Power derives from a person's place or role within a highly structured organization.
Role Cultures are highly bureaucratic with detailed rules about how people and departments interact with each other, customers and vendors. Large, well-established companies like insurance companies and banks tend to have Role Cultures because they have to. You have to deal with too many people in the organization for personal relationships to develop, so who gets to make decisions and who is in control is determined by title. Also, policies and procedures are formalized into operating manuals so that interactions are ritualized. The workflow and decision-making procedures are documented in employee manuals which don't leave a lot of room for innovation or interpretation. This means that management can be sure that roles are well-defined and that tasks will get done without requiring a lot of thought or innovation on the part of the employees.
Role Culture companies will provide you with a lot of stability, certainty and continuity. But Role Culture companies may have trouble adapting to, or generating, change. Every change in workflow has to be carefully considered, the impacts weighed and then documented, and employees have to be trained in the new methods.
If you like well-defined jobs with explicit expectations, a Role Culture organization is the one for you.
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