The Importance Of Power Within 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.

When utilizing feedback as a way of measuring effectiveness of the organizational change it can be by way of surveys from staff, meetings, questionnaires and so on. Feedback helps to communicate ideas better to management so that quality care can continue to improve and goals can continue to be reached. Feedback is used by managers as a tool to respond to and to anticipate changes (Spector, 2010).

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,

Within organizations, large and small, there exists a sense of identity among its members that separates it from other organizations. This sense of identity is known as organizational culture. All over, managers seek to influence and change this into something that can be beneficial for the organization. In his article, “The Six Levers for Managing Organizational Culture”, Professor David W. Young defines the different elements that can influence and change the culture within the organization and how the reader can use these “levers” to their advantage. While the author does present a decent explanation for changing the culture of an organization, he leaves many questions unanswered that leaves his argument incomplete.

Learning organizations today must be adequately able to readily adapt to change the mind-sets and behaviors of the people within. Although this sounds like a unified joint statement for each and every organization however, there are so many organizations that yet do not acknowledge the actual truths and current trends that illustrate particular dysfunctional behaviors that exist and occur each day. Learning organization aid and enable companies and business to run, operate, and function with efficiently. As organizations learn together, they attain knowledge, acquire skills and information and evolve at a faster rate. Culture begins to be created after learning organization are established and they are placed

It is important to change various aspects of organization culture when trying to institute change in organizations (Kavita, 2005). The aspects that such changes should target include the balance of power in the organizations, the organization structure that supports the framework, leadership and management styles. Organizational history is also very critical, especially if it has a progressive track record success. However, if the culture despite the changes remains aligned to the organization goals and mission the employees will adopt it and embrace change.

According to Robbins and Judge, organizational culture is, “a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations” (Robbins 249). A strong organizational culture is one whose organization’s core values are both intensely held and widely shared. After viewing Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, it is obvious that Enron had not only an organizational culture that was strong, but one that was extreme and aggressive. This aggressive and strong organizational culture discouraged both teamwork and ethical behavior and in the end it only plagued Enron until it eventually collapsed under its downfall.

This is important because feedback is essential to leaders and managers in light of the fact that workers' activities and practices eventually decide the corporate society and accomplishment of an organization (Harms and Roebuck, 2010). However, Harms and Roebuck recommend a significantly more reaching approach called the “BET and BEAR” model which according to Berry et al. (1996) is an effective mechanism for providing positive and constructive feedback. They further illustrated that the “BET” model which stand for “Behaviour, Effect and Thank you, is to be used for positive feedback while the ‘BEAR” model is for constructive feedback which is used in addressing negative feedback. Hams and Roebuck further encouraged that students should make at least 75% of their feedbacks to their peers’ positive than negative (Berry et al., 1996, cited in Harms and Roebuck, 2019:419).

A 360-degree feedback system is also known by a number of other names such as a multi-rater feedback, multisource feedback, or multisource assessment. Using this model involves providing feedback from a number of sources and directions on the hierarchical organization chart such as including superiors, sub-ordinates, customers and peers. Therefore this model is able to collect a variety of different perceptions about an individual's performance. A literature review was conducted that examined the 360-system from different perspectives of the evaluation sources and finds that though the system can provide more comprehensive sets of data that sometimes the complexity of which serves to provide no value. However, in many cases, if administered properly the 360-degree evaluation system can be a valuable tool used for professional development in an organizational setting.

Different feedback strategys have been used as efficent tools in the promotion of progress and improvement in the professional world (Baker, A. Perrault D. Alain, R., 2013). De Janasz et al. (2014) explains some positive outcomes that result from shariying, asking and getting feedback from others in within a workplace; such as improving and reforcing employee relationships, enforcing a gainnful comunication, promoting teamwork, and increasing the performance of employees. Specificly De Janasz et al. (2014) develops the idea that providing constructive feedback, sustained by strong interpersonal communication skills, enables the individual recognize their strengths and wiknesses in a clear and non risky way, in order to look for the most accurate plan to improve, and obtain significant and necessary behavioral changes. Everyday Feedback as part of an organization strategy help employees feel confident about their possition and process inside the company, and promotes a clear path to achieve personal and organizational goals (Baker, A. Perrault D. Alain, R. (2013); citado en Levy and williams,

360 degree feedback system as a performance evaluation tool as long as the understanding of its intent is understood. “There are three key steps in the successful implementation of 360 degree feedback systems in an organization. The three steps are that it must fit the organizations culture, make it psychometrically sound, and used with care” (“Best Practices”, 2012). It is also important to train the feedback providers to be sensitive, respectful and polite. Treating employees in a friendly and respectful manner and offering constructive advice will make them more open to accepting the performance

In today’s dynamic business environment leadership must understand the value and importance of their organizations’ culture. While it may never be formally defined, leadership must have a vision of their intended culture and a plan for creating and maintaining it. This vision will serve as the potter’s clay that determines everything from the dress code to the organizational structure. This paper examines two methods organizations can choose to create and maintain a healthy culture.

In an article from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management [OPM] (n.d.) it stated that “without feedback, you 're walking blind, at best, you 'll accidentally reach your goal, and at worst, you will wander aimlessly through the dark, never reaching your destination.” Feedback is a critical element in a managers “toolbox” when evaluating employees. It gives an employee a view of how good or bad their previous performance was and what or if they need to improve in their performance. It also reduces

This article discusses the effect feedback has on an employee or subordinate, and evaluates the most appropriate way to deliver feedback. Negative feedback given in a positive manner can be very

During our performance reviews, feedback was solicited from many entities in which we directly worked with. These individuals commented on various areas of our work and how well we completed tasks. We typically had around 4 or 5 other coworkers or managers provide feedback in regards to our performance. However, I must admit that I was not privy to what the system was actually called back then until I recently began these courses in Human Resources Management. Hence, the 360 degree feedback system can save managers a lot more time to focus their attentions on greater developmental areas for employees when using this approach because more and more people participate in the feedback process. Another advantage of the 360 degree feedback system is that is promotes team development (Heathfield, 2018). Thereby, this process helps team members learn to work more cohesively and effectively together. Likewise, another advantage is that the 360 degree feedback system is one of the key methods in fully assisting in comprehending personal as well as organizational developmental needs for the organization. A huge advantage of this system is that it reduces discrimination (Heathfield,