To Begin The Discussion Of Organizational Culture It Is

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.

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,

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.

The culture of an organization is as unique and diverse as the individuals are who live and work within it. In fact, the above definition of organizational culture provided by Schein (1985a) suggests an image of a living, breathing and influential force engaged in a series of reciprocal interactions with its members. Furthermore, the culture of an organization does not simply appear but is one that is constructed and developed over a period of time. For example, Stackman, Pinder and Conner (2000) describe organizational culture as being comprised of a system of layering or as a “deep construct.” The idea being that the culture of an organization is similar to the skin of an onion encompassing layers of values, beliefs, assumptions,

Organizational culture can be defined as a system of shared beliefs and values that develops within an organization and guides the behavior of its members. It includes routine behaviors, norms, dominant values, and a feeling or climate conveyed. The purpose and function of this culture is to help foster internal integration, bring staff members from all levels of the organization much closer together, and enhance their performance.

Lussier and Achua define culture as, “the aggregate of beliefs, norms, attitudes, values, assumptions, and ways of doings things that is shared by members of an organization and taught to new members.” (p. 358). The culture of an organization can take time to develop and once it has been cemented it can be difficult to change. Organizations can change their culture from within or bring in new leadership to change their culture. Leaders can shape the culture of their organization by either substantive or symbolic leadership styles. This essay will distinguish between symbolic and substantive leadership actions that can be used to shape an organization’s culture.

Organizations develop a culture through many different ways. As an organization ages, evolves, and grows, this culture may change, or even become divided. Understanding the nuances of the culture of an organization is difficult. Leaders of organizations must be able to not only understand, but also influence the culture of their organization. Leaders are responsible for steering the organization, and generally aim to impress their way of thinking, feeling, and behaving onto followers. At first thought, it would seem leaders do this with personal power, or what Edgar Schein (2010) describes as charisma, “that mysterious ability to capture the subordinates’ attention and to communicate major assumptions and values in a vivid and clear

Whilst there are many definitions of organisational culture, within this context, culture generally refers to the organisational values communicated through norms, artifacts, and observed behavioural patterns (Schein, 1992). It is the interplay between ** that , such as the *** Seel (2000, p.3) defined organisational culture “as the emergent results of the continuing negotiations about values, meanings and properties between the members of that organisation and its environment”.

Developing a culture within an organization is very important. The culture of the workplace can control the way employers behave amongst each other, customers, and those outside of the organization. Every organization has its very own unique style or working that often contributes to its culture. The values, beliefs, and principles of an organization helps form its culture. Having a healthy culture is very important and encourages the employers to become motivated and loyal to the company and management. Having a healthy culture can also promote competition. Employers within a company love to be recognized for all their hard work and be shown that they are appreciated by their supervisors. For everything to flow accordingly, there must be set guidelines, rules, and regulations for the employers to work accordingly. These rules and regulations are put in place to help guide the employers in the right direction, and to be clear that everyone knows their role in the organization. It is imperative that employers know how to accomplish tasks and goals in the beginning.

In order to create an effective dialogue about organizational culture and its facets, so that learning and change can later be implement if necessary, culture must first be defined in some appreciable means. For the purpose of this analysis, organizational culture will refer to “a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations” (Robbins & Judge, 1993).

Organizational Culture exists in every firm, thereby placing a significant impact on the motivational factors of employees. It is communicated through perception using values, artifacts, and the assumption of how things in are done in an organization (Daft & Marcic, 2010). In fact, every firm has its exceptional personality known as culture. The organizational culture presents guidelines and boundaries for the employees’ behavior in a firm, which influences the organizational outcome. It helps the members of the organization to have a common goal of accomplishing the firm’s objectives. Organizational cultures have a substantial influence on the capability to execute the strategy and accomplish the firms’ objectives. Therefore, organizational employees are more inclined to accept change when the firm’s culture is aligned with the goals and objectives of an organization.

Organizational culture can be defined as ‘a pattern of shared basic assumptions learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaption and internal integration, which has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems’ (Schein 2010, p18). Having great organisational culture is not achievable in just one turn. Implementations of certain factors are required in order to attain an effective corporate culture. Factors that determine a company’s culture are: the vision of the organisation being understood by the staff, the decisions made by the managers and whether or not they reflect the values taught, and whether or not the perceptions, values and beliefs are being role modelled by managers on all levels. Through the discussion of how organisational cultures are established and maintained, its impact, the difference between strong and weak corporate cultures, how it affects the performance of managers as well as employees, and the process of changing an organisational culture, the importance of managers needing to have a thorough understanding of the culture, will become evident. Hofstede’s theory of dimensions, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Kotter’s theory of change, will support this.

The term organizational culture is related to the study and understanding of the dynamics involved at a personal as well as a group level in work settings. The term also deals with the nature of the work as well (Kudisch et al. 1995). There are several factors that come into play when people interact in works. Understanding organizational culture is becoming increasingly important since the work is becoming a global village and people with diverse background and culture have to interact and work effectively in any work.

Low-Context culture is the new concept for organizational studies that critically examine the outside as well as inside venture culture with more pragmatic ways. It is an elements and distinguishing feature of culture. Historically speaking, this new term is not so much new for 21st century. It is term that has used first time by the most famous anthropologist named as Edward T. Hall. This low-context culture has been using for deepest study of culture as a whole. This cultural term, is more familiar with intentional behavior can observed by producers of culture in reality. (Borelli & Lenzerini, 2012)

Several methods have been used to classify organizational culture. While there is no single “type” of organizational culture and organizational cultures vary widely from one organization to the next, commonalities do exist and some researchers have developed models to describe different organizational cultures. Some are described below: