| Course | WMBA 6615 Building Organizational Culture: Leaders as Architects |
|---|---|
| Week | Week 6 |
| Paper type | Peer replies |
| Length | About 460 words, 3 pages |
| Format | Discussion reply, APA 7 citations |
| School | Walden University |
| Program | Master of Business Administration (MBA) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for WMBA 6615 Week 6
Week 6 Discussion: Responding to Classmates' Culture Analyses
Two Replies, Two Moves: Tracing a Classmate's "Culture of Ownership" Down to the Practice That Produces It, and Setting Another Classmate's Daily Huddle Beside a Firm Where the Same Ritual Teaches Something Else
Response to Hannah: Working Downward
Hannah, you described your software company as having "a culture of ownership," where engineers "fix what they break without being asked." That is a quality, and I want to ask which recurring practice produces it. Qualities like ownership usually come from something the organization does every week, not from a value statement.
Your post mentioned that engineers carry a pager for the services they built. I suspect that rotation, more than any stated value, is what teaches ownership: an engineer who is woken at 2 a.m. by their own code learns quickly to write code that does not wake them. If that is right, the mechanism is the on-call rotation, and the quality would weaken if the company ever moved to a separate operations team that absorbs the night calls.
A candidate you did not mention is the incident review. Many software firms hold blameless reviews after outages, where the engineer who caused the problem explains it to peers. If your company does this, it may teach ownership as strongly as the pager does, because it makes admitting a mistake routine rather than risky. Edmondson (1999) found that teams whose members felt safe taking interpersonal risks engaged in more learning behavior, including discussing errors openly. Schein and Schein (2017) note that how leaders react to critical incidents is one of the primary ways cultures are embedded. How does your company's leadership respond in the first hour after a major outage?
Response to Luis: Working Sideways
Luis, you wrote that the daily 7 a.m. huddle at your distribution center builds "a sense of being one team." I want to set that beside my firm, where a similar ritual teaches something else.
At my engineering firm, the weekly Monday meeting is also a fixed ritual the whole office attends. But it opens with the dollar value of contracts won, and the field survey crews are not invited. So the same practice, a recurring all-hands gathering, teaches my colleagues that the firm's center is sales and that the field is outside it. Your huddle includes everyone on the floor and, from your description, opens with safety and the day's volume, which tells each worker their part matters today.
The difference suggests that the ritual itself does not build team identity; who is in the room and what comes first on the agenda does. Trice and Beyer (1984) argued that rites and ceremonies communicate culture through their content and their participants, not merely through happening. Who decides what goes first in your huddle, and has it ever changed?
References
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
Schein, E. H., & Schein, P. A. (2017). Organizational culture and leadership (5th ed.). Wiley.
Trice, H. M., & Beyer, J. M. (1984). Studying organizational cultures through rites and ceremonials. Academy of Management Review, 9(4), 653-669. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1984.4277391
What the WMBA 6615 Week 6 instructions ask for
The week's discussion asks students to respond to classmates' culture analyses with replies that add something. Each reply usually runs one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty words, and the pair should make different moves. One typically works downward, taking a quality a classmate named and asking which recurring practice produces it, then proposing a practice the classmate did not mention. The other works sideways, setting the classmate's example beside another organization where the same practice exists but produces a different result. Both should open by quoting or closely paraphrasing the classmate, and each should finish by asking something the classmate is placed to answer. Each reply should stand on its own, so a reader who sees only one still understands its point and its question.
How the WMBA 6615 Week 6 example is put together
The first reply quotes Hannah's description of ownership, identifies the pager rotation as the likely mechanism and explains how moving night calls to a separate team would weaken it. It then proposes blameless incident reviews as a second mechanism, citing Edmondson and Schein and Schein, and asks how leaders respond in the first hour after an outage. The second reply quotes Luis's description of his huddle, compares it with an engineering firm's Monday meeting that excludes field crews and opens with sales, and concludes that participants and agenda order, not the ritual itself, shape identity, citing Trice and Beyer. It asks who decides what goes first. Margin comments flag the two different moves. Each reply runs under two hundred fifty words and ends on its own question.
WMBA 6615 Week 6 rubric: what earns full marks
Graders reward replies that engage the classmate's specific claim and make distinct contributions. Tracing a quality to a mechanism shows understanding of how culture is sustained. Offering a practice the classmate missed adds value. A sideways comparison that reveals how the same practice can teach different lessons demonstrates analytical depth. Questions should be answerable from the classmate's experience. Accurate citations, respectful tone and appropriate length complete the expectations. Replies that only praise or repeat the post typically earn little credit. Replies that offer a mechanism the classmate can test in their own workplace give the discussion lasting value.
WMBA 6615 Week 6 help from the desk
Read each classmate's post and note the quality or practice they describe. For one reply, ask what recurring practice creates that quality, and suggest another candidate. For the other, think of a different organization with a similar practice that produces a different effect, and explain why. Open each reply with the classmate's own words. Students often lose marks by making the same move twice, by agreeing without adding anything or by asking questions that cannot be answered. Another common gap is offering opinions without evidence. For a custom sample pair of culture replies, send us your classmates' posts.
Get a WMBA 6615 Week 6 example written to your instructions
Paste the two classmate posts being answered along with the Week 6 prompt and participation rubric. Both replies come back matched to those posts, in 24 to 48 hours, the first one free. Classmate names are stripped before drafting and returned as placeholders, so nothing identifying anybody else passes through the desk.
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WMBA 6615 Week 6 questions, answered
Where can I find a free WMBA 6615 Week 6 sample paper?
Both culture analysis peer replies are published in full on this page.
What does the first reply do?
Traces a classmate's culture of ownership to the on-call rotation and suggests incident reviews.
What does the second reply do?
Compares a distribution center huddle with an engineering firm's Monday meeting.
What does the comparison show?
That who attends and what comes first shapes the lesson a ritual teaches.
Which research is cited?
Edmondson on psychological safety, Schein and Schein on critical incidents and Trice and Beyer on rites.