Taking a Look at 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.

In the 1980’s business experts began to realize the root to organizational success or failure is through its culture. The culture of an organization is the belief that guides each employee in knowing what to do and what not to do and it also affect the public perception of the organization’s brand. Therefore culture is the shared social knowledge within an organization regarding the rules, norms and values (Colquitt, Lepine, & Wesson, 2012). Although, no two cultures are alike, there are components and characteristics that help business experts to define an organization’s culture.

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

Management researchers seem to agree that the things that companies do called "corporate culture" is an intangible concept and hence difficult to define. Among the attempts to define "corporate culture", the following definition is useful as a starting point:- "culture represents an interdependent set of values and ways of behaving that are common in a community and that tend to perpetuate themselves, sometimes over long periods of time" (Kotter and Heskett,1992,141) Peters and Watermann argue that changing a culture cannot be accomplished.

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

In the beginning corporate culture is shaped by the leaders and by the purpose for with the company has been created. It then develops within the constraints of the environment, technology, values of the leadership, and performance expectations. “The initial culture is altered by the design variables of the company, experiences of the company, management’s leadership style, the structure of the company, the nature of the tasks of the groups, the way decisions are made, and the size of the company. In addition, the developing culture is affected by the internal integrity of the company, the climate, and how well the company is competing in the marketplace, its effectiveness.” (DeWitt, 2001(

APPLICATION OF A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK USED IN THE STUDY OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE TO CONDUCT AN ANALYSIS OF AN ORGANISATION’S CULTURE

“Organization culture comprises the deep, basic assumptions and beliefs, as well as the shared values that define organization membership, as well as the member’s habitual ways of making decisions, and presenting themselves, and their organization to those who come in contact with it.”

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,

Although there exist many explanation, interpretations and understandings of organisational culture, there are a number of distinct characteristics or dimensions of culture as defined by Luthans (2008) which are discussed below. However these are not intended to be all-inclusive.

An organisation’s culture can be described as a collection shared experiences over time, by resolution of problems faced in both an external and internal environment (Schein 1990, p.1100). Although, organisational culture is considered a modern concept, a historical viewpoint is explored, to provide evidence of the long held value of this concept to communities, . Furthermore, the formational factors, processes and drivers that develop culture in an organisation, whether positive or negative, will be explored.

Organisational culture, which is defined by Handy (1993) as the concepts and ideas which govern the behaviour of people and organisations, has a significant impact on the effectiveness of an organisation. Handy listed over sixty different variables which contribute towards an organisation’s culture including the style of leadership evident, the systems and structures which support the organisation and how the different sub groups within the organisation relate and work

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 Theory analyzes the various cultural aspects of organizations, most notably the five metaphorical performances, the seven cultural markers, and the notion of culture being something an organization is versus culture being something an organization has. The five metaphorical performances are ritual, passion, sociality, politics, and enculturation. Rituals are certain events that are done at certain times, such as getting coffee at a certain time every day. Passion is how one describes their mundane work through stories that indicate how they see it as just the opposite of boring. Sociality describes acts among workers in the organization that can bring them together, such as joking or

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.