Organizational
Culture
Hey Readers
Today we will talk something about organizational culture.
While not
always easy to capture or define, culture is an observable, powerful force in
any organization. Made up of its members’ shared values, beliefs, symbols, and
behaviors, culture guides individual decisions and actions at the unconscious
level. As a result, it can have a potent effect on a company’s well being and
success.
Acc. to
Wikipedia, Organizational culture is the behavior of humans who are part
of an organization and the meanings that the people reach to their actions.
Culture includes the organization values, visions, norms, working language,
systems, symbols, beliefs, and habits. It is also the pattern of such
collective behaviors and assumptions that are taught to new organizational
members as a way of perceiving, and even thinking and feeling. Organizational
culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with
clients, and with stakeholders.
Ravasi and
Schultz (2006) state that organizational culture is a set of shared mental
assumptions that guide interpretation and action in organizations by defining
appropriate behavior for various situations. At the same time although a
company may have their "own unique culture", in larger organizations,
there is a diverse and sometimes conflicting cultures that co-exist due to
different characteristics of the management team. The organizational culture
may also have negative and positive aspects.
Schein
(2009), Deal & Kennedy (2000), Kottler (1992) and many others state that
organizations often have very differing cultures as well as subcultures.
According to
Needle (2004), organizational culture represents the collective values, beliefs
and principles of organizational members and is a product of such factors as
history, product, market, technology, and strategy, type of employees,
management style, and national cultures and so on. Corporate culture on the
other hand refers to those cultures deliberately created by management to achieve
specific strategic ends.
Organizational
culture includes an organization's expectations, experiences, philosophy, and
values that hold it together, and is expressed in its self-image, inner
workings, interactions with the outside world, and future expectations. It is
based on shared attitudes, beliefs, customs, and written and unwritten rules
that have been developed over time and are considered valid. Also called
corporate culture, it's shown in
(1) The ways
the organization conducts its business, treats its employees, customers, and
the wider community,
(2) The
extent to which freedom is allowed in decision making, developing new ideas,
and personal expression,
(3) How
power and information flow through its hierarchy, and
(4) How
committed employees are towards collective objectives.
It affects
the organization's productivity and performance, and provides guidelines on
customer care and service, product quality and safety, attendance and
punctuality, and concern for the environment. It also extends to production-methods,
marketing and advertising practices, and to new product creation.
Organizational culture is unique for every organization and one of the hardest
things to change.
That is all
for today… Stay happy and Good Night… OPEN UP…!!!
Comments and
suggestion are always welcome. :)
