A Report into Organisational Culture and the Professional Kitchen

Name: Marie Martin
Course: FT408/1F
Date: 09/01/06
Lecturer: Mark Gallagher

Abstract

It is common knowledge that the role a head chef plays in a professional kitchen is a vital one and that the culture of a kitchen is a unique one. The common person views a kitchen as a manic, hectic place where the head chef shouts and roars in order to assert authority and get the job done. The likes of Gordon Ramsey have gone a long way to fuel this image. But just how accurate is this? Surely no one would become a chef if this was so, why put oneself through such an ordeal to cook others their dinner? This paper sets out to establish the culture of the professional kitchen, identify the role the head chef plays within this culture and establish who wants to be a chef and why?

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 4

2. Culture is: 5

3. Organizational culture 5

4. The Kitchen 7
4.1. The Head Chef. 8

5. Levels of Culture 9
5.1. Artifacts 9
5.2. Espoused Values 10
5.3. Underlying Basic Assumptions 10

6. Change in the Kitchen 12

7. Conclusion 13

8. Bibliography: 14

1. Introduction

The role of the head chef has changed over the years being a leader in the kitchen is no longer enough. The Head Chef is among those professions that people dream about, leading a platoon of sous chefs in a glamorous, stainless steel kitchen and presenting fabulous meals to hundreds of people. Parts of this description are true, and those who become chefs have very high levels of satisfaction with their professions. One chef said his career “is only for the very crazy. It is hard work, it is gruelling work, it is important work, and still, I would do nothing else.” The long hours, the painstaking attention to detail, and being constantly surrounded by food are part of a job they love. The profession rewards the talented and the daring, which can see opportunity and grab it. The first few years are an education. Few chefs survive cooking school who don’t understand the physical and mental requirements of the profession: Lifting heavy pots, being on your feet for eight hours, stirring vats of sauces, rolling pounds of dough, having to deal with the stress of working in a confined space, and having to obey the head chef. The organisational culture of the kitchen is that of teamwork and balance, (Carberry, 2004). The head chef is the leader and it is his job to guide his cooks to daily success. And so this paper aims to identifying the culture of the professional kitchen and establish the role the head chef plays on this role.

2. Culture is:
‘A set of basic assumptions about how the world is and ought to be that is shared by a group of people and determines their perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and to some degree their overt behaviour.’ (Schein, E. 1992)

The culture of a group of individuals is something that can be difficult to define, today it is understood that culture is the heart of a society. It is the distinctive way group members interact with each other and with others. It is about people’s social interaction and communication (Peters,T. 2002), It encompasses essentially how they achieve what they do. (Stoner,T. Et al. 1995) and it is also the values, norms and ways of thinking that distinguishes one group of individuals from another. (Cox.T. Et al. 1997)

3. Organizational culture

In order to identify the culture of a kitchen one must first acknowledge a kitchen as a part of an organisation. According to Robert, H. Et al (1999) we can view organisational culture as:
A control mechanism: Managers can obtain powerful control over others by demarcating the acceptable and unacceptable behaviour within their organisation.
An organisational history: The way an organisation has been developed and progressed is evident in the present beliefs, values and attitudes of that organisation.
A commitment to the firm and its values: This can be achieved by getting individuals to incorporate the firms value systems into their own personal beliefs.
A recipe for success: Matching an organisation’s culture and strategy can allow it to achieve its goals, especially since studies show that certain cultures cope more easily with the process of change.
An anthropological analysis: An organisation’s culture has its own myths, stories and rituals.
In other words, ‘organisational culture is a framework that guides day-to-day behaviour and decision making for employees and directs their actions towards completion of organisational goals.’ (Stoner, J. et al. 1995)

Put simply by Deal and Kennedy (1982) organisational culture is: ‘The way we do things around here.’ According to Schein, (1985, p.6) corporate culture is “the pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, and that have worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore, to be thought to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to these problems”. Within every kitchen the culture is differs, it is the role of the head chef to establish the culture of the kitchen, and to train and educate new members of the team to this culture. For an organisation to work and function correctly workers must feel that they belong. The culture of the professional kitchen is very much of the Deal et al ethos. Every kitchen is extremely different and every chef unique and as such chefs must be adaptable to the different cultures they may encounter. The sense of community needed within an organisation is very evident within a kitchen, cooks must be there to back each other up and ensure that no one lags behind. Without this culture of community a kitchen may fall in disarray. Gary Alan Fine (1996) notes that cooks will occasionally stay back or arrive early to ensure that they complete their tasks smoothly with the minimum of pressure. Many will do this on there own time will little or no remuneration. Like all workers chefs attempt to ‘get by’. They don’t demand a hassle free work environment but do strive for a relatively smooth routine. Cooking can be both difficult and monotonous (Molstad, 1986). Chefs try to make to culture of a kitchen bearable.

4. The Kitchen
“In war, man must remain completely focused on his objective: the complete destruction of the enemy. He must let no emotion, thought, or outside force deter him from his goal, in order to ensure a swift victory. The same applies to work in a professional kitchen” (Hildreth, 2004). To an outsider a kitchen can look like a warzone, with the constant fury and pace that accompanies the work being carried out. Cooks are constantly fighting the clock, they must strive for perfection and leave no room for error both with the food the cook and within themselves. The culture of most kitchen leave little room for error,(Escoffier, 1871). The head chef feeds this by constantly checking what is being produced and ensuring that the cooks are ‘on the ball’ so to speak. A common phrase within a kitchen is ‘yes chef’, this phrase has numerous meaning ranging from I understand to I obey. The chain of command is not unlike that of the army where rules must be obeyed and orders followed explicity. And thanks to Escoffier, we refer to the kitchen staff as a ‘brigade’. The brigade system divided the kitchen into functional areas. Each one had a command structure like the army's. Every station is led by a chef de partie, and that person is in charge of his unit of sous chefs, cooks, and assistants. Orders and information move down the chain of command and are spread around to the other member of staff. This sort of organisational structure is discussed by Scott, T. (1998). He postulates that work is typically divided by function and the organisational structure tends towards a traditional framework where the organisation is dominated from the centre. The centre of the kitchen environment is the Head chef, everything eminates from them. The further away from the centre an individual is the weaker the degree of power and influence that individual possesses. This can be seen in the commis chef situation. The commis chef would bee seen as the least skilled and furthest away from the head chef in ranking and as such has the least amount of power in the kitchen. This type of culture places a lot of faith in the individual and can be viewed as an aggressive and competitive atmosphere and as a result individuals in the middle layers often suffer from low morale. This results in a high turnover as individuals opt out of the competitive environment. (Morley, M. Et al. 1998). Staff turnover within a kitchen can be quite high as it takes a certain type of person to put up with such an environment. The head chef will weed out the weaker cooks by intimadation and competition.
4.1. The Head Chef.

The head chef is in charge of a kitchen are ultimately in charge of details. Aside from financial and staff management, a chef must ensure that all the details of the work being done are carried out successfully. If any of these details are neglected, the customer will know, and the chef will have to answer for it. As a result, there is a great deal of pressure on the chef, and he depends largely on his staff to maintain his level of professionalism in the kitchen. Not all chefs handle this pressure well. Putting trust in a cook, especially a volunteer with nothing to lose, can be stressful. Some chefs are bossy, others tend to yell, still others (mostly only in Europe) can come close to inflicting physical harm on their cooks. A good cook has to take this into consideration. A cook who is gaining valuable knowledge from a chef must take whatever abuse the chef gives him with respect. In the end, the job is not about the abuse, its about the food and quality work. A cook who holds a grudge will never succeed. The head chef dictates how the kitchen must be run and as such dictates the culture of the particular kitchen. Cultures vary from kitchen to kitchen and as such a cook must be adapatable.

5. Levels of Culture
Schein has arguably developed what has become one of the most influential theories of organisational culture. He postulates that culture exists on three different levels; at the surface level there is the artefacts, underneath these artefacts there is a series of held values and at the deepest level there is a set of core assumptions. The artefacts are the visible, tangible and audible remains of behaviour that are grounded in cultural norms, values and assumptions. (Morley, M. Et al. 1998)

Figure 1. Schein’s Levels of Culture

Source: Schein, E. (1997)

5.1. Artifacts

Artifacts are the traits that a person sees, hears, and feels when they encounter a new organisational culture. These include the physical environment of the organisation, its language, its technology and products, and its style in clothing, manners of address, and stories told about the organisation. “The important point about this level of culture is that it is easy to oberve and very difficult to decipher”. (Schein, E. 1997) .When entering a kitchen for the first time a new cook will look to the Head chef to guide them. It is the head chef that dictates the environment, the language, the kitchens products and how the stories are told in the kitchen. The head chef has control over the first impression that the cook recieves and it may not be until the new recruit has been there for a substaintial amount of time tha they are exposed to the kitchens sub cultures.

Stories about the organisation typically contain narritives about the founders, rags-to-riches successes, organisation coping with adversity etc. These stories connect the present to the past and provide explanations for current practises. (Robbins, S. 2003). It is not uncommon to hear achef describe how they have worked there way up from nothing and instil an ethos of hard work so as to make the cooks believe they can be were the head chef is.

5.2. Espoused Values

According to Robert, H. Et al. (1999) an organisations espoused values consist of its strategies and goals. He believes it provides the reasonling behind implementation certain practises and proceedures. Morley, M. (1998) writes that the values of an organisation are the strategies, goals, practises and proceedures that that organisation places importance in. There are numerous ways to run a kitchen an it is up to the head chef to decide in what manner that is. The head chef will decide the procedure of food production, the manner of service and the food being served. The head chef is responsible for establishing the kitchens strategies and goals in order to ensure it succeeds. Without this imlementation the kitchen would have no leader and no organisation.

5.3. Underlying Basic Assumptions

According to Armstrong (1999) basic assumptions are composed of the unseen but identifiable reasons why people perceive, feel, believe and say the things they do. They are the shared assumptions that are held by an organisation, usually over a substantial period of time. They are difficult to define as they are not normally recorded and they are also thought to be difficult to change. (Stoner, J. et al 1995). The traditional kitchen brigade is a system that has been around for years and is the most commonly used method of kitchen organisation. These basic assumptions of organisation not only exist in the kitchen but also in the mind of the chef. If the head chef implements a new system it is up to the staff to adopt these new values or the kitchen will fail to run smoothly.
By using Schein’s levels, which range from the very tangible to the deeply embedded, unconscious basic assumptions, it is possible to define culture. The kitchen culture is a combination of both the tangible and unconscious basic assumption. The head chef brings the tangible elements with them to every kitchen and transforms them into the basic assumptions that underline how the kitchen is run. According to Stoner et al (1995), Kotter and Heskett identified two levels of organisational culture. One visible and the other invisible, (as illustrated in figure 2). On the visible level, there are the behaviour patterns and styles of the employees. On the invisible level there are the shared values and assumptions that are held by the organisation over a long period of time. This second level is more difficult to change,(Stoner, J. et. al. 1995).

Figure:2 The Iceberg of Organisational Culture

Source: Stoner, J. et al (1995)

Kotter and Hestett’s two levels can be quite easily identified within the kitchen culture and how the head chef runs the kitchen. The visible level to the ice-berg can be identified through the way a kitchen is run on a daily basis. There are systems in place to ensure that the preparation for the day is carried out and that the service runs smoothly. It is up to the head chef to monitor the day-to-day running and ensure that the day-to-day policies and procedures are accomplished. The underlying assumptions in a kitchen are unspoken and inherent to the head chef’s beliefs. The head chef will bring these with him or he to each job this can sometimes lead to confusion, as every head chef may believe in different core values when it comes to running a kitchen. However these underlying values are present and directly influence what the head chef identifies as the policies and procedures of the kitchen.

6. Change in the Kitchen

According to Stoner, J. et, al (1995) in unadaptive organisation cultures managers care mostly about themselves and their immediate working group. They value the orderly and practise, risk-reducing management as apposed to leadership initiatives. Managers tend not to change their strategies quickly.however with the arrival of a new head chef a kitchen may have to change a adapt at a rapid pace. A kitchen environmet leaves little time to grieve for what went before. The head chef must be able to make the change as smooth as possible to avoid disarray. Zwell, M. (2003) believes that the ability to step back, see the big picture, put together a strategy, and turn it into a workable plan is something that eludes many managers. Head chefs must be able to do this. He or she must be able to see the kitchen as a whole as well seeing the chefs as individuals. Failure to do so may result in problems going unnoticed and the collapse of the organisatinal culture and structure of the kitchen. .

Zwell, M. (2003) argues that most employees develop beliefs and behaviours that are at odds with those necessary to function in the ideal organisational culture. Employees like to do a good job, but do not feel ownership or work in a way that is in accordance with the larger mission or goals of the organisation. Marcel Biró (2005), argues that chefs must feel a sense of ownership about their work for it to be the best. In that kitchens are an expectation to Zwell’s argument. The cooks and head chef must be able to adopt the policies and procedure of the kitchen as their own for it to be successful.

7. Conclusion
This paper started out by explaining what organisational culture is and its importance to an organisation. It has been discussed how an organisation’s culture coincides with its performance and how a head chef influences this. It identified the kitchen as a unique entity in which the culture is both spoken and unspoken. It identified the head chef as being responsible for the culture of each kitchen but also identified each kitchen culture as unique. The organisational culture of a kitchen is stitched into the day to day running of it. The head chef dictates how the procedures must be carried out and the cook must adapt to both the underlying and explicit beliefs to succeed. The organisational culture of the kitchen is strongly influenced by the beliefs and systems that the head chef brings with them when they start a job and the kitchen brigade must be adaptable to them. The head chef has been identified as one of the most important figures in the organisational culture of the kitchen but one that must be aware of how this culture affects those around them. He or she must be able to see the big picture ensuring that eh culture of the kitchen remains suitable and stable.

8. Bibliography:

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Hildreth, C. M., (2004) A Chef's Work Ethic, http://www.newintellectual.org/Chef's%20Work%20Ethic%20Philosophy.htm
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Restaurant Report, Interview with Marcel Biro, http://www.restaurantreport.com/departments/cr_marcel_biro.html
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Cox, T. Jr and Beale, R. (1997) Developing Competency to Manage Diversity. San Francisco, Berrett – Koehler Publishers, Inc.

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Peters, T. (2002) Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business. Second edition, London, Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Robbins, S. (2003) Organisational Behaviour. Tenth edition, London, Prentice Hall.

Schein, E. (1997) Organisational Culture and Leadership. Second edition, San Francisco, Jossey – Boss Inc.

Scott, J. (1998) Fundamentals of Leisure Business Success, USA, The Hawthorn Press.

Stoner, J. et al (1995) Management. Sixth edition, USA, Prentice Hall.

Zwell, M. (2003) Creating a Culture of Competence. Canada, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.