Organizational Culture

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.

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.

Culture consists of beliefs and behavior. It is cultivated behavior in the sense that it is learnt from the other members of the society. According to Henry Mintzberg, an internationally renowned author on Business and Management, “culture is the soul of the organization – the beliefs and values, and how they are manifested. I think of the structure as the skeleton, and as the flesh and blood. And culture is the soul that holds the thing together and gives it life force.” These lines portray how critical is a culture in an organization.

Organizational structure can be defined as the establishment of authority and responsibilities between different positions in the company. It can be either horizontal or vertical. Organization structure also facilitates transparency in the organization (Luthans, 1998). My organization is Saint Joseph’s Hospital, which is a leading magnet facility here in Atlanta Georgia. Saint Joseph 's was the first hospital in the Southeast to perform open heart surgery, the first to develop a cardiac cath lab and the first to perform balloon angioplasty. The hospital was also the first to open a pace maker clinic and the first in Georgia to implant an artificial heart. Saint Joseph 's is also regarded as one of Georgia 's early pioneers in vascular

Organizational culture is a belief that employees share values, beliefs, or perceptions regarding an organization, or a hierarchical society (Tsai, 2011). This is depicted as the qualities, convictions, or observations held by workers inside an association or by an authoritative unit. Since organizations reflect the qualities, convictions and behavioral standards that are utilized by workers, the circumstances that they experience can impact the mentality and conduct of the staff. One perspective through Peasre and Kanyangale (2009) concentrates on consensus, common values, and standards that are seen by the organization as a whole, allowing employees to act in a compelling manner towards others and to translate the significance of the conduct of others in different settings. As an organizational counselor, one must be able to help clients define what the acceptable behaviors are. Furthermore, a counselor must also be able to provide methods of modification to behaviors that will be generalizable to various settings (Hackney and Cormier, 2013). Researchers subscribing to this point of view refer to culture as “collective programming” or group awareness, and “shared underlying beliefs” or group values. The consensus point of view focuses on examples, shared characteristics, or the inside of an organization as a dynamic unit. Points of view like this allow for the systematic recognition of coalitions. When coalitions are discovered, they can be reframed to understand the

To greet each other in Tibet, you stick out your tongue and put your hands together in front of your chest. In Japan, it is only polite if you bow to each other when greeting. There are hundreds of different ethnic groups in the world and they all have their own customs and traditions that stemmed out from their underlying culture. Similar to these ethnic groups, each organization also have their own unique culture that guides how people behave and what people believe in within the organization.

The topic canvasses the effects of organizational culture on the M&A. This annotated bibliography is composed of research based, case study and literature reviewed articles, that all of them are recently published papers. Although in the aspect of mergers and acquisitions, organisational culture has various definition and encirclement (Riad, 2007), from recently introduced emotional intelligence (Harrison-Walker, 2008) to theoretical definitions (Schraeder & Self, 2003), and also there are some debates about the direction of its effects on M&A (Stahl & Voigt, 2008), but its influences on M&A are undeniable. (Stinchcomb & Ordaz, 2007) The most important effects of organisational culture on M&A could be summarised as goal and mission

The key in helping to form and provide an identity for an organisation is in its organisational culture. Northcote and Trevelyan (1853) sought to provide the Civil Service with a distinctive character. Their vision based on four principal recommendations (merit through examination, educational level, graded into a hierarchy and promotion through achievement) has meant the Civil Service has invested heavily in training programmes despite long development times. These circumstances are categorised by Deal and Kennedy (2000) as a “Bet-your-company” type culture.

Social scientists and researchers delved into the idea of organisational culture as an important component of organisational theory in the past. Brown (1998) identified four different sources of organisational culture which stems from climate research, national cultures, human resources management, and from conviction approaches.

There are many different interpretations on what organizational culture is; it can be defined as … This essay will be discussing and explaining organizational culture and change, furthermore how culture can have an influence on behaviour at work. In addition there will be an discussion on the organizational culture of two UK businesses, as well

Each company has its own beliefs and values that define it. A company culture determines how employees and customers perceive the company, client treatment and how the company should react to various changes in the environment. An organizational culture is a mirror of the company leadership. Different styles of leadership ensure maintenance of various corporation cultures. The climate within an organization determines a company’s financial performance. To ensure their propositions are deemed important, a quality company culture integrates each employee or customer. Job-related problems, either personal or work related, are listened to, and the top management find the best means to solve them. Work is delegated to employees while managers work by the employees’ side to ensure perfection (Alvesson, 2002).

Living in a world of approximately 7.5 billion people mean living with different perspectives, different ideas, different cultures; in other words, we live in a society full of diversities. Throughout this semester, I have learned that an organization cannot function without people. In fact, employees are one of the valuable assets of an organization. Every organization has a corporate culture; thus, living in a world of diversities poses the challenge for companies in maintaining such culture alive. I believe that organizational culture, just like Politics, cannot be avoided within an organization. I am not a mother yet, but based on my observation, organizational culture is like growing up a child that is, it requires of a strong mother (an empowered leader) to nurture a child (culture) with values and confidence which are key elements towards attaining success.

While most acquisitions have been branded unsuccessful, most of these acquisitions fail to consider vital elements that influence performance. Success of any given acquisition is the ability of the acquisition to effectively integrate with existing business units to generate a seamless flow of information and sharing of tasks in a manner that maximizes the use of resources.

When examining the significance of the concept of culture for organizational business, we first must identify the two theories of culture theory and organizational theory. Diving into these two theories, we will review in detail of how each impact a family-owned business and how the effectiveness of the management and leadership summarize the culture of the business while evaluating the different purposes about the nature of culture and the organization business. The evaluation will require a reflection on the concept of culture; “Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts.” (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2012).

This report has two principle issues which are surrounded by organisational behaviour like motivation and organisational culture. It applies theories to investigate how Starbucks utilizes these matters to effectively run its association and additionally make a society which is key to its image. The short presentation around two issues with its theories of Starbucks.