ORG 5003 Module 2 Culture and Power Analysis Example

The Branch Is the Company: Culture, Subcultures and Informal Power at a Regional Title and Escrow Firm, With the Evidence for Each Claim

Student Name

American College of Education

ORG5003: Organizational Dynamics & Change Management

Module 2 Assignment

Instructor Name

July 20, 2025

The Evidence

Module 1 found that Harborline Title and Escrow, a composite firm of 11 branch offices, runs its search and document work in each branch separately although the work is the same everywhere. Whether that can change depends on the culture and on who holds influence, so this module gathered three kinds of evidence. The first is 34 semi-structured interviews, the 18 from Module 1 and 16 more, covering every branch and every level. The second is a short network survey answered by 212 of 248 employees, an 85 percent response rate, asking two questions: whom do you go to for advice on a difficult title or settlement problem, and whose opinion matters most when a new procedure is introduced? The third is the firm's artifacts and records: branch checklists, awards, meeting schedules and three years of order data by referral source.

Claims below are labeled by source so that a reader can see which rest on many voices and which on few.

Culture at Three Levels

Schein (2010) separated what an outsider can see of a culture from what its members say and from what they take for granted: artifacts, espoused values and basic underlying assumptions, the unspoken convictions that steer what people really do. At Harborline, the artifacts are striking in their variety. The records show nine different closing checklists across 11 branches, a plaque in the headquarters lobby naming the top-producing branch each year and a Friday lunch at the founding branch that the retired founder still attends. The espoused values appear in the recruiting brochure and in interviews almost word for word: local relationships first, and never delay a closing. Twenty-nine of the 34 interviewees used some form of the second phrase.

The basic assumption beneath both is harder to see but appears in how people describe problems. When interviewees were asked what they do when a file is stuck, 26 of 34 described calling someone they know, not using a procedure. When asked who their employer is, several examiners and processors named their branch. At Harborline, the branch is the company, and the firm is a name on the letterhead. That assumption explains the nine checklists, the informal trading of searches Module 1 found and the pride in the plaque: the branch is the unit people identify with and compete for.

Two Subcultures

The branches do not share one culture. Interviews and survey comments separate the four founding branches, where many staff have worked for the family for more than 15 years, from the seven acquired branches. Staff in the acquired branches describe headquarters as distant and describe earlier integration efforts in skeptical terms; eleven of the 16 interviewees from acquired branches mentioned a 2019 attempt to standardize closing checklists that was announced and then dropped. The branches running the older software, all four bought along the shore, have their own identity, and their staff refer to themselves as the shore offices. Any change that looks like the founding branches imposing their way on the rest will meet this history.

Where Informal Power Sits

Krackhardt and Hanson (1993) argued that the informal networks through which advice, trust and information flow often matter more than the formal chart, and that mapping them shows who can actually move an organization. The advice question in Harborline's survey produced a clear map. The senior examiner at the founding branch, with 31 years at the firm, was named by 71 percent of all examiners and by 44 percent of all respondents as the person they go to for advice on a difficult problem, far more than anyone else, including the underwriting attorneys. On the second question, whose opinion matters when a procedure changes, the same examiner was named most often, followed by three branch managers.

Those three managers hold a different kind of power. Order records show that their three branches produced 46 percent of Harborline's orders last year, and that about 70 percent of those orders came from realtors and lenders who had worked with the same manager for years. Pfeffer (1992) described power in organizations as coming largely from control over resources others depend on and from position in networks of communication. The three managers control the most important resource Harborline has, its referral relationships, and the senior examiner sits at the center of its knowledge network. Neither kind of power appears on the chart.

Formal Power and Its Limits

Formal authority at Harborline is concentrated but thin. The chief operating officer can direct all 11 branch managers, but with a span of 11 and no operations staff, the officer's influence over daily work runs almost entirely through those managers. In interviews, several branch staff could not name the chief operating officer, while every one named their branch manager. The chief executive holds final authority and the family's ownership, but interviewees at acquired branches described the executive as someone who visits once a year. The founder holds no formal role and, by the records, attends only the Friday lunch, yet 19 respondents named the founder on the question about whose opinion matters when procedures change.

The picture that emerges is of an organization where formal power can start a change but cannot carry it. Authority can announce a new production model; it cannot make examiners trust it or realtors keep sending orders. Those depend on the informal power described next.

What This Means for Change

Three conclusions follow for any attempt to separate client-facing work from production, as Module 1 suggested. First, a change announced by headquarters will be read through the memory of the dropped 2019 checklist and through the assumption that the branch is the company, so it must show early that it is not simply the founding branches taking over. Second, the senior examiner's endorsement or opposition will probably decide how examiners across the firm respond; involving the examiner in designing the new production process is not a courtesy but a condition of success. Third, the three branch managers can make or break the change because the referral relationships run through them, and a design that seems to threaten those relationships will be resisted with good reason. Module 3 will choose a change model with these facts in view.

Limits of the Evidence

Three limits should be kept in mind. Interviewees were chosen to cover every branch and level, not at random, and the staff most willing to sit for an hour's conversation are probably also the ones most invested in how the firm works. The network survey measures who people say they go to, which may differ from whom they actually call on a busy day, although the pattern matches the telephone logs the senior examiner's branch keeps. And the referral data show where orders came from but not why; a realtor may follow a manager for the relationship or simply for convenience, and only a change in who manages a branch would reveal which. The central findings survive every one of these limits, though each one flags a spot where a detail of the diagnosis might be off.

References

Krackhardt, D., & Hanson, J. R. (1993). Informal networks: The company behind the chart. Harvard Business Review, 71(4), 104-111.

Pfeffer, J. (1992). Managing with power: Politics and influence in organizations. Harvard Business School Press.

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership (4th ed.). Jossey-Bass.