ORNISATIONAL CULTURE

Introduction
“Being a great place to work is the difference between being a
good company and a great company”
-Brian Kristofek, President and CEO, Upshot

People often think of culture simply as something that anthropologists

study when they visit exotic places and analyze the native’s people behavior.
What does culture have to do with the realities of life in an organisation ?Until
someone has worked for a couple of different organisations one cannot learn
the enormous difference culture makes . (Harris & Hartman, 2006)
After understanding that each and every organisation has a different and
unique culture organisational culture can be defined as the outcome of an
organisation’s experiences, philosophy, as well as the values that guide
member behaviour. The culture of an organization is expressed by performance
of the employees. Culture is based on shared attitudes, believes, customs, and
written and unwritten rules that have been developed over time and considered
valid.

The practices, principles, policies and values of an organisation form its

culture. The culture of an organisation decides the way employees behave
amongst themselves as well as the people outside the organisation. Handy in
1985 popularised four organisational types, which link culture and the
structure of the organisation.

Power Culture: This type of culture has a central force or power

controlling the whole system like a web. The center of the web is known as
power-center from where the power radiates. In this type of culture faster
decision are possible, though the quality of the decision can be questioned.

Role Culture: This culture is based on defined jobs, rules, procedures

etc. This culture is dependent on logic and rationality and its strength lies in
the functions and specialists. This type of culture gives clarity to the
individuals about what is expected of them, but on the other hand, they also
might discourage creativity.
 Task Culture: This culture is team or project oriented. This culture
mainly focus on problem-solving by pooling the required resources and people
from various part of the firm on a temporary basis.

Person Culture: Here an individual acts the power source. The

organisation here is the supporting element. Person culture can be found when
individuals are required to exercise talents, skills or abilities that can not be
transferred easily to others. (Parikh & Gupta, 2010)

An ideal organizational culture should be the one in which

 The organization’s goals are established and reviewed periodically

through the participation of all individuals and group in the organization.
 Decisions are made collaboratively by the people who must live with the
decision.
 Behavior is supportive of the organization’s goals and purposes.
 The organization should be supportive of the needs of individual
employees.
 Individuals and groups need to be respectful to each other.
 Superiors and subordinates are expected to have high level of trust and
confidence for each other.
 Cooperation and teamwork should exist at all levels in one organization.
 Methods of reinforcement used are primarily rewards and participation.
 Employees should be cost conscious.
 Information needs to go to right places.
 Downward and upward communications are accepted with an open
mind.
 Changes are initiated to improve performance and goal attainment.
 Changes should be received and accepted openly.
 Individuals should feel pride for themselves and their employer.
 The time individuals spend performing tasks is related to the
contributions of the tasks toward the achievement of the organization’s
goals.
 Individuals are motivated through enjoyment from achieving the
organization’s goals.
 Conflict is not seen as a destructive force but as a potentially
constructive activity.
 An organization where risks are necessary, endangered individuals and
groups are given support.
 An ideal organisational culture may seem unrealistic at the first place and
in many situations it probably is. A management’s role is to as much of the
mentioned points as is possible. The mission is to build an ideal organizational
structure first. Then the mission statement should be decided and declared.
The mission statement should include the products or services the company is
offering, the target audience, the stakeholders, the responsibilities and goals of
the organization. (Harris & Hartman, 2006)

Having understood what organisational culture now we will be

discussing about its impact on employees performance, behaviour, and
motivation:

In 1984 Denison scrutinized the characteristics of organisational culture

and tracked the performance using the data from 34 American firms over a
period of five years. As per Reichers and Schneider (1990), stated that culture
researchers have committed various studies to the definitions of culture,
relatively few researchers have been contributed in culture and performance
research. Only reason for doing this was the complexity in operational concept
of the culture construct. Kotter and Heskett in 1992 stated the relationship
between long-term organisational performance and economic performance
across more than 200 organisations. (Shahzad et al., 2012)

These studies claim that organisational culture is strongly attached to

performance of employees.
The figure describe the percentage difference between the net income of firms
with performance enhancing culture and without performance enhancing
culture, which proves the effect of culture on the increase in net income of the
organizations within given study period.

In an effective organizational culture, employees share the organization’s

values and beliefs (Schein, 2010). When employees share the organization’s
value, they can perform better to achieve the organization’s objectives (Denison,
1990). Study findings in the area of organizational culture showed that effective
organizational culture includes shared values and common purpose to create a
sense of teamwork in the organization (Flamholtz & Randle, 2011). Members of
the organization use an effective organizational culture to develop teamwork
and knowledge sharing culture (Wiewiora, Murphy, Trigunarsyah, & Brown,
2014). Schein (2010) indicated that managers with an effect organizational
culture encourage teamwork to improve performance in the organization.
Teamwork is an essential factor to achieve common organizational objectives.
In an effective organizational culture, business managers and employees work
together to improve performance and productivity in the organization
(Childress, 2013). Eaton and Kilby (2015) noted that effective organizational
culture is important to motivate and retain competent employees in the
organization. (Tedla, 2016)

Most of us think of organisational culture as this nebulous, squishy

reality that we hope is as healthy as we’d like it to be. From time to time
disturbing behaviors and situations crop up, and we deal with them. Some
companies treat these like a whack-a-mole game rather than undertake a
careful examination of root cause. There are three consistent stumbling blocks
that prevent leaders from grabbing the bull by the horns and managing their
culture before it manages them. (Lund, 2018)
There are some
Conclusion