Explaining My Culture through Goffee and Jones and Schein's Theories

The term "culture" has been used more and more recently but what exactly does it mean? Some have even regarded culture as "the most central problem of all social science" (Malinowski, 1939). According to Merriam Webster (2016), culture is defined as the arts and other manifestations of human achievements. If culture was as simple as Merriam-Webster defines it then the lives of anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists would be much easier. As we know, culture varies greatly across religion, countries, and some cases in just states; the difference between the north and the south. We can conclude that culture is a set of shared thoughts, values, and cognitions (Geertz, 1973). With culture in itself varying tremendously based on values and location, then surely organizational culture is no simple concept either. The term "organizational culture" has just recently become to be used more (Barley, 1988). Though there may be disagreements on defining culture universally, researchers tend to agree that culture is of vital importance in an organizational context, whether that organization is a company or a government (Kilmann, Saxton, & Serpa, 1986).

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.).

Schrodt, P. (2002). The relationship between organizational identification and organizational culture: Employee perceptions of culture and identification in a retail sales organization. Communication Studies, 53, 189-202.

“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

All Organisations posses a distinct form of culture with some having more than a single culture. This culture is usually very difficult to measure, change and most especially change.

Organizational culture in a HCO is predetermined by state and government laws, executed by company rules and influenced by social norms to provide and manage patient care and safety. The organizational culture of our group project was predetermined by the instructions given to us by our professor, executed by our team and guided by the social norms such as internet etiquette as per UCF guidelines. In this document we will discuss how we worked as a team and how we assigned individual roles for completing this

Briefly describe the culture of the chosen organization, noting whether the organization’s espoused values align with its enacted values. To what extent is communication in an organization determined by the organization’s culture?

One of the facts of life is that people are motivated in different ways and hold different points of view. They have unique values hierarchies, develop unique perceptions of reality, and establish different goals and priorities from those of their coworker and colleagues. At the same time, organizations are living systems that demand dynamic relationships among employees. Given that people do not have identical viewpoints, this dynamic relationship necessarily leads conflict, challenges, and problems. The culture of the Mayo Clinic has proven to be a viable and effective means for solving problems and meeting challenges in contemporary healthcare (Nelson & Quick, 2015).

Health Care Organization Culture The culture of an organization can be simply put to be the way of life in an organization. It can also be seen as the shared value system derived overtime that guides members in their relationship, external environment, and solve problems in other to succeed. Health care organization (HCO) culture can greatly influence the ability to manage human resources, serve patients and ultimately has a strong impact on its economic performance (Kotter & Heskett, 1992). Constructive organizational cultures that enhance both employee satisfaction and patient satisfaction consist of safe work environments where members have positive colleague interactions and approach tasks in a manner that helps attain high personal satisfaction

ABC Corporation has a culture that is based on providing award winning after-sales service to ensure it has repeat customers (WCM 620 Final Project Case Study, 2017). Thomas prides himself on creating a culture that produces high-performance numbers by encouraging his employees to handle a high volume of calls. Thomas believed that each employee should be clear on company protocol and performance expectations with a focus on high productivity (WCM 620 Final Project Case Study, 2017). During the conflict, Thomas believed that his front-line manager,

Within organizations, large and small, there exists a sense of identity among its members that separates it from other organizations. This sense of identity is known as organizational culture. All over, managers seek to influence and change this into something that can be beneficial for the organization. In his article, “The Six Levers for Managing Organizational Culture”, Professor David W. Young defines the different elements that can influence and change the culture within the organization and how the reader can use these “levers” to their advantage. While the author does present a decent explanation for changing the culture of an organization, he leaves many questions unanswered that leaves his argument incomplete.

340). The current culture can be described as a normative, process culture in that employees follow regulations and policies when completing their work. The organization is transparent with their communication, hence employees respect them. However, the workface feels like they are running to lean and only care about the bottom dollar hence turnover is high. There is great coordination of care between all departments except for the marketing department. There is a disconnection secondary to the clinical staff feeling that marketing only brings in patients to meet their quotas instead of patient that truly need services. Moreover, marketing is the only department that is bonus eligible. As a result, the folklore is that the organization only cares about the bottom-line and not the employees. Additionally, the only reason patients come to this hospital is because the employees “kill them with kindness”. Superior Hospitals needs a cultural change. It needs to more towards an academic and normative culture as employees are highly skilled and need further training and education in order to be successful. The research notes that this type of culture pays particular attention on who they hire, their current skill sets and their motivation to learn and grow, so that turn-over rates remain low and the employees are fulfilled in their roles (Sponaugle, 2014). Moreover,

Cultural organization is unique and configures their norms, beliefs, values, and behavioral characteristics into the individual and groups that unite to get things accomplished. Patterns begin to evolve and become a rule of basic assumption; whether it is a new idea, one recently discovered or under development by a certain group as they learn to cope with internal integration and external adaptation problems. Cultural characteristics are hard to define because culture is multi-dimensional with integrated components that intertwine at different levels and ever-changing which takes time to establish and therefore time to change it also. Culture becomes the fabric or social glue that unites its participants, this will counteract any processes that are different becomes an unavoidable side-effect of life in an organization. Mutual understandings and a shared system of meanings becomes the basis of communication in a cultural organization. Functions of a society need to be fulfilled with a certain amount of satisfaction or culture can impede the efficiency of that organization. Problems with this concept arise when trying to categorize culture or when, why, or how corporate culture should be changed or finding the best, healthiest or most desirable one.

According to our text, Deal and Kennedy identified four dimensions of culture. Values, Heroes, Rites and Rituals, and Culture Network reflect how in a large part an organization makes decisions (Lester & Parnell, 2006). An organization’s culture is impressed upon staff beginning at the hiring process and continues throughout their tenure. For example, a Healthcare organization may have a culture that stresses patient safety and satisfaction beyond anything else. In this culture, any decision regarding process improvement or introduction of a new service line would be tailored to either safety or satisfaction. If a hospital were to start a patient lift team, the project team would ask how this departmental addition would impact patient safety

“Corporate culture refers to the beliefs and behaviors that determine how a company's employees and management interact and handle outside business transactions (Investopedia.com, n.d.).” With regard to corporate culture, we will initially decipher the results gained by participating in the McGinty/Moss assessment and determine whether or not the results conformed to our expectations or the results created a new revelation for us. Secondly, we will determine the level to which, the aforementioned assessment and the McNamara information discloses to us similarities and differences about our own organization. Subsequently, we will discover whether or not a combination of the assessment and the McNamara categories assisted us with