor are not in the same place. Instruction may be synchronous or asynchronous. Distance education may employ correspondence study, audio, video, computer technologies, etc[1].

Distance learning is becoming an increasingly popular way of studying and most universities now provide courses using these methods. But could it they communicate through it one of the most important components of education – corporate university culture?

Edgar Schein[2], a MIT Sloan School of Management professor, defines organizational culture as:

"A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way you perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems".

In other words, corporate culture is the total sum of the values, ideas, concepts, traditions and beliefs,as well as behavioral standards and experiences shared by all the members of the organization that make a company unique. Corporate culture is often called "the character of an organization".

Professor Schein believes that culture, as an organizational attribute, is very difficult to be changed in compare with other organizational products as well as services, founders and leadership. Schein’s model of organization clarifies culture from observer’s position and divides it into three cognitive levels of organizational culture.

The first levelis organizational attributes that you can see, feel and heareven if you’re an initiated observer (known as artifacts). In other words, this level includes offices, visible award, dress code, interactions between the members, and even company slogans, company mission and other operational mottoes.

The second level is represented by the professed culture of an organizational member’s- the values. This level shows how local values and personal ones are broadly manifested within the organization. At this level studying organizational behavior can be produced by interviewing members of the organization and by the questionnaires (to figure out the attitude about organizational membership).

The third level is the deepest one. Here Schein disposes the organization's tacit assumptions. These are the units of culture that can’t be seen and cognitively identified in diurnal interactions between representatives of the organization’s membership. Moreover, these are the units of culture which are often forbidden to discuss inside the organization. Lots of such 'unspoken rules' exist beyond the knowledge of the membership.

Those who possess the sufficient experience to comprehend the deepest level of organizational culture,in general, becomes adapted to its attributes with the lapse of time, thus strengthening the invisibility of their subsistence. Questionnaires and interviews with members of organization cannot show these attributes. At this level rather more profound methods are required to identify and comprehend organizational culture.Culture at this very level is the fundamental and driving unit often skipped by organizational behaviorists.

By the means of Schein's model, organizational behaviors becomes more transparent for understanding, in spite of its paradoxicality. For example, an organization can confess highly aesthetic moral standards. But only at the second level ofSchein’s model. At the same time organization will showopposed behavior at the deepest level –the third level of culture. Outwardly, organizational rewards can suggest only one organizational norm. However, at the third level it suggests something absolutely different. This insight proposes a comprehension of the obstacle that organizational newcomers have in adapting to the organizational culture and why it is necessary to time goes by to become adopted. This also gives an explanation why organizational change agents usually can’t achieve their aims: fundamental tacit cultural norms are usually not comprehended until agents begin to act. Only comprehension of culture at the third level could be insufficient to set up cultural change. The main reason is the dynamics of interpersonal relationships which are attached to the dynamics of organizational culture in the attempts to set up desired change.

Now let’s analyze an example of the university corporate culture – corporate culture of the StateUniversity– Higher School of Economics. It would be better to start with the deepest level of HSE corporate culture – organization’s tacit assumptions. In this case it could be define as the number of “ideas” such as freedom of expression, self-development, success, etc. On the second level ideas turn into particular values expressed within the organization, for example:

  • To be one of the best universities in Russia,
  • To be a modern liberal university,
  • To meet the level of European universities,
  • To promote science and education,
  • To give to the students and professors the opportunities for self-development

And it is very easy to detect the first level components of corporate culture such as a HSE mission[3], a logotype, a talisman (a crow), a slogan (“Non scholae, sed vitae discimus”), modular system of education, traditional events of HSE or its departments, etc. These artifacts result from the deeper levels of culture; it is an expression of values which have been established in the university during its formation.

Picture 1. Relations among the three levels of corporate culture in SU-HSE (example).

Now, when we have defined all the terms, let’s try to answer the main question: could the distance higher education, especially distance learning via the Internet knows as e-Learning[4] (even in 2000 e-Learning was twice more popular than CD ROM–learning and ten times more popular than video-learning), communicate the university corporate culture? Obviously, it can easily transfer artifacts by means of communication technologies such as official site, e-mails, forums, discussion boards, etc. The second level values are a bit more difficult to be transferred, but still possible with the help of official documents, speeches, article and interviews published on the Internet. Organization’s tacit assumptions could be transferred as well, but it is a really hard work which takes a lot of time, because newcomers should get some experience and spend some time within the organization. Communication technologies such as corporate social networks, chats, forums and videoconferencing can help newcomer to adapt to the university, but in this case a “real life” methods such as conferences, trainings, seminars, meetings can be much more efficient.

In conclusion it must be said that being innovative this topic is not enough disclosed in the literature, that is why more in-depth studies on the subject are required. Future studies can be, for example, in the field ofpractical researches of organization’s tacit assumptions, researches of communication technologies or researches the influence of the availability of online courses on the university corporate culture.

[1]The Commission on Colleges

Southern Association of Colleges and Schools

1866 Southern Lane

Decatur, Georgia 30033-4097

DISTANCE EDUCATION: DEFINITION AND PRINCIPLES

[2]Schein, E.H. Organizational Culture and Leadership.

[3] HSE mission in brief:

  • to generate and disseminate modern economic knowledge among Russian business and government;
  • to educate the new generation of researchers and practitioners;
  • to generate new ideas for economic and social reforms and building new corporate strategies

[4]web-site about e-Learning