ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE - BLOG 09

IMPORTANCE OF AN ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

An organization's culture is an engraved set of principles that determine to a great extent, of how employees react to various situations. It has proven that when an organization doesn’t practice a good culture, eventually it will drag the business down. Schein (1990) emphasizes that there are visible and invisible levels of corporate culture. One of which leaders can control and others to which leaders must react. 

(Source: itagroup, 2017)

The organization's culture needs to change and adapt itself to the evolving needs of stakeholders. Developing and maintaining a high-performance culture is the most effective way to motivate employees and to make them carry out their goals in the most productive way. 

(Source: youtube, 2016)

Deal And Kennedy's Typology Of Corporate Culture

After examining hundreds of corporations and their business environments, Deal and Kennedy have come to a conclusion that many companies fall into four categories of organizational cultures. 

1. The Toughguy, macho culture

2. The work hard / play hard culture

3. The bet your company culture

4. The process culture

Peters And Waterman's Excellent Companies

A second view of the type of culture is based on interviews and background research by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman culminated in the book entitled In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's BestRun Companies.

Eight distinctive aspects of culture were identified as follows:

1. Bias for action

2. Closeness to the customer

3. Autonomy and entrepreneurship

4. Productivity through people

5. Strong value systems

6. Stick to the knitting

7. Simple organization structure

8. Decentralization authority

The Ouchi Framework

The success of Japan in the world market of the last decades led to the thought that elements of the Japanese approach to organizational culture might be successfully transferred to the United States. This way of looking at organizational cultures derives from William G. Ouchi ( Theory Z: How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge, 1981).

(Source: William G. Ouchi, Theory Z: How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge. Reading Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1981, p. 58. )

The Japanese management style is much more complex that Ouchi suggests. Pascale and Athos, delving more deeply into Japanese management, point to the Japanese way of establishing superordinate goals that tie the enterprise together.

Freedom, which manifests itself as autonomy, empowerment, and participation in decision-making (Isaksen & Ekvall, 2010; Martin, 2002) is one of the most common elements associated with an innovative culture. Organizational practices are learned through socialization at the workplace. Work environments reinforce culture on a daily basis by encouraging employees to exercise cultural values. Organizational culture is shaped by multiple factors, including the following:

• External environment
• Industry
• Size and nature of the organization’s workforce
• Technologies the organization uses
• The organization’s history and ownership

(Source: 4squareviews, 2012)

His theory is that different countries have different cultures or value-systems that be compared by looking at several dimensions along which these cultures can be said to reside. He started out with four different dimensions, and the theory has gradually grown to six of them.

 References :

Dawson, CS 2010, Leading Culture Change: What Every CEO Needs to Know, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, CA, USA. Available from: ProQuest ebrary.

Johnson, G. and Scholes, K. (2001) Exploring Public Sector Strategy. Essex: Pearson.

Schein, E. H. 2010, Jossey-Bass Business and Management: Organizational Culture and Leadership (4th Edition), Jossey-Bass, Hob