Organizational Culture and Structure

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.

Organizational structure is the division of labor and the patterns of coordination, communication, workflow, and formal power that guide organizational activities. An organization’s structure reflects the company’s culture and power relationships and can establish new communication patterns and align employee behavior with the company’s mission, vision and goals. The organizational structure enables effective communication and smooth workflow, but organizational culture is its underpinning. Organizational culture is the basic pattern of shared assumptions, values and beliefs that govern behavior within a particular organization. Organizational culture is a deeply embedded form of social control.

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.

(10 pts.) Discuss how organizational architecture and corporate culture are related. Use an example of a real-life firm and discuss how its corporate culture blends with its organizational architecture.

Organizational structure has been set up to facilitate all goal achievements. It is a way to motivate their employees and get them to work together. It also helps its employees to follow the organizations goals, and work together as a team. In order to do this, they need to have an organized structure to be able to run the company smoothly. A main foundation of every organization is to post their mission statement and goals everywhere so that their employees can see them. An organizational culture can consist of common shared beliefs and values that are established by the organization’s leader, and then communicated and reinforce through various methods, this helps shape employee perceptions, behaviors and understanding. Overall, organizational structure and culture can effect progress of many organizations in a positive and negative way.

As known each organization has a set objective to be achieved. Hence depending on the objective & to achieve those objectives, an organization can be structured in many difference ways: the 2 basic division, is the division of labour& coordination & supervision. These are done to be in-line with the organizational objective.

Organisational culture refers to the behaviours of people at work, their shared beliefs and values.  Schein (1992, p.12) describes this as a set pattern of assumptions that a team shares as they learn working together over a period of time. Organisations

for the oversight of delegating processes and expected outcomes. Without structure there is a potential for chaos to ensue, communication to be inhibited, thereby preventing goals from getting accomplished. Organizational structure is an important tool managers use to increase efficiency within the departments (Sullivan, 2013) and is an important line of communication for employees at the department level as well as throughout the organization. Every

An organizational structure is a framework set for certain activities at the work place like coordination of activities, supervision of employees and task allocation to be organised (Mills, 2005).

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.

The purpose of an organization structure is to divide up and coordinate resources and tasks in order to achieve performance success.

Organizational structure is a formal relationship between management and the employees. It is a way to motivate the employees and get them to working. It is also away to get employees to follow the company goals, and work together as a team. To make an organization work they need to have an organized structure to be able to run the company. The mission

The first part of this week’s assignment was to look at how organizational structure impacts organizational culture and vice versa. But before we look at that let us review what organizational structure and culture are. Organizational culture as defined from the text is the shared values, principles, traditions, and ways of doing things that influence the way organizational members set (Robbins, Decenzo, Coulter, 2013). Also an organization’s culture usually reflects the vision or mission of the organization’s founders (Robbins, Decenzo, Coulter, 2013). Organizational structure is a hierarchical arrangement of lines of authority, communication, rights and duties of an organization (BusinessDictionary.com, 2013). Organizational structure determines how the roles, power and responsibilities are assigned, controlled, and coordinated, and how information flows between different levels of management (BusinessDictionary.com, 2013).

The mechanistic structure is the traditional or classical design, common in many medium- and large-size organizations. Mechanistic organizations are somewhat rigid in that they consist of very clearly delineated jobs, have a well-defined hierarchical structure, and rely heavily on the formal chain of command for control. Bureaucratic organizations, with their emphasis on formalization, are the primary form of mechanistic structures. According to Max Weber, bureaucracy is a form of organization characterized by a rational, goal-directed hierarchy, impersonal decision making, formal controls, and subdivision into managerial positions and specialization of labor. Bureaucratic organizations are tall consisting of hierarchies with many levels of management. In a tall structure, people become relatively confined to their

Organizational structure is a system that consists of explicit and implicit institutional rules and policies designed to outline how various work roles and responsibilities are delegated, controlled and coordinated. (Investopedia, 2017) , It determines the guidelines of activities such as task distribution, coordination, and supervision to reach and achieve organizational objectives. The organization can be structured in various ways, depending on its objectives.