The Impact of Organizational Culture on Employee Satisfaction & Productivity

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.

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 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.

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,

She and Kareem became friends and helped each other if they were struggling with performance issues (WCM 620 Final Project Case Study, 2017). Kathy knew about Kareem 's religious requirements and was aware of his

In any organization it is essential to understand the relationship between organizational culture, leadership behavior and job satisfaction. This understanding allows management to know what cultural factors drive the organization and can be used to align the organization with its strategy allow for a good reward system. Culture within organizations is important as it plays an enormous role on whether employees are in happy and safe environments and can perform at the full capacity. Strong cultures are based on two characteristics, high levels of agreement among employees about what’s a valued and high level of intensity about these values CITATION Cha03 \l 1033 (Chatman & Cha, 2003). Although it seemed as if it had a great culture

Organizational culture at our place of employment can promote improved patient outcomes. How we feel about ourselves, our personal investment and our relationship to our work environment are additional factors that contribute to patient satisfaction and our sense of professionalism and accomplishment (Manojlovich & Ketefian, 2002). We will look at the role of our organizational structure and its impact and contribution to the issues involving Nurse A.

The organizational culture can encourage or discourage effectiveness, depending on the nature of the values, beliefs, and norms” (Ivancevich, Konopaske, & Matteson, 2011). Organizational culture can be very friendly, very task oriented, competitive or driven to be highly productive or it can be disorganized and unproductive. The culture is based on the history of the company and the atmosphere that is created and nurtured over time. This culture guides the language the employees use their loyalty and many more areas. Organizational culture is an important social characteristic that influences organizations, group, and individual behavior with in a company (Hartnell, Ou, & Kinicki, 2011). The Culture of an organization affects the way people behave, how they address customers, the atmosphere, perception, values, and beliefs. Employee’s performance and effectiveness can also be determined by an organization’s culture. Every organization has its own culture based on shared expectations, values and attitudes and its influence on individuals and groups (Ivancevich et al., 2011). People inside of an organization have a big effect on the culture because of their values, beliefs, and ideology. Companies try to hire people who have the same values as the company so that they will fit into the organization. People stay with organizations that have a

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.

Every organization operates and functions in a different way. Rather it be the employees, the structure, or the products and services they provide, each organization will have their own unique way of performing tasks and reaching their goals. All organizations have a set of values and norms by which they go by, which sets them apart from other organizations. These values and norms are part of an organization’s culture. According to the textbook, organizational culture is “the set of shared values and norms that control organizational members’ interactions with each other and with suppliers, customers, and other people outside the organization” (pg. 179). Culture is one of the key ways an organization can increase its effectiveness. Organizational culture shapes and controls behavior within the organization. It influences how people respond to a situation and how they interpret the environment surrounding the organization. Therefore, an organization’s culture directly affects its performance and position within the competitive environment. With that being said, an organization with a well-established culture will tend to be more successful than an organization with a poor culture. Employees often spend 40 hours or more per week at their work place, which means organizational culture not only affects their work lives, but their personal lives as well. In attempt to better understand organizational culture, I will take a look at Chick-fil-A, a fast food restaurant

Organizational culture is the lived experience of organizational members that consist of values, beliefs, and ways of behaving and communicating (Dainton and Zelley). According to Michael D. Watkins in his article, “What is Organizational Culture? And Why Should We Care?” he explains that while every one knows that Organizational culture exist “there is little consensus on what organizational culture actually is, never mind how it influences behavior and whether it is something leaders can change” (Watkins). Watkins started a discussion on LinkedIn to see what people believed organizational culture was. Some responses consisted of “Culture is how organizations do things” and “Organizational culture is the sum of values and rituals which serve as ‘glue’ to integrate the members of the organization”. As a senior at Suffolk I have seen many ways in which our school tries to promote organizational culture but unfortunately in reality it fail’s to do so.

Organizational cultures develop over time thus the need to adopt and integrate valuable components towards realization of effective and efficient development of the organizational cultures. Understanding of the organizational culture is an essential aspect towards the achievement of quality culture with the aim of enhancing the output and development of the teams. In understanding organizational culture, it is critical to evaluate factors affecting the development of organizational culture within the context of an organization. Some of the critical factors influencing the development of organizational culture include purpose, processes, history, goals, objectives, size, social, and economic factors.

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

Business in the 21st century necessitates the exploration of global markets, and employing multicultural teams in order to accomplish corporate goals. This realization has prompted many companies to seek expansion internationally. To remain competitive, the leadership of a U.S. corporation has employed me as a consultant to lead a team to expand their operations in Greece, Germany, Iran, and Singapore. As this expansion unfolds, I would form a culturally diverse leadership team, with the purpose of developing culturally appropriate groups to carry out the expansion goals in these markets. In order to develop a successful global team, I must scrutinize the organizational culture, the necessary leadership style, the impact of the group’s culture on workplace productivity, and the overall impact on the organization itself.

Organizational culture is a crucial element of every organization; hence it comes as no surprise that it has received much scholarly attention. While it is impossible to summarize all research on organizational culture in a single piece, a number of fundamental studies must be noted. Ouchi (1980; 1982) compared organizations to clans having a strong culture to help them with goal incongruence and performance ambiguity. Barney (1986) proposed that organizational culture might be a source of sustained competitive advantage.