Understanding Organisational Culture

Culture can be defined as “a set of basic tacit assumptions about how the world is and ought to be that a group of people share and that determines their perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and, to some degree, their overt behaviour” (Schein, 1996). Organizational culture is depend on differences in norms and shared values which are learned in workplace and to direct behaviour of members in the particular organisation. (Cabrera, Cabrera& Barajas 2001) Organisational culture was built on its shared beliefs and values which was the guidance to solve problems.

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,

Once completing the quiz “What’s the Right Organisational Culture for Me?”(Robbins, DeCenzo, Coulter & Woods, p. 46), I found that my personal score of 24 placed me in this more humanistic style of organisational culture. According to Robbins et al (2016, p. 46), scores more than 22 “indicate a preference for informal, humanistic, flexible and innovative cultures”. The quiz itself looked into the seven main pinpoint of organisational culture; “innovation and risk-taking, attention to detail, outcome orientation, people orientation, aggressiveness and stability.” I think that organisational culture is integral to the businesses productivity because of its ability to reflect communal shared values, principles, traditions, and practices that influence the way an organisation’s employees and other members conduct themselves.

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

There are many definitions of organisational culture available in the literature, many of which are based on the fact that culture consists of values, beliefs, and assumptions shared by the majority of members of an organisation. These characteristics and shared views are then translated into common and repeated patterns of behaviour. Although it is difficult to come up with a single definition that would cover

Within the field of management, the success and failure of the modern business organisation has been largely depicted by the intricate concept of culture. Organisational culture, a concept borrowed from borrowed mostly from anthropology typically is defined as a complex set of values, beliefs, assumptions and symbols that define the way in which an organisation conducts and manages its business (Barney 1986). Management is not just an act of change, but the responsibility for and control of a company or similar organisation (Willmott 1983). It is the management of organisational culture that merely drives the

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.

These values have a strong influence on employee behavior as well as organizational performance. In fact, the term organizational culture was made popular in the 1980s when Peters and Waterman’s best-selling book In Search of Excellence made the argument that company success could be attributed to an organizational culture that was decisive, customer oriented, empowering, and people oriented. Since then, organizational culture has become the subject of numerous research studies, books, and articles. However, organizational culture is still a relatively

Organisation Culture as there are many ways in which you can define the subject my interpretation of it is that it is structure of shared meaning which is held by members that differentiate the organisation from other organisations. Culture has its origin in the organisational interaction.

The culture of an organization sets the tone for any work environment. Human resources and organizational culture works best together when an organization realizes if a potential employee is the best fit for the organization’s culture. However, the prospective employee must understand and realize if they are the best fit for the organization’s culture. Organizational culture relies on practices of the organization and how it affects the employee; it is the environment of the workplace. “Leaders first create culture when they create groups and organizations; once culture exists, they determine the criteria for leadership roles and from there, will determine who is capable of being leaders” (Schein, 2004, p. 311). Business professor, David

Organisational culture has been widely researched over the years because of the important benefits that arise from a strong culture in aiding organisations to succeed and grow. Understanding how to ‘build, maintain or modify an organisation 's culture ' (McAleese, D & Hargie, O. 2004 p.155) is essential to achieving a competitive advantage as organisations can have a direct influence on attitudes and behaviours of the employees within an organisation. (Robbins, Millett, Cacioppe & Waters-Marsh, 2001)

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

The culture of an organisation can be seen as a set of core characteristics that are collectively valued by all members of that organisation; and, corporate culture is believed to be a key element in the success of any organisation (Visagie et al. 2002). Schein (2004) emphasises that organisational cultures provide group members with a way of giving meaning to their daily lives, setting guidelines and rules for how to behave and most important, reducing and containing the anxiety of dealing with an unpredictable and uncertain environment. The aim of this paper is to provide a clear demonstration of appropriate theoretical frameworks in relation to corporate culture; with the concentration on analysing its positive and negative influences

The organizational culture plays a big part in defining the competitive positive of the organization in its environment, and play a crucial role in shaping behavior in the organization and the way in which an organization is perceived by external stakeholders.The culture of an organization has a strong influence on new organization tackles problems and questions, sets strategy and creates the structures that determine the work activities and relationship of organization members and also on new members behave when carrying out their

Social scientists and researchers delved into the idea of organisational culture as an important component of organisational theory in the past. Brown (1998) identified four different sources of organisational culture which stems from climate research, national cultures, human resources management, and from conviction approaches.