Organizational culture: can system designers ignore it?

´Organizational culture´ can be considered to be the sum of shared attitudes, expectations, and conventions of behaviour within a group of people who regularly work or otherwise spend time together. It has long been established in the social sciences that organizational culture profoundly influences the behaviour of individuals in organizations and that it is remarkably persistent and resistant to change. The existing culture in any organization is bound therefore to have a significant influence on how new technology and procedures are accepted and managed by a workforce. This implies that it is important to consider the organizational culture of the users of new systems. This need is examined in the light of a small number of case studies connected to the defence domain. The conclusion of the study is that it is far more effective to ride the existing organizational culture than to confront it, and some stratagems are proposed to enable systems designers to identify promising ways of doing so.