organizational culture

Examples of organizational culture in the following topics:

• Building Organizational Culture

  • Managers are tasked with both creating and communicating a consistent organizational culture.
  • Organizational culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with clients, and with stakeholders.
  • The process of ingraining culture into an organization is simply one of communicating and integrating a broad cultural framework throughout the organizational process.
  • While there are a variety of cultural perspectives and many organizational elements within a culture, the initial process of instilling culture is relatively consistent from a managerial perspective.
  • Describe strategies used by managers to create and maintain a consistent organizational culture.

• Core Culture

  • Core culture is the underlying value that defines organizational identity through observable culture.
  • Core and observable culture are two facets of the same organizational culture, with core culture being inward-facing and intrinsic and observable culture being more external and tangible (outward-facing).
  • One useful theoretical framework to consider when differentiating between core and observable culture is Edgar Schein's Organizational Culture Model.
  • Organizational culture, both observable and core, is created first at the managerial level.
  • Management is tasked with both the creation and consistent application of core culture at the organizational level.

• Types of Organizational Culture

  • While there is no single "type" of organizational culture, some common models provide a useful framework for managers.
  • Several methods have been used to classify organizational culture.
  • While there is no single "type" of organizational culture, and cultures can vary widely from one organization to the next, commonalities do exist, and some researchers have developed models to describe different indicators of organizational cultures.
  • We will briefly discuss the details of three influential models on organizational cultures.
  • With the rise of globalization, this is particularly relevant to organizational culture.

• Communicating Organizational Culture

  • Culture runs deeper than this definition, however, because culture also represents the embedded values, traditions, beliefs, and behaviors of a given group.
  • The role of the manager is essential to the successful communication of a given organizational culture because managers are figureheads and role models for how individuals in the organization should behave.
  • While it is too simplistic to say that culture is a top-down communicative process, there is relevance to the idea that culture generally begins with the founders of the organization and the values they emphasize in the organizational growth and hiring process.
  • With many diverse tools for communicating culture comes the challenge of aligning each perspective for consistency of message: for instance, the employee training program must emphasize the same values as the mission statement and must match the executive mandate for organizational structure and design.
  • Recognize the role of management in communicating and teaching organizational culture to employees and subordinates.

• Common Targets of Organizational Change

  • Change management can be implemented to change an organization's mission, strategy, structure, technology, or culture.
  • When an organization requires changes to address counterproductive aspects of organizational culture, the process can be daunting.
  • Prior to launching a cultural change initiative, a company should carry out a needs assessment to examine the existing organizational culture and operations.
  • A company must clearly identify the existing culture and then design a change process to implement the desired culture.
  • Change management should also make use of performance metrics including financial results, operational efficiency, leadership commitment, communication effectiveness, and the perceived need for change in order to design appropriate strategies that make the change in organizational culture as smooth and as efficient as possible.

• Defining Organizational Culture

  • Organizational culture can be defined as the collective behavior of people within an organization and the meanings behind their actions.
  • Schein's Cognitive Levels of Organizational Culture - Edgar Schein believes that culture can be viewed most simply via artifacts (e.g., facilities, dress code, etc.), more acutely through values (e.g., focus on quality, loyalty or other central values) and most complexly through tacit assumptions (i.e., unspoken rules of behavior and other intangible expectations that are very difficult to observe and measure).
  • Gerry Johnson's Cultural Web - This includes the elements of culture, which is an important aspect of how we define it.
  • Johnson underlines the paradigm, control system, organizational structure, power structure, symbols, stories, and myths as central determinants of what a given organizational culture stands for.
  • Even small things, such as the way an office space is set up, can set the tone for organizational culture.

• The Impact of Culture on an Organization

  • Big and strong organizational cultures will have a powerful tendency to continue moving in the direction they are already moving (momentum).
  • Understanding how to change an organizational culture requires some insight into what creates culture in the first place and how altering those components may impact meaningful cultural development.
  • Gerry Johnson's cultural web offers great clarity about how an organizational culture responds to and reflects influencing factors.
  • Identify areas in the organizational structure and control systems which require updates to conform with the new or adapted culture.
  • Managers, particularly upper management, must be aware of the implications of cultural change, the facets of organizational culture and the steps involved in altering it.

• Observable Culture

  • Culture includes many factors, such as:
  • It is also the pattern of such collective behaviors and assumptions that are taught to new organizational members as a way of perceiving, and even thinking and feeling.
  • Organizational culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with clients, and with stakeholders.
  • Observable culture simply refers to the parts of an organization's culture that can be observed, such as a symbolic CEO, a business policy, or even a product .
  • Recognize the way in which intrinsic organizational culture is transmitted into an observable, public face for organizational culture

• Defining Culture

  • Culture has evolved drastically as a term and a concept since inception.
  • With this evolution and malleability of culture as a modern idea in mind, it is important to explore the various aspects of culture in society today.
  • As culture is such a central component of human identity, the recognition of the role that culture plays in our daily lives is a critical context which we must be consistently aware:
  • As cultures continue to interact and cross paths with one another, understanding one another via culture minimizes cultural friction while maximizing on the potential synergies inherent in diversity.
  • Outline the various perspectives on the definition and aspects of culture.

• What is Organizational Behavior?

  • Organizational behavior also deals heavily in culture.
  • Company or corporate culture is difficult to define but is extremely relevant to how organizations behave.
  • A Wall Street stock-trading company, for example, will have a dramatically different work culture than an academic department at a university.
  • Understanding and defining these work cultures and the behavioral implications they embed organizationally is also a central topic in organizational behavior.
  • Diagram of Schein's organizational behavior model, which depicts the three central components of an organization's culture: artifacts (visual symbols such as office dress code), values (company goals and standards), and assumptions (implicit, unacknowledged standards or biases).