Organizational Culture : An Organization Function

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,

According to Mclean and Marshall (1993) organisational culture is defined as the collection of traditions, values, policies, beliefs and attitudes that contribute a pervasive context for everything we do and think in an organisation. (ie) this means that these factors actually determine how we think as well as act and react not only to people from within the same organisation but also to anybody on the outside who has some sort of interaction with the organisation. As can be seen with the part-structure in Figure 1, this organisation (WHD) has various levels of management. There is quite

As a result of the accelerating pace of globalization, business environments in which organizations operate are increasingly turbulent and there is an unprecedented level of competition between rival firms (News.bbc.co.uk, 2016). Owing to this persistent rise in competition, organizations are faced with the dilemma of creating a viable competitive advantage. One way of developing such advantage is by constructing a captivating organizational culture.

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

An organizational culture is a system of shared beliefs and values that are establised to help motivate and coordinate employees in the achievement of meeting the organization’s goals (Kinicki, 2012, p.229). The four types of organizational cultures are: clan, adhocracy, market, and hierarchy. By a company choosing what kind of culture and structure they will plan lays out the design of how an organization will function which gives an the organizational identity, it facilitates collective commitment, promotes stability, and shapes the workplace behavior by helping employees to understand the purpose and goals of the company, and how they intend to accomplish their goals (Kinicki, 2012).

Rizescu, M. (2011). Orgainzational Culture Influences on the Organization's Functionality. Revista Academie ForTelor Terestre. 1( 61): 75-82.

Organizational culture refers to a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs that show employees what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior.[1]

Organizational culture influences many aspects of work life. Workplace cultures that are grounded in strong and formally articulated values and modes of behavior define an organization. Well-communicated values influence employee behavior and drive how employees relate with all stakeholders within the organization—from co-workers, management and members of the board to clients, shareholders and the community at large. When organizations seek to change their culture, HR—as change agent and educator of the change process—plays a significant role in this endeavor. In addition, HR's role is both up front and in the background, by leading, supporting, coaching, encouraging, measuring and evaluating the change during the process and over time.

Organizations as culture are able to create a vision for leaders to use in order to guide organizational objectives. It can also provide a perspective so followers can measure their leader’s performance in achieving the vision. Organizational culture can determine the way employees interact at the workplace and helps guide and give them a sense of direction at the workplace. Through observing Foundation, the following provide examples to demonstrate how Foundation is operating within the culture metaphor:

The organizational culture of an organization serves as a foundation that should guide the practice and attitude of all healthcare professionals and staff. King & Demarie (2015) describes organizational culture as the basis that determines right and wrong. A hospital organization’s mission, vision, and goals are derived from the culture established within the organization. Organizational decisions are highly influenced by the organizational culture within an environment. Growth, advancements, and acquirements must be aligned with an organization’s culture to facilitate success. Healthcare organizations must ensure that all staff are aware of the efforts they must portray in order to properly exhibit the culture to all individuals seeking healthcare services.

Organisation Culture as there are many ways in which you can define the subject my interpretation of it is that it is structure of shared meaning which is held by members that differentiate the organisation from other organisations. Culture has its origin in the organisational interaction.

OPENNESS. Openness can be defined as a spontaneous expression of feelings and thoughts, and the sharing of these without defensiveness. Openness is in both directions, receiving and giving. Both these may relate to ideas (including suggestions), feedback (including criticism), and feelings. For example, openness means receiving without reservation, and taking steps to encourage more feedback and suggestions from customers, colleagues and others. Similarly, it means giving, without hesitation, ideas, information, feedback, feelings, etc. Openness may also mean spatial openness, in terms of accessibility. Installing internal E-mailing may be a step in this direction: everyone having a computer terminal has access to information which he may

The culture of an organization sets the tone for any work environment. Human resources and organizational culture works best together when an organization realizes if a potential employee is the best fit for the organization’s culture. However, the prospective employee must understand and realize if they are the best fit for the organization’s culture. Organizational culture relies on practices of the organization and how it affects the employee; it is the environment of the workplace. “Leaders first create culture when they create groups and organizations; once culture exists, they determine the criteria for leadership roles and from there, will determine who is capable of being leaders” (Schein, 2004, p. 311). Business professor, David

The organization that I work for has many locations but I will concentrate on my work site. The organizational focuses on the well being of the residents and families. For this paper, I decided to focus more on the organizational culture. I will look into how the administrations of this organization are directly responsible for building and sustaining the culture within an organization.