The Concept Of Culture Of An Organization

The term "culture" has been used more and more recently but what exactly does it mean? Some have even regarded culture as "the most central problem of all social science" (Malinowski, 1939). According to Merriam Webster (2016), culture is defined as the arts and other manifestations of human achievements. If culture was as simple as Merriam-Webster defines it then the lives of anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists would be much easier. As we know, culture varies greatly across religion, countries, and some cases in just states; the difference between the north and the south. We can conclude that culture is a set of shared thoughts, values, and cognitions (Geertz, 1973). With culture in itself varying tremendously based on values and location, then surely organizational culture is no simple concept either. The term "organizational culture" has just recently become to be used more (Barley, 1988). Though there may be disagreements on defining culture universally, researchers tend to agree that culture is of vital importance in an organizational context, whether that organization is a company or a government (Kilmann, Saxton, & Serpa, 1986).

“Culture consists of the symbols, rituals, language, and social dramas that highlight organizational life, including myths, stories, and jargon. It includes the shared meanings associated with the symbols, rituals, and language. Culture combines the philosophy of the firm with beliefs, expectations, and values shared by members. It contains the stories and myths about the company's founder and its current leading figures. Organizational culture consists of a set of shared meanings and values held by a set of members in an organization that distinguish the organization from other organizations. An organization's culture determines how it perceives and reacts to the larger environment (Becker, 1982; Schein, 1996). Culture determines the nature

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.

Culture can be defined as a set of shared values, shared beliefs and customary ways of thinking doing things, which shape and guides the ways of organisational members. Culture is therefore very crucial as it has the ability to influence the processes or the activities of employees and the functioning of the organisation without necessarily imposing measures and control.

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,

Organizational culture is not a new concept in the world of organizational behavior. Yet despite its age, it still has many varied definitions as well as philosophies on its importance and impact to the success of a company. One definition is that organizational culture is a cognitive framework consisting of attitudes, values, behavioral norms, and expectations shared by members of an organization (Greenberg, 2013, p. 368). Greenberg (2013) further explains organizational culture through an analogy of a tree. Organizational culture are similar to the roots of a tree.

Cultural organization is unique and configures their norms, beliefs, values, and behavioral characteristics into the individual and groups that unite to get things accomplished. Patterns begin to evolve and become a rule of basic assumption; whether it is a new idea, one recently discovered or under development by a certain group as they learn to cope with internal integration and external adaptation problems. Cultural characteristics are hard to define because culture is multi-dimensional with integrated components that intertwine at different levels and ever-changing which takes time to establish and therefore time to change it also. Culture becomes the fabric or social glue that unites its participants, this will counteract any processes that are different becomes an unavoidable side-effect of life in an organization. Mutual understandings and a shared system of meanings becomes the basis of communication in a cultural organization. Functions of a society need to be fulfilled with a certain amount of satisfaction or culture can impede the efficiency of that organization. Problems with this concept arise when trying to categorize culture or when, why, or how corporate culture should be changed or finding the best, healthiest or most desirable one.

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.

The culture of an organization is like a river. It can be fluid, strong and consistent, serving as lubricant while guiding its members in the right direction. In contrast a river can become stale and toxic, silently killing those who drink at its shore.1

There are many different definitions of organizational culture. Most of them suggest basically the same principle, that the organization’s culture is the shared values, beliefs and assumptions of how the members should behave. The purpose of the culture is to understand how organizations function and gives meaning to the organizations way of doing things. Culture helps to foster internal integration, bring employees from all levels of the organization much closer together, increases moral, and enhances their performance. Just as personality shapes an individual, organizational culture shapes its members and defines what the organization is willing to do. The goal of the organization should not only emphasize on being profitable but also to

The dictionary definition of a culture is “the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular group of people or a society”. An organisation is made up of individuals and the culture of an organization defines how things are done in an organisation and what behaviour and actions are considered as acceptable or not acceptable. Hofstede defines culture as the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes

Culture is steady, clear patterns of behavior in organizations. This view heightens repeated behavior or habits as the heart of culture and deemphasizes what people feel, think or believe. It also focuses our attention on the forces that mold behavior in organizations, and so brings up an important question: are all those forces “culture” or is culture simply the behavioral outputs?

The business dictionary (Business Dictionary 2014) defines organisational culture as the ‘values and behaviours that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization’. An organisation's culture is important in ensuring that the performance of the business meets or exceeds the expectations of all aspects of their business, from management to the wider community as a whole. The culture dictates the ways employees interact and brings all the employees on a common platform to extract the best of each member. An organisations culture should be in line with the predefined goals, visions and values outlined in the mission statement.

According to Kummerow and Kirby (2013), organizational culture is patterns of shared values, beliefs and assumptions developed by an organization as it looks for ways to cope with issues of internal integration and external adaptation. Consequently, it will govern how individual behave within the organization and the culture is tough to any new member of the organization so that they know the correct way to think, feel and perceive issues within the organization. Culture is an important part of any company, it provides and controls the way staff members behave in

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).