Written by Shona Simkin
Photo courtesy of Evgenia Eliseeva
Anjali Bhatt is an assistant professor in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School, where she teaches the first-year organizational behavior course in the MBA required curriculum. We asked Anjali about her research, what it means for organizations and individuals, and what she likes to do in her spare time.
What is your research field?
I study cultural change in organizations. There’s a lot of great research being done about understanding what organizational culture is, the types of cultures that help organizations thrive and help people feel a sense of belonging, but how do we get there? , there is much less research on organizations and how to change culture to help them. The people in it. I study it at both the individual and organizational level. The study of how individuals change their behaviors, norms, values, and beliefs, and how organizations, which are collections of individuals, shift from one set of behaviors, patterns, and beliefs to another. I am.
How did you become interested in cultural change?
I used to be a social impact consultant, and much of our work involved bringing together multiple organizations and stakeholders around common social needs. Different organizations often had different perspectives on the same problem, which was a major barrier to coordinating work. I wanted to clarify the root cause of that misunderstanding.
I don’t think I realized how pervasive this problem is, not just in the social sector, but also in organizations with departments that don’t work well together, and in mergers and acquisitions (M&A). I took a cultural sociology class in graduate school and realized it was about people’s mental models. Perhaps we can overcome these problems if we understand how mental models form and evolve, and how to build bridges between different mental models.
What are you currently working on?
As a sociologist, I tend to think in terms of large groups, but as I deepened this research, I became interested in understanding cultural change on an individual level. In other words, who are the instigators of cultural change? Who can learn alternative mental models and build bridges between two different groups?
I was looking for an environment where I could compare the actions of individuals in the same situation and predict who would end up building bridges between cultures. We were able to collect data from mergers that minimized layoffs and other external factors, allowing us to compare apples-to-apples in terms of how different people behaved. Next, we looked at who bridges this culture and brings together different ways of communicating.
What do we do about this?
I’ve been observing how the language style of employees’ emails changed before and after the merger. Linguistic style is different from the content or topics being discussed, and instead focuses on how these topics are communicated. Implicit features of workplace communication, such as emotions, pronouns, and assertiveness, often tell us what we value and how we should behave. Are our emails more or less polite? Do we swear by email? That kind of thing.
This kind of data is very difficult to obtain from companies. It took about four years worth of work to get it from this particular company. One of the things I think about is making sure that personal information is properly protected. So you don’t actually have access to the raw text. You will have access to only the linguistic measures that are relevant to your research question.
What did you find?
In fact, I was surprised by the results. It wasn’t completely what I expected. We know that people in leadership positions and high performers tend to be less acculturated than others. Consistently, it is individuals with lower status, ranking, and performance who engage in more cultural adjustment immediately after a merger.
I’m currently working on explaining this discovery. I can think of two explanations. One is that people in leadership positions are less able to adapt. They are so ingrained in their existing habits that it is difficult to break free from them. The other category concerns leader motivation, where leaders are less motivated to change their behavior. It turns out that feature discussion alone is not enough to explain the differences. There appears to be some evidence that motivation plays a role. Not only are leaders incapable of adapting to the culture, but they also have little interest in adapting their behavior depending on the situation. I think it’s very important to understand who has the motivation to change their behavior and how you can motivate them to change their behavior.
How do you think your findings have the potential to change organizational and individual behavior?
My sense is that this is very different from how people currently advise on M&A and cultural change. I think there is great potential if these findings can be incorporated into how cultural integration is managed. Corporate culture is unlikely to be a high-priority criterion when deciding whether or not to undertake M&A. But once that decision is made, how do you actually execute it to get the desired cultural outcome, whether it’s full integration or coordinated ambidexterity?Managing bridge construction operations Those tasked with the task are often chosen because they are familiar with the details of the merger or have a leadership role. However, my research shows that they may not be the best choice and this could very well be a recommendation to consider the opposite of what many integration consultant teams are recommending. It’s expensive.
What do you like to do outside of work?
My favorite hobbies are probably cooking and hiking. I grew up hiking in Colorado with my family during the summers. It was always a great opportunity to clear my head, get into a flow state, and see the big picture. Although I may not be able to go out as much as I would like, I feel lucky to live in an area where I have a lot of access to mountains and nature. Cooking every day has become something that helps me concentrate. My two-year-old son is also into cooking and is always keen that we cook what he calls “fresh food” rather than eating leftovers. One of his favorite things to make is pizza, and these days making pizza together as a family has become a fun activity.
