Organizational Culture : A Diverse And Inclusive Workplace

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 purpose of this paper is designed to introduce, educate, and promote diversity within your company. Your company will be shown the merits of diversity and how diversity within your organization can be a benefit. This paper will be broken down into three main areas: Benefits of Diversity, Challenges of Diversity, and Recommendations for an effective diversity within your organization..

According to Robbins and Judge, organizational culture is, “a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations” (Robbins 249). A strong organizational culture is one whose organization’s core values are both intensely held and widely shared. After viewing Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, it is obvious that Enron had not only an organizational culture that was strong, but one that was extreme and aggressive. This aggressive and strong organizational culture discouraged both teamwork and ethical behavior and in the end it only plagued Enron until it eventually collapsed under its downfall.

Increasing productivity and sparking motivation in employees, are challenges that managers, businesses, and organizations have struggled with for centuries. While there are many beliefs about which method(s) yield the best results, and what is considered to be the desired result, a ‘one-size-fits-all’ management technique still does not exist. The current movement in psychology, called Positive Psychology, focuses on what is “right” in an individual, and not on their faults. This basic concept is starting to extend its influences into the workplace, making it seem that Positive Psychology may become the key ingredient corporate culture, and all places of employment alike, have needed to promote success and satisfaction in their lines of work.

“ And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.”

Just as society has a culture, so has an organization. Organizational culture has been called ‘Corporate soul’ (Singh and Paul 1985). The spirit and the ethos that precolates all aspects of organizational behavior and like societal cultureit cannot be seen directly. It has to be inferred by peeling out the most external, tangible, and hence visible sheaths of an organization to the most central and invisible values, beliefs, and assumptions regarding how and why people work and relate with each other within an organization. Organizational culture consists of the following five layers (J.B.P Sinha 1990) :

Examine the culture of the selected organization. Explain how you determined that the selected organization showed the signs of the culture that you have identified. Determine the factors that caused the organization to embody this particular culture. Determine what type of leader would be best suited for this organization. Support your position. Imagine that there is a decline in the demand of product or services supplied by the selected organization. Determine what the change in culture would need to be in response to this situation.

The number one philosophy of building a great business is to fill a void. Nick Swinmurn founder did just that in 1999 when he started Zappos.com Inc (Zappos.com). Mr. Swinmurn wanted to start an online store that catered to selling a great selection of shoe after going to a mall and he could not find the shoes he was looking for (Eng 2012; Zappos.com). The website was dedicated to the selling of wide variety of brands, colors, sizes, and widths; if you are looking for a shoe chances are Zappos.com has them. There was finally a website customers could go and shop for the best shoes and have no trouble returning the shoes if it did not fit. The website started by Nick Swinmurn going into stores and actually taking pictures of shoes then

Study in organizational culture began in the early 1980s. Organizational culture is “work group culture” and involves organization’s personality. Organizational culture includes shared philosophies, ideologies, beliefs, feelings, assumptions, expectations, attitudes, norms and values (Fred Lunenburg, Allan Ornstein, 2012, p. 55). Most organizational cultures include observed behavioral regularities, norms, dominant values, philosophy, rules, and feelings. Organizational cultures includes certain input such as the energy imported by organizations from the environment in the form of information, people, and materials (Fred Lunenburg, Allan Ornstein, 2012, p. 55). This input energy must guide organizational behavior toward shared goals and process. Organizations produce an output because of the input into the

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,

Welcome to this year’s national convention! I would like to thank all of you for coming tonight, but I would especially like to thank Professor Akers for organizing and planning this event. Tonight, we will be discussing communication and behavior issues in leading a diverse work culture. Did you know that non-white workers now make up nearly one-third of the labor force (Burns, 2012)? Statistics too boring to keep your attention? How about this: “Racially diverse teams outperform their non-diverse counterparts by 35 percent (Woolf, 2017). Do I have your attention know? As you can see, diversity in the workplace doesn’t have to be a requirement just to meet government regulations and ethical expectations. There are tremendous implications for your business. Unfortunately, there are several issues possible plaguing and inhibiting your business in regard to diversity. We will discuss the most predominate issue, communication and communication behaviors.

The importance of promoting and maintaining a workplace of inclusion and cultural diversity within any healthcare organization (HCO) is like no other time in history as the U.S. population itself becomes more diversified. It is projected that by 2060 more than half of the population will be of minority race (US Census Bureau, 2015). With our country growing more diverse each year, natural history and progression would suggest that our fundamental institutions such as our HCOs should also become more diverse (Rasmussen, 2017). Achieving and maintaining profitability in the current and continuously emerging marketplace will be benchmarked against MHCC ability to adapt to these changes (Modern Healthcare, n.d.). The financial burdens related to

As a result of increasing numbers of immigrants, cultural diversity has become a common display in the workplace, which means having a blend of cultures in an organization. It is important to understand each culture individually as they possess their own values and beliefs. Organizations must incorporate these differences to motivate employees in order to successfully achieve a company 's goal. If employees accept the organization’s goals, it can direct the company to success with higher productivity and effectiveness. Socialization also plays an important role, as it helps increase employee loyalty and motivation, which then leaders io to higher effectiveness and efficiency. During the socialization process, an employee is responsible for familiarizing themselves with their tasks and role in the company, and later on learning and adapting to the organization’s culture. Both cultural diversity and socialization are relevant in the field of human resources because they influence how management should govern its employees to achieve successful organizational performance and meet strategic goals. This paper will illustrate various benefits and consequences of

Workplace culture is often hard to describe, because it means something different in every organisation and many times employees feel it’s ‘just the way things are’. But so often it can define a company and when it’s not working well, everyone knows about it.

Have you ever experienced a miscommunication with coworkers at workplace? If so, do you know what exactly was the main thing that led to miscommunication? Miscommunication at the workplace happens when coworkers have different points of views, lack of understanding or different life experiences. There is only one workplace issue that includes all of the problems that I have just mentioned: cultural diversity. Cultural diversity at workplace refers to all types of differences among individuals at the workplace such as, different races, different gender, different ages, different points of views and different classes. We are living in the generation where travelling is easier than ever. Millions of people choose to live abroad, therefore communicating with people from different cultures is inevitable. There are various cultures living in the world today and the way each culture communicates differs from one another. Therefore, this problem refers to everyone because in this current generation, everyone gets to face cultural diversity at their workplaces. The misunderstandings that cultural diversity cause can be very serious. It can lead the headquarters of a company to lay off their employees and it can also drive the organization to have an unproductive communication with their business partners. Everyone in this generation faces cultural diversity in daily lives when communicating with others. Therefore, this problem refers to everyone, because in this current generation,