Somma Harris
Corporate Culture and Organization
Enterprise Rent-a-Car: Sustaining Organizational Learning and a Strong Culture
Organizational learning helps companies to maintain adaptability and flexibility in the modern business world. A strong culture teaches employees values, views, purpose, belonging, and sense of identity, Enterprise Rent-a-Car strong culture has held the organization together and motivated their employees to do the right thing rather than what is easy. They believe that having a winning culture helps to execute organizational learning and strategy; therefore they take care of employees and customers first, with the expectation that profits will follow. Culture is necessary during the formation of any company. This is where the essential components of the organization’s culture are embedded in the structure and major processes of the organization. Enterprise Rent-A-Car made sure to do this from the beginning, when the company was just operating out of a garage. They developed a cultural compass that tackles business ethics, public affairs and philanthropy, workplace equality, diversity and inclusion, and operations. The cultural compass has helped them shape the best employees to operate the business. Enterprise Rent-a-Car believes that an inclusive workplace helps the company attract and retain the best talent in the market. Inclusion is about understanding and embracing differences in ways that drive innovation, connecting the company more
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 is the collective attitude, intellect, and atmosphere that a community creates for itself. This includes values, traditions, and social norms. Specifically, organizational culture is within a community, group, or business that shares values, follows a code of conduct and standards, and holds its members accountable for their contributions. Organizational culture arises from the goals and mission set out by the company. A negligent culture can provoke and encourage inappropriate behavior between employees. As shown with Uber, organizational culture can become dangerous and harmful to its members if proper standards are not established.
Organizational culture could almost be considered the roots of a company. The way a company’s employees think, the way the customers feel, and the company’s decisions are made are all based around the culture that the company has laid for itself. An employee’s values, thoughts, and actions should reflect those stated in the company’s mission. Southwest Airlines and American Airlines, while both attempting to create a culture that is comfortable and pleasing to their
Organizational culture according to Hofstede (2007) “is a much more superficial phenomenon residing mainly in the visible practices of the organization, acquired by socialization of new members who join as young adults. Culture helps define what behavior gets recognized and rewarded along with appropriate actions taken by top management. When Leary was introduced into the Elmville office, she knew that in order for her to build a winning team she would need to change the culture because the current one would not allow for such growth.
A healthy organizational culture can be done with two different strategies. The first strategy being an action plan for developing a company that gives back to the employees. A good company understands the importance of building a positive morale and disposition among the staff. Regions Bank has developed a "team works" incentive plan that rewards good sales behaviors for the branches. This has given the employees an opportunity to not only make a base salary, but reap rewards for attainable quarterly sales goals as well. When an employee takes control of their production it gives a sense of ownership to the staff member to take pride in their company and help them develop on a larger basis.
“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
A good culture encompassing strong values, vision, morale’s and beliefs and behaviours expressed by employers and employees of an organisation can be the driver of the overall performance of a company. A good culture can help support the implementation of changes and new initiatives and are likely to be supported by those involved.
A company’s culture can have a huge impact on employment relations. If the organisation encourages staff to be engaged and involved in how business is delivered, they are more likely to be motivated and productive and retention will be higher. Creating a good reputation outside the business can also help with future recruitment.
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,
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to work as a Management Trainee Intern at Enterprise Rent-A-Car at the home-city branch located in Kona. Enterprise Rent-A-Car is a management career, where each employee can advance from within. The branch office is on the second floor of the building and the rental cars are lined up on the ground floor, which made it easier for employees and customers to window shop from inside. Inside the office has tons of space for customers to rest and place their luggage(s), and the desks were hidden from sight behind a divider. Enterprise Rent-A-Car is a family business owned by the Taylor family. The Taylor family created a business that brought opportunity for all people, to build and grow a career, create friendships and leadership skills, and most importantly to have fun.
I believe that it is also important to support an organization culture including some key values including the following: integrity, great customer service, unity, respect and compassion and excellence. (Newstrom, 2014, p. 100).
The culture of ownership is great strategy to motivate employees because the owners try harder than employees, both to improve the customer satisfaction and to save costs. This can be done in 2 ways
A strong positive organizational culture develops from employee awareness of the distinct differences between their company and other companies along with company mindfulness and embracing cultural diversity of its employees. As long as the organizational uniqueness of companies is positive, company pride among employees expands and improves the employees’ willingness to learn. Conversely, disinterested employees lack commitment to their company and lack desire to learn, making training more difficult.
The culture of an organization is the set of values, beliefs, behaviors, customs, and attitudes that helps its members understand what the organization stands for, how it does things, and what it considers important"(Griffin, 49). In other words, "the way things work around here" (Dr. Williams). In order for any small business or large corporation to be successful, the employees must understand what is expected of them. While things might be slightly different in a large corporation versus a small "mom and pop shop", the goal of both is the same. MAKE THE BUSINESS MONEY. The topic of my paper will be on makes a good corporate culture.
Remind students that strongly implanted cultures assist in executing strategy because company managers can use the traditions, beliefs,