Throughout this essay organisational culture will be examined, including the two approaches mainstream and critical. What managers can do to shape culture and also an example of when culture has in fact been changed.
Organisational culture can be acknowledged as the organisations personality; which is also referred to as corporate culture. Organisational culture is defined as the process of how things are dealt with within an organisation on a daily basis, affecting the employees and how they work, how they are relating to each other, to the customers and also their managers. Deal and Kennedy defined organisational culture as ‘the way we do things around here’ and Hofstede said it is ‘how people behave when no one is watching’ and ‘the collective programming of the mind’ (Deal and Kennedy 1982, Hofstede 2001).
There are two approaches to organisational culture mainstream and critical, both will be evaluated and explored throughout. Starting with mainstream, Smircich defines mainstream organisational culture as ‘something that an organisation has’ (1983). When looking at culture through this perspective it is understood to be
- Variable meaning the capital or other assets that the business has such as information technology, culture meaning how the employees think and feel which is something that can be manipulated by managers.
- Integrating and stabilizing, since the culture is something that is shared between the organisational members it is perceived a natural force
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.
“Organisations need strong culture”. Consider this statement in relation to how we understand and make sense of culture in the post-bureaucratic era.
Organizational culture is the heart of the organization performance it is critical for organizational success. It is a culture in which the core values are intensely and widely shared among the employees and stake holders.
Organisational Culture is defined as what the employees perceive and how this perception creates a pattern of beliefs, values and, expectations. Organisational culture differs from organizational climate. Climate refers to more temporary attitudes, feelings and perceptions of individuals (Schneider, 1990). Culture on the other hand is an enduring, slow to change, core characteristic of organisations which is an implicit often indiscernible aspects of organisations, climate refers to more overt, observable attributes of organisations.. Organisational culture is “the way things are” in the organisation rather that people’s transitory attitudes about them
Coined as “the way we do things around here” (Deal and Kennedy, 1983, p. 501), culture encompasses how an organisation is run, its “personality”, and the norms, values, beliefs and attitudes (Armstrong, 2010) that reflect the organisation’s mission, aims and goals.
Within the field of management, the success and failure of the modern business organisation has been largely depicted by the intricate concept of culture. Organisational culture, a concept borrowed from borrowed mostly from anthropology typically is defined as a complex set of values, beliefs, assumptions and symbols that define the way in which an organisation conducts and manages its business (Barney 1986). Management is not just an act of change, but the responsibility for and control of a company or similar organisation (Willmott 1983). It is the management of organisational culture that merely drives the
An organisation’s culture relates to a set of shared beliefs and values that has been agreedby the entire group and thus representing the company’s unique identity. They reflect theorganisation’s core values which are learned, re-learned and passed on to new members.These include the way people communicate with one another, how information isexchanged, the procedures and processes followed etc. Roger Harrison defined four typesof organisational culture depending on the level of centralisation and formalisation. Thisis indicated in the figure
There is no perfect book definition for Organization Culture. It is a term that has a generic definition and has a different meaning in different organizations. Every organization has a different culture based on its products and business and the people working in it, in order to be successful. Informally we can coin the term saying ‘the way we do things around here’ that would make the organization look ‘hip’ and ‘cool’.
Background Organizational Culture Organizational culture is a way to describe the collective behavior within an organization, the values, norms, language, symbols, status, and beliefs and habits. We can also view organizational behavior as the collection of behaviors within an organization that cause those members to perceive their organization and others. In fact, organizational culture affects the way individuals and groups interact with each other, clients, stakeholders and the public Because people are so individualistic, it would stand to reason that each organization would have a unique culture, or even group of cultures based on location or department/focus (Tatum, 2010).
Organisational culture refers to ‘the shared beliefs and values guiding the thinking and behavioural styles of members’ (Cooke and Rousseau, 1988, in Bratton 2010: 334), indicating that employees who accept the common values of an organisation and put great effort on commitments are likely to build up a strong culture to an organisation.
An organization is an entity comprising multiple people, such as an institution or association and is linked to an external environment. Culture is a way of life of people - the values, beliefs, behaviors and symbols they accept and practice and pass from one generation to another. Organizational culture therefore is a system of values, beliefs, behaviors and symbols that governs how people should behave in organizations. This is a relatively stable element of an organization that greatly influences its members or employees on how they should act within the organization - work ethics, habits, skilss, even up to dress codes.
‘An organization’s culture comprises an interlocking set of goals, roles, processes, values, communications practices, attitudes and assumptions.’ (Denning, 2011) Organisational Culture is the way in which things are done and how employees react and behave around the workplace. A culture tends to follow traits under three main levels; Underlying Assumptions; Values and Artefacts – Physical Manifestations, Behavioral Manifestations and Verbal Manifestations- meaning not all organisations follow the same culture. If the organisation’s culture is to accept change
The culture of organisation is values and beliefs that apply to the unique psychological and social environment within the organisation. Culture of organisation consists of organisation’s values, philosophy, experience; assumptions gathered and its self-concept, internal activities, and communication with outer environment such as customers, other organisations and forecasts for future. It is based on mutual values, beliefs, habits, rules and even fashion which has been established over some period of time and treated as good and appropriate thing for company. Corporate culture can be seen in different activities within the company, such as:
APPLICATION OF A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK USED IN THE STUDY OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE TO CONDUCT AN ANALYSIS OF AN ORGANISATION’S CULTURE
Existing culture can in times be very hard to continue with because of the change in the growth or in the strategic change in the organisation. At such appropriate web of culture is important to be identified or that can be a problem in the progress of the organisation. These identified elements will give organisation a bigger picture of what was going wrong and how can they change it towards betterment of the organisation.