Professional Documents
Culture Documents
GOD Mid Term Report
GOD Mid Term Report
GOD Mid Term Report
Organization culture has great importance in the way that organizations operate these days.
The culture directs the way in which certain policies and practices are implemented in the firms.
Culture represents the basic beliefs that the firm has invented, discovered or developed in
response to cope with the problems of external adaptation and internal integrating. This review
focuses on various aspects of organizational culture and how it integrates with teams. It also
focuses on what teamwork is? And how can we define job satisfaction. The review moves on
to talk about culture and its impact on team effectiveness. There are three keywords that define
team effectiveness, input, process and output. All of these are talked about in detail in the
review. When there are multiple teams in huge organizations, it can also lead to certain conflicts
like time zone difference, language different etc. These conflicts and challenges are also talked
about in detail. To solve these conflicts certain strategies are listed and how the right solution
be chosen is also identified. Organizational culture can have varied types. All these types are
based on two dimensions, sociability and solidarity. Lastly the review talks about How are
teams integrated within an Organizational culture and the importance of leadership in teams.
Also, stated are various characteristics of efficient leaders.
What is Organizational culture?
Organizational Culture is a series of basic underlying assumptions and deeply held beliefs shared
by all members of the group that operate at preconscious levels and drive in important ways the
demeanour of individuals in the organizational context.
It is one of the main topics and focus of the management of how to improve the organizational
culture. There are three keywords which define the team effectiveness:
Organizational culture (acts as the input)
Teamwork (acts as the process)
Job satisfaction (acts as the output)
Organizational learning is an important aspect of organizational culture and with that thought
leaders can pass through their insights and create learning opportunities for subordinates to
improve organizational learning. Culture in an organization like the character in a human being.
The individuals’ behaviour in in direct alignment with the culture of his/her workplace.
Organizational model of firm performance focused on organizational factors such as human
resources policies, organizational culture, and organizational climate and leadership styles.
Another study by Chien (2004) found that there were five major factors determining
organizational performance, namely:
Leadership styles and environment
Organizational culture
Job design
Model of motive
Human resource policies
Organizational culture and competitive intensity in addition to organizational innovativeness are
used in the current study. (ref.1)
Set of characteristics that an organization values:
Individual creativity, Risk, Leadership, Integration, Management support, Control,
Identity, Bonus, Communication pattern, Compromise with conflict phenomenon.
There is a direct impact of organizational culture on teamwork and job satisfaction
What is teamwork?
Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task
in the most effective and efficient way. Teamwork is very crucial to experience and embrace few
stated things:
Teamwork motivates unity in the workplace
It provides improved efficiency and productivity
Gives great learning opportunities
Encourages workplace synergy
Teamwork offers differing perspectives and feedback
There are five teams that every organization should have for better co-ordination of the dedicated
tasks, and they are:
Leadership team
Stimulus team
Health and safety team
Welfare of employees
Communication and culture team
Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction has two different aspects; one is the environmental factors like supervision,
salary, interpersonal relationships, working conditions; another is the motivating factors for the
job like importance of achievement, responsibility and growth.
Importance of job satisfaction:
For the purpose of employee satisfaction many theories have been developed. The most
important theory is Maslow’s need theory. It is based on human hierarchical needs. On the other
hand, job satisfaction relates to significant conventional views, which are formulated via
Mausner and Herzberg (1959). Maslow’s theory is based on fundamental and external element
such as accomplishment, acknowledgment, duty, pay, plan, interpersonal interaction,
management, and operational atmosphere. (Ref.2)
The experience of job satisfaction is not only important for the individual functioning but also
for organizational functioning which refers specifically to performance, efficiency, absenteeism,
staff turnover and organizational citizenship behaviour.
Culture and its impact on team effectiveness
Dr Geert Hofstede’s research on Comparative Cultures shows that there are 5 measurable
cultural dimensions, each with 2 distinct orientations:
Individualism dimension; Individual and Group orientation: The focus of this
dimension is on the question regarding whether people prefer being left alone to look
after themselves or prefer to work in a group (‘I-help-you, You-help-me’ attitude)
Power distance dimension; Hierarchical and Participative orientation: This
explains the extent to which members who are less powerful in a society accept that the
distribution of power takes place unequally. Participative cultures work to build
consensus among team members. A Hierarchical corporate culture is an
organizational model based on clearly defined corporate levels and structures
Certainty Dimension; Certainty and Ambiguity Tolerance orientation: This
describes the extent to which people in society are not at ease with ambiguity and
uncertainty. Some people want more information before deciding, while others are
comfortable with less or unstructured information
Achievement dimension; Achievement and Quality of life orientation: It is the
degree to which we care for Goal achievement or caring for others. For example, in
cultures with higher quality of Life, you may find longer maternal/paternal leaves,
which may cause global teams to be dissatisfied as they may feel that they are working
more.
Time dimension: The extent to which members are willing to adapt to reach a desirable
future. The short-term orientation focusses on profits while the Long-Term orientation
focusses on Market share.
Some Potential conflict areas in a multi-cultural/Global setting:
Meetings, especially who sits where and the timing of making decisions I.E whether
decisions are taken before the meeting or after it.
Time Zone differences: If the group members are spread over larger time differences,
the potential for conflict is higher.
Language differences: 2 group members may not know a common language to
communicate with each other, as they stay in different areas.
Decision making norms: Cultures differ enormously when it comes to decision
making and how much information is required beforehand. For e.g. American managers
prefer to work with less information while a Korean Manager would generally require
a lot of information.
Strategies to resolve Multi-cultural conflicts and improve effectiveness:
Adaptation: Adaptation will work perfectly if members are willing to accept their
cultural differences and be responsible for resolving them. It is generally the best
approach in a diversity issue.
Managerial intervention: The manager should actively participate to resolve the
challenges that crop up, rather than leaving it to the employers themselves.
Structural intervention: Reorganization of groups to place people in groups in which
they are comfortable to reduce interpersonal disharmony.
The manager should track human interactions without being too intrusive to identify
potential differences that may crop up.
Technical jargons should be avoided to prevent miscommunication.
Solidarity measures the task orientation. High solidarity means that people can work well
together toward common goals, even when they have personal disputes or conflicts and vice
versa for low.
According to this classification scheme four types of organizational cultures can be identified:
communal culture;
networked culture;
mercenary culture, and
fragmented culture
A communal culture can give its members a sense of belonging and is also task-driven.
Leaders of this culture are usually very inspirational and charismatic. The negative side is that
they often have too much influence and members are rarely vocal.
In a networked culture members are as friends and family who have close contacts and care
about each other. They are willing to help each other and share information. The negative side
is that they are so close and kind to each other that they are reluctant to criticize the poor
performance.
A mercenary culture focuses on strict goals. The goals should be met and the job done quickly.
Everyone focuses on goals and objectivity. The negative side is that those with poor
performance may be treated inhumanely.
In a fragmented culture the sense of belonging to and identification with the organization is
usually very weak. The individualists constitute the organizations, and their commitment is
given first to individual members and task work. The negative side is that there is a lack of
cooperation.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6666162_Managing_Multicultural_Teams
1a, 1b, 1d The Role of Organizational Culture in Effective Team Development; Jack G.
Montgomery Jr. Western Kentucky University, jack.montgomery@wku.edu
1e Leadership in Teams: A Functional Approach to Understanding Leadership Structures and
Processes Frederick P. Morgeson Michigan State University D. Scott DeRue University of
Michigan Elizabeth P. Karam Michigan State University: Leadership in Teams
1f https://www.thebalancecareers.com/how-to-build-a-teamwork-culture-1918509
Other references
The effect of organizational culture, teamwork and organizational development on
organizational commitment: the mediating role of human capital Masoud Ghorbanhosseini