An Analysis of Organizational Culture Essay

Organizational culture is the “values and beliefs that people have about an organization and provides expectations to people about the appropriate way to behave” (Kinicki, 2013, slide 3). Corporates can change Changing organizational culture can be a process using one or more of the eleven strategies, (1) formal statements, (2) slogans & sayings, (3) stories, legend, & myths, (4) leader reactions crises, (5) role modeling, training, & coaching, (6) physical design, (7) rewards, titles, promotions, & bonuses, (8) organizational goals & performance criteria, (9) measurable & controllable activities, (10) organizational structure, and (11) organizational systems & procedures (Kinicki & Williams, 2013, p. 236-137). Like stated before organizations

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” (One Page, n.d.).

“Culture consists of the symbols, rituals, language, and social dramas that highlight organizational life, including myths, stories, and jargon. It includes the shared meanings associated with the symbols, rituals, and language. Culture combines the philosophy of the firm with beliefs, expectations, and values shared by members. It contains the stories and myths about the company's founder and its current leading figures. Organizational culture consists of a set of shared meanings and values held by a set of members in an organization that distinguish the organization from other organizations. An organization's culture determines how it perceives and reacts to the larger environment (Becker, 1982; Schein, 1996). Culture determines the nature

To understand the organizational culture of a company, one needs to start by looking at the history. Lakeshore Learning Materials was born from a divorced mother of three named Ethelyn Kaplan, who took a dream and a chance by moving her family to California in 1954 to open a toy store. When she started noticing that teachers were interested in her material, Ethelyn realized that she needed to expand her business into educational materials. 60 years later, Lakeshore Learning Materials has grown into a company with over 2000 employees, 60 retail stores throughout the United States and growing. Lakeshore Learning Materials is currently headed by Ethelyn’s grandsons, Bo and Josh Kaplan. Under the supervision of Bo and Josh, Lakeshore continues to be a leader in the Educational Materials, yet still able to keep the family culture that their grandmother started. Highest quality customer service and hard work are the core values that shape Lakeshore’s Organizational Strategy. These high expectations aren’t hard for employees at Lakeshore because the company is so loved by everyone that works there, that they give nothing less than the best.

The organization culture as a leadership concept has been identified as one of the many components that leaders can use to grow a dynamic organization. Leadership in organizations starts the culture formation process by imposing their assumptions and expectations on their followers. Once culture is established and accepted, they become a strong leadership tool to communicate the leader 's beliefs and values to organizational members, and especially new comers. When leaders promote ethical culture, they become successful in maintaining organizational growth, the good services demanded by the society, the ability to address problems before they become disasters and consequently are competitive against rivals. The leader 's success will depend to a large extent, on his knowledge and understanding of the organizational culture. The leader who understands his organizational culture and takes it seriously is capable of predicting the outcome of his decisions in preventing any anticipated consequences. What then is organizational culture? The concept of organizational culture has been defined from many perspectives in the literature. There is no one single definition for organizational culture. The topic of organizational culture has been studied from many perspectives and disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, organizational behavior, and organizational leadership to name a few. Deal defines organizational culture as values,

As known each organization has a set objective to be achieved. Hence depending on the objective & to achieve those objectives, an organization can be structured in many difference ways: the 2 basic division, is the division of labour& coordination & supervision. These are done to be in-line with the organizational objective.

“Organizational culture consists of a set of shared meanings and values held by a set of members in an organization that distinguish the organization from other organizations” (Baack, 2012). These shared values have a strong influence on the people in the organization and dictate how they dress, act, and perform their jobs. Culture plays a huge role in the guiding of the behaviors of employees of an organization. There are three stages of culture that interact with one another to influence the behaviors in the organization. These stages are: observable artifacts, espoused values, and enacted values.

Organizational culture is the stable beliefs, values, and assumptions shared by a group of people. I used to work at a bar and there was a shared understanding between the servers and bartenders. The bartenders were the managers, and each manager had their style of how the bar was ran each night. The servers had their system of who get what section, but they also had to follow the style of each bartender. The instrumental purpose of our organizational culture was influenced by who was managing the bar each night. There were some bartenders who did not like being bothered with questions from the servers and there were some who were nice and helpful. The bartenders that did not care, influenced the servers by letting them choose who had each section, deciding who had to clean and stock, and who was able to leave and at what times.

I work for Cornerstone Services in Joliet, IL. Cornerstone is a not-for-profit organizational that provides vocational, residential and behavioral health services for individuals with chronic mental illness and/or intellectual disabilities ("Cornerstone Services,” 2016). Cornerstone has been serving the Joliet and greater Will County area since 1969, and Kankakee County since 2013, and strives to integrate individuals from institutions and nursing homes into the community and make connections to local resources to enrich the lives of those we serve. A number of therapy programs are offered such as outpatient therapy, group therapy, addiction counseling, psychosocial rehabilitation

The Hofstede Centre (n.d.) defines culture as the “collective mental programming of the human mind which distinguishes one group of people from another.” Chipulu, Ojiako, Gardiner, Williams, Mota, Maguire, Shou, Stamai, and Marshall (2014), note that “culture can be at once tangible and observable; latent and unobservable; or even an abstraction altogether” (p. 367). Culture therefore has many dimensions. Some aspects of culture can be observed by analyzing symbols, ceremonies, dress, and other aspects. On the other hand, some aspects are not observable from the outside, but have to be experienced. Looking only from the outside gives us only a glimpse into the culture values. A large part of culture is the unwritten rules of how things are done. This part of culture is not necessarily observable to an outsider. To fully understand the cultural values of an organization, you need to be inside the organization with access to those with years of work experiences.

In this paper I will discuss the effects and responsibilities leaders have on an organizational culture. I believe leaders have an enormous effect on the well-being of an organizational culture. Leaders must take an active role within their organization's culture. Whether positive or negative, in an organization, things tend to follow suit "down hill." A leader has the power and influence to maintain, create, or repair an organizational culture. However, this can prove to be a delicate and challenging task.

1. The authors Joanne Martin and Caren Siehl are focusing on organizational culture and its counterculture. The definition given by the authors for counterculture states that counterculture will most likely arise in a strongly centralized organization that has allowed a reasonable decentralization of authority to take place. The article assumes that cultural systems can emphasize as well as sustain the objectives of the firm’s top management. The main argument here is that in addition to serving integrative functions, culture can express disagreement and address needs for segregation among organizational elements. As a replacement for thinking culture is a huge phenomenon, they explore counterculture’s uneasy symbiotic relationship with

In today’s dynamic business environment leadership must understand the value and importance of their organizations’ culture. While it may never be formally defined, leadership must have a vision of their intended culture and a plan for creating and maintaining it. This vision will serve as the potter’s clay that determines everything from the dress code to the organizational structure. This paper examines two methods organizations can choose to create and maintain a healthy culture.

Edgar Schein, a famous theorists dealing with organizational culture, provides the following definition for the term: "A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems that has worked well enough to be considered valid and is passed on to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems." (organizationalculture101) However, organizational culture is more than sharing assumptions used by a group to solve problems; it is the combination of the points of view, ineffectual processes, education, backgrounds of all the staff which are part of an organization way of doing things. Corporation culture should uncover from the board of the directors to the rest of

The shared characteristics and, in some cases, perception of employees create what is known as organizational culture. A strong culture constructs a unified employee atmosphere, whereas a weak culture lacks a shared sense of distinction between employees. An employee’s heritage or individual culture, although different than, affects the overall organizational culture of companies. Like society, sub-cultures exist within organizations. Formed by departmental function, geographical location, and/or the personalities of employees, sub-cultures include employees who continue to adhere to the organizations’ overall culture, but have additional independent characteristics. Employees’ individual heritage, along with the culture and