Discussing the importance of organizational culture in strategic management (25)

Solution by Anthany Tapiwa Mazikana

Many scholars hold various views concerning organizational culture as a backbone of an

organization in strategic management. Some propels that culture plays a pivotal role in an
organization. This write up intends to establish whether organizational culture is essential
particularly related to organizations such as Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, Telecel Zimbabwe, Net
One and Powertel pvt ltd in Telecommunication industry in Zimbabwe which have different
organizational culture. The author will mention other organizations but will mainly focus on
organizations which are in Telecommunication industry. Discussion shall be offered in a bid to
establish whether organizational culture plays an important role or not. However to put the
discussion in a proper context the writer is going to define the key terms organizational culture
and strategic management and highlight the importance of organizational culture.

Robbins (1986) defines organizational culture as a relatively uniform perception held of the
organization, which has common characteristics such as descriptive and it distinguish one
organization from another, integrates individuals, groups and organization systems variables.
Deal (1999) also defines organizational culture as values, beliefs, and behaviors that differentiate
one organization from another. Schein, (1999: 15) outlines the manifestations of culture as “the
way we do things around here, the rite and rituals of our company, the company climate, the
reward system, our basic values.

Organizational culture is a system of shared beliefs and values guiding behavior, Schermerhon
(2009:182). In Schein, (2004: 1) organizational culture is defined as a “dynamic phenomenon
that surrounds us at all times, being constantly enacted and created by our interactions with
others and shaped by leadership behavior, and a set of structures, routines, rules, and norms that
guide and constrain behavior”. Meanwhile David (2010) defines strategic management as the art
and science of formulating, implementing and evaluating cross functional decisions that enable
the organization to achieve its objectives. Kendall (2012) also noted that strategic management is
the process of administering a company such that it continuously formulates, adjusts and
implements its strategies. Every organization values its organizational culture for instant Econet
Wireless Zimbabwe values quality and their customers. This culture of giving value to customers
and quality enables Econet to formulate a good strategy which matches with their culture.

Organizational cultures are created, maintained, and transformed by people. An organizational

culture is in part, also created and maintained by the organization’s leaders. Organization
founders and leaders at the executive level are the principal source for the generation and
reinfusion of organizations ideology, articulation of core values and specific norms.
Organizational values express preferences for certain behaviors or outcomes. Organizational
norms express behaviors acceptable by others, and are culturally acceptable ways of pursuing
goals. Leaders also establish the parameters for formal lines of communication and the formal
interaction rules for the organization.

Organizations nowadays are now being challenged to be more accountable to their stakeholders
and not just their shareholders, and this has made organizations begin to examine the relationship
between management and their boards of directors. Moral simply stated “Is concerned with
social practices defining right and wrong” Beauchamp and Bowie (2004: 1). These practices of
right and wrong are transmitted within cultures and institutions from generation to generation.

Hartman, (1996) asserts that culture includes laws, rules and systems as well as language,
history, formal and informal practices, beliefs and rituals. Management of an organization should
build the right culture. Schein,(2004) has recommended five primary embedding mechanisms
which leaders can use as major tools to teach their organizations how to perceive, think, feel, and
behave, based on their own conscious and unconscious convictions. These primary mechanisms
include what leaders pay attention to, measure, and control on a regular basis, how leaders react
to critical incidents and organizational crises, how leaders allocate recourses, rewards and status,
deliberate role modeling, teaching and coaching and how leaders recruit and select.

Many organizations have different organizational cultures depending with the nature of an
organization. Some have a strong attitude towards training workforce, some value experience of
employees when recruiting than education level whilst others value the behavior of workers and
how people relate to each other. Chinhoyi University of Technology have got its culture of
ranking continuous learning, they consider the way people publish , the way people learn and it
is the way the organization operate and conduct business hence it is their culture of valuing
continuous learning.

Some organizations do not have a strong organizational culture due to the nature of their
business and how they conduct its business. Taking for instance GMB Zimbabwe, Net One ,
ZIMRA, ZINWA and Agribank these organizations are parastatals and they are controlled by
government . They tend to have political power struggles. Sometimes absenteeism is very high in
these organizations because they do not have strong organizational culture. Culture should exist
through training, morning briefs, storytelling, and giving employees task and objectives to
complete as a manager. Meanwhile effective execution of strategies is driven by organizational
strategies

There are three levels of culture as highlighted in the definition by Schein (2004) which the
author will expound below. Firstly artefacts is the most visible level of culture which contains
visible and audible behavior patterns, art, architecture, and output of the cultural group, overt
behavior and technology. Values reflect a group’s or person’s vision of what “ought” to be. Such
values are typically consciously perceived and can be articulated because they are part of the rule
system of the group. Values, thus, form a general behavior standard which gives security to
people within the group. Lastly basic assumptions contain invisible and unconscious assumptions
which steer behavioral patterns. They are non-confront able and non-debatable. The content of
these assumptions can be the beliefs about the nature of reality, time and space, of human nature
or of human relationships and so on.

Schein (2004) argued that culture is the sum total of all the shared, taken for granted assumptions
that a group has learned throughout its history. It is also the structure and control system to
generate behavioral standards. Schein (2004) further states that the strength and degree of
integration of a culture is a function of the stability of the group, the length of time the group
existed, the intensity of the group’s experience of learning, the mechanisms by which the
learning has taken place, that is, positive reinforcement or avoidance conditioning and the
strength and clarity of the assumptions held by the founders and leaders of the group.

The model by Schein (1985) shows the three levels diagrammatically.

Fig 1: The Components of Culture

Gordon (1987) says that there are different levels through which culture can be studied. The first
level being the visible artifacts; that is the constructed environment of organization, architecture,
technology, office lay out, manner of dress, visible and audible behavior patterns as well as
employee orientation. The second level is values and the third are basic assumptions.

More recently Pennington (2003:251) noted that culture refers to “the integrated patterns of
human behavior that describe how we do things right here.” These human patterns behavior
include thought, speech, and action. Taking for instance at Telecel Zimbabwe, employees speech
and actions should be in line with the company, they should act in accordance with the
organizational culture. Telecel do not tolerate absenteeism, so if an employee decides not to
come to work, this action will not be tolerated, as a result employees are always guided by
organizational culture.

Culture connects employees, customers as well as communities to the organization. This view is
supported by Deal and Kennedy (1982) who says culture refers to the way we do things around
here that communicates what we believe about people, performance and productivity. The way
Econet Wireless Zimbabwe operates enables the organization to connect with employees as well
as customers. The organization always seek to do things right. The organization conducts
workshops and incorporates innovation as a strategy to match with its culture. The organization’s
culture cannot be installed but guided by policies, practices, skills and procedures that are
implemented and reinforced. Groeschl and Doherty (2000: 12) illustrate the subject of culture
using the following diagram:

Fig 2: Culture Onion

Behavior

Values

Basic
Assumptions
Behavior represents the explicit culture whereas the intrinsic culture is represented by the values
and the basic assumptions. Culture is the shared philosophies, ideologies, values, assumptions,
beliefs, expectations, attitudes. All of these interrelated qualities reveal a group's agreement,
implicit or explicit, on how to approach decisions and problems, Kilmann et al (1986). This view
is supported by Cooper and Cartwright (1992) who noted that organizational culture refers to
symbols, values, ideologies and assumptions that operate in unconscious ways, to guide
individuals and business behaviors and serve to create organizational cohesiveness.

Organization culture directly influences the organizational member’s motivation, performance,

satisfaction and stress levels, Cooke and Szumal (1993). Culture, acting through institutionalized
belief systems and group norms, can be a very effective means of directing the behavior of
organizational members toward innovative activities, even though innovation is a highly
uncertain process. Organizational members are intentionally socialized into the assumptions and
belief systems of the culture where group norms help to shape the behavior of the group
members so that it is in accordance with the values and beliefs of the organization’s culture.
According to Strickland et al (2007) the company’s corporate culture is mirrored in the character
or personality of its work environment. This refers to those factors that underlie how the
company conducts business and how behaviors are held in high esteem. This can be reflected in
three levels discussed earlier (Schein 2004).

A different and contrasting approach to culture is offered by Pettigrew (1979). He does not
assume that the values in question are shared by all members of an organization. He focuses not
on the organization but on the group. He notes that when people work together they develop a
sense of what they are doing and why, of how they should relate to each, in short a system of
meanings. But he does not assume that cultures are necessarily positive, or integrative, or shared.
Culture is the system of such publicly and collectively accepted meanings operating for a given
group at a given time. Pettigrew (1979) sensibly objects to the assumption that cultures are
unitary, consensual and consistent. He argues that culture is a source of a family of concepts, all
of which have their use: symbol, language, ideology, ritual and belief.
 Organizational culture also known as "corporate culture" is a key aspect of organizations such as
Econet Wireless Zimbabwe and its work setting. The nature of organizational culture has a
strong impact on Econet Wireless Zimbabwe’s performance and the quality of work experiences
of its members. It has a major impact on the performance of organization, especially on the
quality of work life experienced by the employees. Econet strives to improve its customer care,
team spirit, being conservative and personality recognizable. Their culture has an impact on
performance of the organization. Sometimes the organization has to adopt a strategy which suits
their organizational culture so as to foster completion and meet changing needs of customers.

The diagram below shows main components of organizational culture in an organization.

Fig 3: Observable Culture

Stories

Tales about events

conveying core values

Rites and rituals Core Culture Heroes

-Celebration of heroes -Beliefs and other symbols -People (past

and events displaying conveying core values &present) who display
core values
core values
 Symbols

-Language and othe symbols

conveying core values

In the diagram above one can easily identify organizational culture with a bit of effort. The most
visible part is the observable culture which is shown in the stories, rituals, heroes and symbols
that are part of the everyday life of the organization. The deeper, below- surface part is the core
culture which consist of the values that influence the beliefs, attitudes and work practices among
organizational members, Schermerhon (2009; 184). Top management at an organization like
CaterQuip private ltd in Zimbabwe determine the culture of the organization through story
telling about events, conveying core values and annual meetings. Zimbabwe revenue authority
(ZIMRA) now has a strong culture on attitudes to the roles of employees in an organization for
instants when the company in 2004, the company mission was for tax and customs; there was
rampant corruption were closed door system was being used were each tax officer used to have
his own office where customers would visit him and pay payments in those offices and that
would result in bribery. The company later on adopted an open plan office which discourages
corruption. So the organization has changed the way they operate as a strategy where it has a
strong attitude toward the roles of employees at a workplace and a culture of team work to
enable transparency.

Single organizational culture exists through storytelling, training and morning briefs. Culture
consists of beliefs and behavior. It is cultivated behavior in the sense that it is learnt from the
other members of the society. As organizational culture is the totality of beliefs, customs,
traditions and values shared by the members of the organization, it stresses much on sharing of
norms and values that guide the organizational members' behavior. These norms and values are
clear guidelines as to how employees are to behave within the organization and their expected
code of conduct outside the organization.

Econet Wireless Zimbabwe private ltd is recognized by its culture. Whenever people name an
organization, the culture attached to the organization is immediately recalled the same as Econet
Zimbabwe. The organization is different from other organizations like Telecel Zimbabwe and
Net one organization which operate in the same line of business because of cultural values,
beliefs and norms. A comment on the CFI.co website by Econet management said: “We (CFI.co)
are recognizing a corporate culture of innovation that helps people find a more satisfying
lifestyle. Econet has introduced projects that enhance its relevance to communities. These
projects include the Energize the Chain, The Fisherman project, and the Green Kiosk concept,
programmes that target the improvement of health delivery, trade and empowerment in
communities. The Fishermen campaign is designed to transform fishing communities from
centres of small informal fish trade into small to medium businesses through the use of a cocktail
of Econet products and services, among them the solar lantern, mobile internet access and
EcoCash. Econet Wireless continues to focus on harnessing mobile technology innovation to
improve the livelihoods of the people it serves. The ways the organization operates enable the
organization to realize new opportunities and fight competition from rivals.

Organizational culture generates Commitment

Organization culture provides the members with a sense of organizational identity and generates
a commitment. Though ideas that become part of culture can come from anywhere within the
organization, an organization's culture generally beings with the leader who implements
particular ideas and values as a vision, philosophy or business strategy. When these ideas and
values lead to success, they become institutionalized and give shape to an organizational culture.

Nowadays organizations operate in a dynamic market and environment and organizational

culture should be altered to match strategies of an organization. An organizational culture always
succeeds where the top management of an organization encourages new ideas. This is a case for
Econet Wireless Zimbabwe which their top management encourages new ideas from the shop
flow workers. Sometimes they use participatory leadership style and whenever employees make
mistakes they do not punish them. This aid in generating commitment and provides members
with a sense of organizational identity.

Organizational Culture improves performance

HRmarketer (2005) states that, studies have shown that organizational culture has a direct impact
on other vital performance outcomes of any organization, including customer satisfaction and
business growth and the strong effects of organizational culture are consistent across a wide
spectrum of businesses and industries, from education institutions, churches, automotive sales
and service and fast-food retailing to home construction and computer manufacturing.
Organizational culture and its embedding contribute to better corporate performance.

Organizational culture affects employees and employees’ performance of the company.

Employees are one of the most important determinants and leading factors that determine the
success of an organization in a competitive environment. This is especially true for organizations
that rely heavily on their good behavioral employees to provide friendly and courteous service to
their customers in this competitive environment. For instance, Anthany and Palmer pvt ltd is
more than just coffee. They are in the people business. The success of the Anthany and Palmer is
depending on the people they hired, retain and develop.

Corporate culture is a significant determinant of organization behavior and performance, Deal

and Kennedy (1982). Denison (2000) also noted that corporate culture and cultural strength are
associated with superior performance. More specifically, firms with strong-culture are more
likely to retain the incumbent employees, have internally promoted managers, and reduce the
probability of default and hostile takeovers than weak-culture firms, Shinichi et al (2007).

Telecel Zimbabwe has a disciplined culture of having workers who are efficient. Pursuing a
strategy of high volume, low cost processes can only succeed within a disciplined culture where
the workforce operates in an efficient, repeatable production environment with a
mindset for continual cost improvement. This organizational culture works hand in hand
well with a strategy of pursuing a high volume low cost policy where the organization always
aim to produce, provide or supply whilst incurring lower cost for instants charging lower prices
for their products. This strategy enables the organization to fight stiff competition over rivals
such as Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, Net one and Tel One in the industry of telecommunications.
The culture of Telecel of cost improvement enables the organization to improve performance
through incurring less cost. The diagram below shows the model of organizational culture
impacting on organizational performance.

Fig4: The model of organizational culture impacting on organizational performance

Employee attitude and

behavior

Organizational
Organizational Culture Performance

Customer’s attitude and

behavior
As there are important factors that influence organizational performance, employee and
customer's attitude and behavior are impacted by organizational culture in some degree, as
shown in fig 4. The improvement of organizational culture identity can guarantee sufficient
exertion of enterprise common employee's enthusiasm and knowledge system. If it is enough to
pay attention to the staff, organizational culture will build a kind of positive working atmosphere,
mutual values and management mechanism for the staff. Thus, a suitable working environment
that encourages creation actively is produced.

The staff are motivated to establish uniform goal, as same as the goal of organization, and keep
pace with organization's goal while struggle individually, which will encourage the employee's
working enthusiasm greatly, improve work efficiency, and reduce trade cost inside enterprises
effectively. Organizational culture promotes the will that the staff take action in enterprise's
responsibility, make them pursue the completion of service for others actively and improve the
satisfaction of external interest’s relatives. Organizational culture promotes improves employee's
work skills in order to increase work productivity, thus improve the relative value of products.

On the other hand, customers demand not merely including satisfactory products, service and
solution; they also hope to buy a kind of product which is connected emotionally with a certain
product or trade mark of a company, or one kind of product or service which has the scheme of
solving the problem and reflect the brand identity concurrently. For that reason, it depends on
organizational culture in establishing customer's trust and loyalty further.

Organizational culture, on one hand, impresses customers with a good brand image; on the other
hand, lead administrators and staff pay close attention to customers much more, cooperate
together and work hard for the common goal, as well as observe customer demand voluntarily. It
makes administrators and staffs treat customers consistently, fairly and reasonably which
facilitate getting and keeping loyal customer even more. The customer brings direct economic
performance to organizations through purchasing products or service. Based on the above
analysis, organizational culture is an effective factor that determines whether the organization
can obtain outstanding performance or not, it is an effective factor that determines organization's
response and attitude to particular incident and external change of environment too.

Organizational culture can influence organizational performance through employees and

customers. The author who pays attention to practice regards culture pattern as goods, and binds
organizational performance with organizational culture. They make organizational culture come
to equally important status as institutional structure, tactics or control. Accordingly, enterprises
must attach importance to the operation revision and innovation of organizational culture, so as
to make organizational culture include the value orientation of enterprise staff and customer, and
really meet their demands in the course of execution. Only in this way, can we unite enterprise,
staff and customer, create ideal organizational performance and realize strategic objectives of
organizations successfully.

Bringing employees together

The organization culture brings all the employees on a common platform. The employees must
be treated equally and no one should feel neglected or left out at the workplace. It is essential for
the employees to adjust well in the organization culture for them to deliver their level best. The
work culture unites the employees who are otherwise from different back grounds,
families and have varied attitudes and mentalities. The culture gives the employees a sense
of unity at the workplace.

More over organizational culture enables employees to know their roles and duties very well.
Every employee is clear with his roles and responsibilities and strives hard to accomplish
the tasks within the desired time frame as per the set guidelines. Implementation of
policies is never a problem in organizations where people follow a set culture. The new
employees also try their level best to understand the work culture and make the
organization a better place to work.
It is the culture of the organization which extracts the best out of each team member. At Econet
Wireless Zimbabwe, they have a culture where management is very particular about the
reporting system, the employees however busy they are, they would send their reports by end of
the day. No one has to force anyone to work at Econet Wireless Zimbabwe. The culture develops
a habit in the individuals which makes them successful at the workplace.

Organizational Culture ensures good behavior of employees

Organizational culture gives rise to a positive attitude and behavior which are again an addition
to culture. Culture leads to good behavior and good behavior makes good culture which is useful
for better behavior. Both employees and the organization enjoy culture. Organizational culture
creates the boundary beyond which no employees are allowed to go. The attitude and behavior of
the employees are directed towards the achievement of goals through a sound culture.
Disciplined employees make other employees disciplined and well-behaved.

Getting corporate culture right is important, which is why organizations invest heavily in shaping
their cultures and influencing the behaviors of their workforces. Econet Wireless Zimbabwe
always maintains a culture of having workers with a working and team spirit. They always
develop and ensure good behavior of employees. This way of operation enables them to gain a
reputation because good behavior of employees sometimes is a competitive advantage over rivals
such as Telecel Zimbabwe, Net one and Tel one. This is so because well behaved employees
handle clients or customers well and customers favor an organization with well behaved
employees. Promoting a culture of good behavior on employees act as a good management
strategy to an organization as it enables it to fight competition as explained by the author above.

Organizational culture affects customers and clients

The organizational culture can impact on customers or companies clients. Organizational

culture can affects customers or clients’ attitude, behaviors and even choices. Any companies’
culture is connected very close with customers and clients of the company. From this point, the
service culture is important part of the whole organization. For example, if you decide to stay at
the Chinhoyi University Hotel, you will feel what an incredible experience is. Once you walk
onto the hotel, you cannot help but notice that every single person working there follows a
certain culture. The hotel may have a culture where every client or customer complain is
supposed to be handled with care or it may have a culture of valuing customers and treating them
as Kings. If each customer is treated well at an organization then customers would favor such an
organization. Meanwhile some organizations have a culture where the managing director handles
everything, even customer complaints and sometimes when handling them it depends with his
attitude and moods such that his responses affect customers of the organization.

Motivation

An organization activities success is in relation with its organizational culture. Culture is power
and social strength that motivates the organization or stops it. Important issue for strategists is
the conception of the fact that respected organization is a culture social system. Relation between
organization culture and strategies are determiners of its success, Oliver (2008). Organizational
culture acts as a motivator that guides and controls the employees. Satisfied employees get more
spirit and enthusiasm for performing their jobs.

Organizational culture emphasizes on regarding people as the centre, its core is to create
common values. Outstanding organizational culture means creating a kind of atmosphere that
everybody is paid attention to and respected. Excellent cultural atmosphere usually may produce
a kind of incentive mechanism which makes each member's contribution get other employees
and leader's appreciation and reward in time. By this way, encouraging the employees dare to
dedicate themselves, make unceasing progress and constant innovation in order to realize self-
value and the development of organization. In addition, the establish of organizational culture,
not only influence enterprise itself, but also have a certain impact on public, as well as domestic
and international enterprises, it forms a part of social culture while improving enterprise's
popularity, that is to say, organizational culture has enormous radiating function .
Econet Wireless Zimbabwe has a culture where every employee should respect each other. Every
employee is also allowed to take part in decision making and if each employee makes a wrong
decision, he or she will not be punished. This motivates workers and improves their performance
and decision making as they work towards attainment of organizational goals.

Efficiency and financial performance

Many authors noted that strong-culture firms have less debt than weak-culture firms. Zingales
(2000) argues that firms with larger organization capital suffer from higher costs of financial
distress, because the financial distress destroys organization capital. His argument suggests that
strong-culture firms are more eager to avoid the financial distress because they have greater
amount of organization capital than weak-culture firms.

As the possibility of financial distress depends not only on a firm’s performance but also on the
leverage, strong-culture firms should choose a lower debt ratio in their capital structure
decisions. In fact, Donaldson (1984) suggests that corporate managers like to be able to rely on
internally generated cash flow, rather than debt, to avoid the firm’s going out of business. We
conjecture that his observation is more likely to be observed in strong-culture firms.

Organizational Culture has an effect on knowledge sharing

As organizational culture consist of the shared values, beliefs, and practices of people in an
organization, beyond the mission statement and stated values lies a deeper level culture that is
embedded in the way people act, what they expect on each other and how they expect of each
other and how they interpret each other’s actions, McDermormott and O’Dell (2001). Culture is
rooted in core values and assumptions; it is taken for granted and is often hard to articulate.
Some aspects of organizational culture are confusing or even invisible to organization members.

Some organizations exhibit little awareness or realization of the value and benefit of possessed
knowledge to others. Hierarchical, position based status and formal power issues may also act as
inhibitors. In other organizations, a general lack of time and resources may affect the sharing of
knowledge, Riege (2005). Organizational culture influences knowledge related behavior as
cultures and particularly subcultures sub-cultures heavily influence what is perceived as useful,
important, or valid knowledge in an organization. Organizational culture meditates the
relationships among levels of knowledge that is it dictates what belongs to the organization and
what knowledge remains in control of individual employees; it determines who is expected to
control specific knowledge, who must share it and who can hoard it. Culture also creates a sub-
text for social interaction in that it represents the rules and practices that determine the
environment within which people communicate, that is cultural ground rules. Finally culture
shapes the creation and adoption of new knowledge in an organization, Delong and Fahey
(2004). Organizational culture and its related sub-cultures affect the level of collaboration within
an organization and collaboration is the key to successful knowledge sharing.

Shaping Organizational processes

According to Saffold (1998), firstly, culture can give a shape to the organizational processes
which again helps to create and modify culture. Secondly, it is likely that culture’s contributes to
performance is significantly less undemanding than many studies involve. Most of authors and
successful managers suggest that strong organization culture is very essential for business
because of three important functions. Firstly organizational culture is extremely fixed with the
social control that may cause to make influence on the employee’s decisions and behavior.
Secondly organizational culture works as social glue to bond the employees together and make
them feel a strong part of the corporate experience, which is useful to attract new staff and retain
the best performers.

According to Tichy (1982), organizational culture is known as “normative glue” means to hold
the overall organization together Lastly organizational culture is very useful to assist the sense
making process, helps the employees to understand the organizational events and objectives,
which enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the employees.

Strong culture has almost considered as a driven force to improve the performance of the
employees. It enhances self confidence and commitment of employees and reduces job stress and
improves the ethical behavior of the employees, Saffold, (1998). Further he states that mostly
studies on culture tend to emphasize on a single organizational culture. But in the Deal and
Kennedy’s (1982), point of view both strong and weak culture have a great impact on the
organizational behavior but in the strong culture, employee’s goals are side with the goal of
management and helpful to increase the overall organizational performance.

According to Barney (1991), organizational provide sustainable aggressive advantage. He

introduced three conditions; first, he suggests that culture must be viable, second the culture must
be rare and have attributes and third culture must be imperfectly imitable. These can provide
assistance to superior organizational performance that can be temporary or continue for long
term. Long term increase in organizational performance may cause to get the competitive
advantage under long run.

The standardizing function of organizational culture

Through establishing common value system, organizational culture forms unified thought, make
faith form a kind of tendency on the staff's psychological deep layer, and then a kind of response
mechanism reconstructed in the transformation. As long as there is an inducement signal from
outside, positive response will take place, and turn into the anticipated behavior rapidly. By
coordination and self-control, the collision of restrain to employees is weakened, the conflict of
autonomy psychology with the reality of being managed is relieved, which makes a unifying, and
harmonious organization from the top to the bottom.
The agglomerating function of organizational culture

Organizational culture is the group consciousness created by the staff together. It is a kind of
binder, unites the people of all respects and all levels around organizational culture, and makes
cohesiveness and centripetal force to organization. Organizational culture connects employee's
personal thoughts and feelings, and destiny with the safety of organization closely. At the same
time, employee has a sense of ownership and acceptance to the organization.

Influencing Quality management

The role that culture plays in influencing an organization’s level of quality management practices
has received much attention, Buch and Rivers, (2001). As Prajogo and McDermott (2005) found,
the studies that examined quality management as a single construct usually focused on the
cultural characteristics related to people and flexibility, and overlooked the potential effect of
cultural characteristics about control and standardization. Quality management is a
multidimensional construct which is composed of multiple quality practices, Kaynak (2003).

These quality practices have different functions and roles regarding continuous improvement.
For example, a typical quality practice – workforce management – is to use the entire capacity of
workers and to encourage employee commitment to organizational continuous improvement
efforts, Flynn (1995). Workforce management emphasizes the organizational and people side of
quality management and uses a variety of techniques to facilitate changes, such as employee
participation in decisions, employee recognition, teamwork, and the use of effective
communications to create an awareness of organizational goals (Kaynak, 2003).

Organizational culture may not be important in strategic management

However organizational culture may not be important in strategic management if an organization

does not cope up well with the dynamic environment and market. Some organizations always
alter their organizational culture to match with their new strategies. Now adays they tend to be
new competition, dynamic conditions in the environment and change of customer needs and
preferences. So if an organization does not alter their culture or their way of operating to cater
for new competition and change of customer preferences then organizational culture will not be
important in strategic management.

When Econet Wireless Zimbabwe brought new services and new products, the organization
always make sure that they change the way they operate. For instance the company introduced
(innovation) internet which now enables them to communicate globally. At first when a customer
had a challenge in accessing the company services, he had to call to the customer care were by
the organization representative would response later and address the challenges and this would
mean the organization would have many representatives in the building waiting for calls all the
day but when the organization introduced internet as a strategy of fostering competition, this
changed the way Econet used to operate. Now the company would require few workers which
would operate computers with internet and address challenges facing employees pertaining to
connection problems. So the point here is, when an organization alter or bring new strategies, it
also need to adjust organizational culture for us to recognize culture as an important aspect in
strategic management.

Proper culture facilitates efficient execution of strategies at an organization. When an

organization uses Conservative organizational culture where it always maintain its status and is
always resist change and there tend to be red tapes in their hierarchy, the organizational culture
will not match with strategies being adopted. Often remarkably resistant to change, culture can
present a major strength or weakness for an organization. It can be an underlying reason for
strengths or weaknesses in any of the major business functions, Brown (1995). If the
organizational culture is incompatible with its strategy, objectives will not be met. Before
changing the organization’s strategic direction, top management should be prepared to
reshape the organization culture to fit the new strategy. An organization which uses
conservative organizational culture like Net One which is a parastatal does not achieve its goals
and is always lagged behind. The organization is lagged behind and does not implement change
due to its culture and red tape.
A sometimes organization which does not change their culture loses its employees. Econet
Wireless Zimbabwe have been formed as a result of employees working in organizations like Tel
One who decided to form their company because of their culture of using red tape and taking a
long time to implement strategies. The culture of Tel One was failing to match with strategies
that were being proposed. This frustrates employees since there is no execution of strategies.

Most organizations will feel that a balance of two or more cultures would be appropriate for their
organization. Management consultants have tools for assessing appropriate organizational culture
and staff preferences in this regard, Fahey (2004). Different organizational cultures can be
successful, there is no optimum appropriateness and ‘fit’ are the keys, Fahey (2004).

Organizational culture interventions can be complex and time-consuming. However, it is clear

from company analyses that if successful companies fail to adapt their culture when the
environment changes, then they cease to be successful. Even without proactive intervention,
organizational culture changes over time as organizations grow and progress. When first
founded, an organization tends to revolve around its founder and his or her vision.

As the organization grows, activities need to be ‘departmentalized’ and organizational systems

established. Work is delegated to functional units. This often proves difficult for the founder or
first Chief Executive, either because they struggle with the loss of control or because they find
themselves ill equipped to deal with their new organizational role. Often these new systems
become inflexible, and other cultures break through to cope with a changing environment. Then
new systems of communication and coordination are introduced to bridge the various cultures
and structures. However, if a manager can recognize the different cultures involved in various
parts of the organization, then at least he or she will be able to understand the nature of the task
and the potential problems involved, instead of grappling in the dark with associated problems
and ‘solutions’.
Many organizations do not empower their employees and this demotivates them. Organizational
members should be empowered through celebration of a victory, pushing a decision to a lower
level, sharing the vision of excellence, creating a team mission and logo together, ignoring a rule
to get the job done, supporting a subordinate’s idea, publicly recognizing a group or personal
achievement and sharing organizational secrets and inside information. Van Tonder (2004, p
212) noted that an organization should implement changes such that an organizational culture
match with strategies being proposed at an organization.

Whistleblower Protection.

Most cult-like organizations or those with strong cultures that push the edge on indoctrinating
workers to the desired culture may create an atmosphere of fear and secrecy amongst workers to
ensure that no one tells the outside world about the harmful activities workers are subjected to
within the walls of the organization. This can be fear of retaliation through termination of
employment or other forms of formal or informal discipline. There are some organizations which
engage in unethical behavior, and this sometimes will be affecting some employees but due to
the organizational culture employees will not be able to disclose such behavior to the world.
When potential illegal practices are removed, we are still left with profiles of employees in
organizations that manipulate the employer-employee social contract to the benefit of the

organization and the detriment of the employee.

Oppressiveness of the organizational culture

As the organizational culture of an organization is not axiological neutral and is a reflection of

the power structure, it is oppressive as it realizes interests of some groups at the expense of
others. It defavoures people subjected to power and sanctions unjust order. Many critical
researchers generally agree with interpretive researchers in assuming that organizational culture
can be understood as a core metaphor, that is what organization is and not what it has. Such a
perspective makes culture problems fundamental for the functioning of the organization in all its
dimensions. Thus oppressiveness of culture is directly connected with repressiveness of the
organization.
Ideological character of cultural processes in a contemporary organization

Promoting indoctrination and manipulation, culture is a mechanism of exercising power. Owners

and managers, as well as employees, may not be aware of the injustice and repressive character
of the culture of contemporary organizations. Oppressive culture is assimilated, it is considered
to be natural, obvious, and thus impossible to change. Culture becomes ideology, it creates “false
consciousness” rationalizing, to those holding power and those subordinate to power, unjust
order as the only possible model. Its alternative could only be chaos and destruction.

“Symbolic violence” in organizations.

Contemporary organizational, managerial and consumerist culture has become the most
important tool of controlling and exercising power. The tool is very effective and dangerous as it
is often a tool in disguise and acting implicit, rather systemically than personally. It is not “naked
vidence” connected with physical repression, but subtle mechanisms of control and social self-
control, which, can be called “symbolic violence”. Language, value systems and norms,
organizational structures, communication networks are hierarchical and have control of minds in
the interest of the owners of financial, political, relational, or more generally cultural capital.
“Symbolic vidence” penetrated all aspects of organizing through culture which according to the
core metaphor is an organization.

Tough to Change

The corporate culture gives employees a sense of identity and belonging that encourages
participation in the company. A business does not stand still, however. When an owner decides
to make changes, it threatens employees’ identity. Some may see opportunity, but it is natural for
others to wonder what role they will have in the new situation. Others will fear a loss of status.
Facing these uncertainties, employees may resent and resist change. Some may even become
hostile.
Misalignment

The mission statement of an organization may not support the organizational culture. No matter
how glorious the words of a mission or vision statement, they cannot inspire employee action if
the corporate culture will not support it. The culture provides the means of translating mission
into action. Communication, relationships, interrelationships, empowerment, the sense that the
true values of the organization are aligned with mission; all these determine whether employees
can fulfill an owner’s vision for the small business.

Meanwhile there are some factors which are to be taken into consideration when considering
organizational culture in strategic management such as leadership. Schein (1992) argues that
leadership today is essentially the creation, the management, and at times the destruction and
reconstruction of culture. Schein (1992: 5) noted that, “the only thing of importance that leaders
do is create and manage culture” and “the unique talent of leaders is their ability to understand
and work within culture”. Leaders must be able to assess how well the culture is performing and
when and how it needs to be changed. Assessing and improving organizational culture as well as
determining when major cultural transformations are necessary is critical to long-term
organizational success. Managing differentiated cultures and creating synergies across these
cultures is also a critical leadership challenge. Effective culture management is also necessary to
ensure that major strategic and organizational changes will succeed. Basically, culture
management is a key leadership and management competence.
Conclusion

To sum up corporate culture is important in strategic management because it shapes what the
organization considers to be “right decisions”, what employees consider to be appropriate
behaviors and how they interact with each other within the organization, how individuals work in
groups and the organization as a whole deal with work assigned to them, the speed and
efficiency with which things get done, the organization’s capacity for and receptiveness to
change and the attitudes of outside stakeholders to the organization. Meanwhile there are
limitations of organization culture such as misalignment, it is tough to change the organizational
culture and employees may resist change. Meanwhile it is important for an organization to get
the right culture through workshops, training, incorporating innovation as this enables
organizations to foster competition, realize new opportunities and gain competitive advantages
over rivals. There must be a right mix of strategies and culture to enable business success and
elimination of culture lags and avoidance of performance risk hence i urge organizations to adopt
a culture which enables them to realize new strategies and they should keep on changing it as the
environment is dynamic.
References

Barney, J.B. (1991). Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage. Journal of
Management, 1 (17): 99-120

Beauchamp, Tom L./Bowie, Norman E. (Eds.) (2004): Ethical Theory and Business,
London: Pearson Education International.

Buch, K. and Rivers, D.(2001). TQM: The role of leadership and culture. Leadership &

Organizational Development Journal, 22(8): 365-371.

Brown, A. (1995). Organizational Culture 2nd ed. Pitman Publishing. pp.9, 33, 176.

Cooper, Cary L. and Cartwright, Susan (1992). Mergers and acquisitions: The human factor.

Oxford: Butterworth. Heineman.

Cooke, R.A, and Szumal, J. L. (1993). Measuring normative beliefs and shared behavioral
expectations in organizations: The reliability and validity of the organizational culture inventory.
Psychological Reports, 72(3), 1299-1330.

David, A (2010), Leading with cultural intelligence. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn,
2010 Business and Economics

Deal, T.E. and Kennedy, A.A. (1982), Corporate cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate
Life. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.

Deal, Terrence E, and Allan A. Kennedy. (1999). Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of
Corporate Life. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co

Delong, D. and Fahey, L. (2000), Diagnosing cultural barriers to knowledge management.

Academic of Management Executive, 14(4), 113-127

Denison, D. R.(2000). Organizational culture: Can it be a key lever for driving organizational
change. In S. Cartwright & C. Cooper (Eds.), The handbook of organizational culture. London:
John Wiley and Sons.

Donaldson, L. (1984). Strategy and structural adjustment to regain fit and performance: In
defense of contingency theory. Journal of Management Studies, 24, 1-24.

Fahey, L. (2004), Diagnosing cultural barriers to knowledge management. Academic of

Management Executive, 14(4), 113-127
Gordon G, DiTomaso N. (1987), Predicting corporate performance from organizational
culture. Journal of Management Studies, 29, 783-798.

Groeschl, S. and Doherty, L. (2000), Cross Cultural Management- An International Journal: Vol
7, Number 4 pg 12-17.

Hartman E (1996), Organizational Ethics and the Good Life. New York: Oxford University
Press.

HRmarketer.com (2005), Looking for ways to Boost your company’s Bottom-Line Results?
Research shows big impact of positive, PR Newswire.

Kaynak, H. (2003), The relationship between total quality management practices and their
effects on firm performance. Journal of Operations Management, 31: 1-31.

Kendall, Kenneth E and Kendall, Julie E (2012), Systems analysis and design. 8th Edition.
Prentice Hall

Kilmann (1986) Strategic Information Management: Challenges and Strategies in Managing

Information Systems. Routledge.

McDermott, R. and O’Dell, C. (2001). Overcoming cultural barriers to knowledge sharing.

Journal of Knowledge Management, 5(1), 76-85

Oliver F (2008), The structure and evaluation of the strategic management field: A content
analysis of 26 years of strategic management. Journal of Management and Accounting School,
2008, vol.7(8), pp. 12-22.
Pennington R (2003), Change perfomamnce to change the Culture: Industrial and Commercial
training journal: Vol 35 Number 6: page 251 to 255

Pettigrew T (1979), On understanding organizational culture, Academy of Management review,

University of Warwick

Prajogo, D.I., and McDermott, D.M (2005), The relationship between total quality management
practices and organizational culture. International Journal of Operations and Production
Management, 25(11): 1101-1122.

Riege, A. (2005). Three-dozen knowledge sharing barriers managers must consider. Journal of
Knowledge Management, 9(3), 18-35.

Robbins, S.P (1986), Organizational Behaviour: Cases, Concepts and Controversies. Prentice
Hall, New Delhi.

Saffold, G.S. (1998). Culture Traits, Strength, and Organizational Performance: Moving

beyond Strong Culture. The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 13, 546-558

Schein, Edgar H. (1999), Organizational Culture and Leadership; San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers.

Schein, Edgar H. (1992). Organizational Culture and Leadership; San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers.
Schein, E.H. (2004) 2nd edition, Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass Publishers.

Schermerhon , John R Jnr.(2009), Organizational Behavior, 7th edition. University of Phoenix,

Wiley.

Shinichi Hirota , Kubo Katsuyuki, Miyajima Hideaki (2007) Does Corporate Culture Matter?
An Empirical Study on Japanese Firms. The Research Institute Economy, Trade and Industry.

Strickland, A.J. 2003. Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases, 13th edition. New York:
McGraw-Hill.

Tichy, N. M. (1982). Managing Change Strategically: The Technical, Political, and Cultural

Keys; Organizational Dynamics (autumn), pp. 59-80.

Van Tonder, C. (2004). Exploring the origins of burnout among secondary educators. SA Journal
of Industrial Psychology, 35(1).

Zingales, L. (2000), “In Search of New Foundations,” Journal of Finance 55, pp. 1623-1653.