Abstract

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.

Identifying the right strategy for a problem

 Adaptation can be used if conflicts arise due to decision making differences or there
are misunderstandings and stonewalling due to communication differences
 Structural Intervention can be used when the team is affected by emotional tensions
related to prejudice or fluency issues or there are inhibitions due to perceived status
differences.
 Managerial Intervention should be used early in a team’s life to set norms which can
help teams start out effectively.
Organizational culture and its types:
A key weapon in the war for talent in the 21st century is organizational culture. In the seller’s
market for highly skilled labour, culture as a key ‘value proposition’ for talented individuals
assessing potential employers. Goffee and Jones describe organizational culture as
‘communities’. The communities to which they refer are similar to those which exist in
everyday organizations.
Cultures are dynamic. They shift, constantly and incrementally, in response to external and
internal changes. So, trying to assess organizational culture is cumbersome by the reality that
you are trying to hit a moving target. But it also opens the possibility that culture change can
be managed as a continuous process rather than through big shifts. Likewise, it highlights the
idea that a stable “destination” may never — indeed should never — be reached. The culture
of the organization should always be learning and developing.
Goffee and Johns identified four main types of organizational culture based on two
dimensions:
 sociability
 solidarity

Sociability was defined as friendliness in relationships between people in an organization. It

means that actions are taken that favour others with no expectation of something in return.
Sociability is consistent with a high people orientation, high team orientation, and focus on
process rather than outcomes.

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.

How are teams integrated within an Organizational culture?

The four basic types of organization cultures tell us about the beliefs and ideologies of
organizations. The principles that drive the concept and idea of team management is imbibed
as an element in these cultures. Though studies show teams provide many positive effects to
an org but this belief does not always translate into real world scenarios. The common issues
that teams face are,
 Stagnated functions
 Non-productivity
 Hindrance to the ideals for which they were formed
These real cases have confused researchers and theorists. So what are the factors that lead these
theoretically efficient groups to fail? The first thing to consider before even the inception of a
team is to understand if the organization really needs a team or not. By understanding an
organization’s culture, we can actually answer some key question important for team building.
These questions can be Why does my organization need team management? What are the
issues/problems that introducing teams will resolve for me? Is there any specific goal that
the team needs to achieve? 1a
Another dimension to look at in order to understand the organization culture is to look at how
things are done when no one is looking. This tells us about how are problems handled in the
organization? How is a crisis handled? Is the atmosphere of crisis seeming to always be
present?1b These questions tell us about the toxic organizations. Introducing teams or any
other fix would be a short term solution to their problems.
As trivial as these questions may seem, an honest attempt to answer them may reveal whether
or not you and your organization can handle the challenges presented by implementing
management teams.
To make teamwork happen, these powerful actions must occur,1c
 Leaders set the clear expectations
 Model teamwork in their interaction with each other and the rest of the organization
 The organization members talk about and identify the value of a teamwork culture
 Teamwork is rewarded and recognized
 The performance management system places emphasis and value on teamwork
Leadership: The Final Ingredient on Organizational or Team Management
We have yet understood if the organization needs teams or not, we now need to look at how to
make these teams successful by giving them the proper direction. The traditional passive
“scholar in residence” approach to the profession and its attendant “Let them come to us”
posture toward patron populations has become an unwelcome and age old approach1d.
Functional leadership theory suggests that the leadership role is “to do, or get done, whatever
is not being adequately handled for group needs” (McGrath, 1962: 5). Put another way, the
leadership function in teams is that of “. . . leader as completer . . . the best a leader can do
is to observe which functions are not being performed by a segment of the group and
enable this part to accomplish them” (Schutz, 1961: 61). Thus, team leadership is
fundamentally oriented around the satisfaction of critical team needs. 1e
This lays great emphasis on the importance of correct leadership in teams but what are the
characteristics of a leader?
 Leaders are able to articulate and communicate their often-original ideas
 Leaders inspire, persuade motivate, and challenge people to achieve and get results
 Leaders are willing to take risks and can turn theirs and others mistakes, conflicts and
failures into learning opportunities and focus away from blame assignment
 Leaders know how to manage money and understand the language and concepts of their
financial world
 Leaders embrace diversity and conceptually move beyond the barriers of gender, race
and social class in their recruiting, mentoring and promotion policies
References:
Ref 1: http://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._1_No._3_December_2010/4.pdf
Ref 2: http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jbm/papers/ndbmr-volume-1/D.pdf
https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/57124/NguyenThanh_Tung.pdf

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