The concept of organizational culture.

‘The establishment of authority relationships with provision for co-

ordination between them, both vertically and horizontally in the
enterprise structure.”….that is how Koontz and O’Donnell define an
organisation. What distinguishes organizations from them is the
preoccupation with performance and the need for control.
Organisations on their own do not have goals only the people in them
and because often at times the individuals goal may differ from the
collective purpose of the organisation This creates a central practical
and theoretical problem in the design and study of organizations
called the organizational dilemma, arising from the inconsistency
between individual goals [e.g. self-esteem, pride, status, money, etc.]
and the collective purpose of the organization [increased share
income, reputation, investment, large product range etc.].
This then hep in creating the culture as the values and practises of
both individuals and the collective at large reflect in conduct and the
organisational culture is defined. Hofstede defines culture as the
"collective programming of the mind which distinguishes one
category of people from another", being entirely learned and specific
to the group. Thus, we refer to [for example] an "absence culture" as
those norms of absence and attendance which typify a certain group,
in some groups it is normal not to take time off work unless one is
severely ill whereas in other groups it would be the norm to take time
off for very minor ailments.
Organizational culture includes an organization’s expectations,
experiences, philosophy, and values that hold it together, and is
expressed in its self-image, inner workings, interactions with the
outside world, and future expectations. Catholic university will be a
good as example as both the institution and its students believe in
providing holistic education Christian education in its teaching. This
is seen through the programmed Thursday Mass and prayer before
lectures.
Business leaders are vital to the creation and communication of their
workplace culture. However, the relationship between leadership and
culture is not one-sided. While leaders are the principal architects of
culture, an established culture influences what kind of leadership is
possible (Schein, 2010).
Leaders must appreciate their role in maintaining or evolving an
organization’s culture. A deeply embedded and established culture
illustrates how people should behave, which can help employees
achieve their goals. This behavioural framework, in turn, ensures
higher job satisfaction when an employee feels a leader is helping him
or her complete a goal (Tsai, 2011). From this perspective,
organizational culture, leadership, and job satisfaction are all
inextricably linked.
It is based on shared attitudes, beliefs, customs, and written and
unwritten rules that have been developed over time and are considered
valid as seen with the management of L.L. Bean which takes care of
the team by having regular one-on-one meetings with employees to
discuss career development and offering regular classes and
workshops. Their “Bean’s Best” program praises teammates who go
the extra mile with an annual celebration, and teammates
acknowledge one another through peer recognition programs. This
has resulted in a low 3% turnover rate for the company.
These shared values have a strong influence on the people in the
organization and dictate how they dress, act, and perform their jobs. It
has been shown that workgroups which are high producers are not
always those who are the happiest and that some very satisfied groups
have low work rate norms. Where individuals break the norms [by
"rate busting" or by doing too little], they may be ostracised their
workmates
Every organization develops and maintains a unique culture, which
provides guidelines and boundaries for the behaviour of the members
of the organization.
Organizational culture includes-
The ways the organization conducts its business, treats its employees,
customers, and the wider community, L.L. Bean’s dedication to
customers through offerings like lifetime warranties and free shipping
is reflected in its internal culture. The 103-year-old retail company
with a focus on outdoor apparel has a low turnover rate of just 3%,
and employees enjoy perks like discounted gym memberships,
employee discounts, paid time off for volunteering and even college
tuition reimbursement.
The extent to which freedom is allowed in decision making,
developing new ideas, and personal expression, as head of
communications at DogVacay Rachael King says “Our office culture
is all about creativity and collaboration, and our open floor plan and
fun decor provide a pleasing and comfortable workspace for our
teams to work together. DogVacay’s employees come from all
different backgrounds, which contributes to our unique and open
office culture, but we all have one important thing in common: our
love of dogs!”
How power and information flow through its hierarchy, Adobe
company is popular for this value as the manager says “What really
sets Adobe apart, though, is how it values communication across the
company between departments. Regular team events, like a speed
networking event, encourage employees to get to know one another.
Adobe not only encourages creativity and communication, it rewards
and provides outlets for them.”
How committed employees are towards collective objectives. Adobe
also has the culture as Adobe offers perks like discounted gym
memberships and tuition reimbursement, plus paid sabbatical and
subsidies for commuters. Employees even receive patents for their
ideas and are awarded bonuses for those creations at an annual
banquet. Product releases are celebrated with events and recognition
for the teammates responsible with rewards like bonuses and swag.
According to Harrison and Handy, the following four typologies of
culture can be identified:
Power culture: in this organisation power is held by just a few
individuals whose influence spreads throughout the organization.
There are few rules and regulations in a power culture examples of
such firms are Enron, Lehman Brothers and RBS.
Role culture: Organizations with a role culture are based on rules.
They are highly controlled, with everyone in the organization
knowing what their roles and responsibilities are. Power in a role
culture is determined by a person’s position (role) in the
organizational structure. Role cultures are built on detailed
organizational structures that are typically tall (not flat) with a long
chain of command examples would be insurance and banks.
Task culture: teams in an organization are formed to address specific
problems or progress projects. The task is the important thing, so
power within the team will often shift depending on the mix of the
team members and the status of the problem or project. For example,
construction companies.
Person culture: individuals very much see themselves as unique and
superior to the organization. The organization simply exists in order
for people to work.
Characteristics of organizational culture are;
Innovation (Risk Orientation).
Attention to Detail (Precision Orientation).
Emphasis on Outcome (Achievement Orientation).
Emphasis on People (Fairness Orientation).
Teamwork (Collaboration Orientation).
Aggressiveness (Competitive Orientation).
Stability (Rule Orientation).
Effectiveness of organisational culture on performance of an
organisation
An organization’s culture can either be strong or weak depending on
the degree of alignment of the organization’s value and employee’s
response to stimuli because of their alignment with it (Olivier, 2009).
Strong cultures are being the organisations values and beliefs are
widely shared with significant influence on people’s behaviour with
respect to their job (John, 2006). It encompasses the ability to
influence and motivate organizational members to act in an approved
manner in the organization, and also an agreement on the part of
members, regarding the importance of the organizational values
(Schein, 2004). Zappos has become almost as well known for its
culture as it is for the shoes that it sells online It starts with a cultural
fit interview, which carries half the weight of whether the candidate is
hired. New employees are offered $2,000 to quit after the first week
of training if they decide the job isn’t for them. Ten core values are
instilled in every team member. Employee raises come from workers
who pass skills tests and exhibit increased capability, not from office
politics. Portions of the budget are dedicated to employee team
building and culture promotion. This promotes the culture and happy
employees, which ultimately leads to happy customers.
Weak cultures are organisations were there is lack of motivation by
the members of the organization, and it encompasses little or
no strategy-implementing assistance since there are no traditions,
beliefs, values, common bonds, or behavioural norms that
management can use to motivate to execute the chosen strategy (John
2006). Famous for ripping off independent artists and contributing to
the fast fashion culture of waste, Forever 21 is not favourable place to
work. They’ve been sued by their own employees multiple times and
their CEO has a measly 30 percent approval rating. They also don’t
provide adequate benefits and reportedly force employees to stay in
the stores through their lunch breaks and long after their shifts end
which has resulted in unhappy workers and a high turnover rate.
Culture is a boundary-defining role; that is, it creates distinctions
between one organization and another. How an organisations defines
its culture will impact the customers and employees it attracts leaders
should then focus on creating the type of company that they would
like to work at — and that they think people would like to work at
with them — and be clear about what that is. Amazon has thrived
because of the boundary it has set employees use terms like
“bruising,” “relentless,” and “churn and burn” to describe their
experiences there but Amazon is one of the most successful
companies in the world as some employees actually love that fast-
paced, brutal environment. “Most of the existing rhetoric on culture
says all companies should have managers who are nice and friendly
and treat their employees like family,” Denise Lee Yohn of Amazon
writes in Quartz. “The common notion is that every workplace should
be nurturing, encouraging, and inclusive. That’s simply wrong.”
The flipside of this mechanism is whenever there isn’t any team
chemistry in a business, then things can get pretty toxic pretty
quickly. It’s no surprise, therefore, that one of the things you get in
the wrong kind of corporate culture is poor internal communication
which creates an unhappy working environment leading to high
employee turnover which can affect productivity.
Secondly, culture conveys a sense of identity for organization
members. Peter Ashworth explains that your organizational culture
“defines for you and for all others, how your organization does
business, how your organization interacts with one another and how
the team interacts with the outside world, specifically your customers,
employees, partners, suppliers, media and all other stakeholders.” In
other words, your organizational culture will reverberate across all
aspects of your business because it represents the way you do
business. It’s simultaneously your identity and your image, which
means it determines how your people and customers perceive you.
Catholic university has proved this to be true as part of employers are
brothers and sisters from the domain who help the values of the
denomination overflow into its educational system.
Due to this reason the leaders should thoroughly ensure that culture
is enhanced in the planning phase as the negative image of the
company automatically results in the negative image of the leaders
too.
Culture enhances the stability of the social system. Culture is the
social glue that helps hold the organization together by providing
appropriate standards for what employees should say and do. This is
the reason why Zappos hires for culture first, treats employees to a
three-day culture camp training event, and regularly features
employee contributors in a culture series for its blog. the company is
so focused on culture that it has its own culture book, which has
hundreds of unedited testimonials from employees and is updated
every year- when you get the company culture right, great customer
service and a great brand will happen on its own.
However, the disadvantage of this culture is that the employees
take this friendly environment very lightly and they start waste their
time in talking more than doing their jobs.
Culture serves as a sense-making and control mechanism that guides
and shapes the attitudes and behaviour of employees. The role of
culture in influencing employee behaviour appears to be increasingly
important in today’s workplace as organizations have widened spans
of control, flattened structures introduced, teams reduced
formalization and empowered employees. The shared meaning
provided by a strong culture ensures that everyone is pointed in the
same direction.
A successful organizational culture brings together the people at your
company and keeps them aligned. When your culture is clear,
different perspectives can gather behind it with common purpose. The
culture at your organization sets expectations for how people behave
and work together, and how well they function as a team. Warby
Parker has made company culture deliberate by creating a dedicated
team tasked with coming up with events and programs to promote
community. Great company culture doesn’t happen on its own.
When putting people together it will be of paramount importance
that people who engage positively are put together as otherwise
pairing may results in unhealthy tense working environment which
can destroy the firm’s atmosphere.
The overview is the relationship of the organization and the
stakeholder with each other is called organization culture. The stake
holders include employees, suppliers, customers, government and the
community. The way in which organization treats with its
stakeholders and in response to that treatment the behaviour of the
stakeholders generates the culture of the organization. For culture to
be effective leaders should make sure that they plan on how work
should be conducted and control the organisational culture when the
image of the firm could be tainted.
Culture has long been regarded as essential to organizational
effectiveness (Schein, 1992). According to Alicia (2002);
Organizations with a strong culture create clear and coherent values
and expect members to care and agree with those values, even if core
values emphasize dissent and creativity (Flynn & Chatman, 2001).
Chatman (2002) is of the opinion that organizations attain strategic
advantages through strong cultures. For example, Southwest Airlines’
has better performance than its competitors, over a period of time, due
to its strong culture of focusing on keeping costs low and customers
happy.
However, Denison (1990) postulated a model that highlights the four
key traits of organizational culture, which includes; mission,
consistency, involvement, adaptability. Denison’s research has
demonstrated that effective organizations have high culture scores in
all four traits. Thus, effective organizations are likely to have cultures
that are adaptive, yet highly consistent and predictable, and that foster
high involvement, but do so within the context of a shared sense of
mission.
References
Jostle Corporation, S. 2009-2020. [Online]. [Accessed 10 June 2020].
Available from: www.jostle.me
Essays. November 2018. Advantages And Disadvantages Of
Organization Culture Business Essay. [online]. Available from:
https://www.ukessays.com/essays/business/advantages-and-
disadvantages-of-organization-culture-business-essay.php?vref=1
[Accessed 10 June 2020].
The Disadvantages of Corporate Culture By Nicky LaMarco
Updated November 27, 2018
August 6, 2015 11 min read Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur
contributors are their own.
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