Organizational Culture




In simple terms the culture could be defined as “How we do things around here in the organization”. Organization culture is the sum of values & rituals which serve as ‘glue’ to integrate the members of the organization (Permin, 2016). Culture also includes the organization’s vision, values, norms, systems, symbols, language, assumptions, beliefs, and habits.

One of the most important building blocks for a highly successful organization and an extraordinary workplace is “organizational culture” (Rick, 2015). The most important thing about culture is that it’s the only sustainable point of difference for any organization. Anyone can copy a company’s strategy, but nobody can copy their culture, it is grown with the company and cannot be replicated exactly. 

Culture is driven by leadership. How leaders behave, what they say, and what they value drives culture. An organization's culture can ultimately determine its success or failure. A company filled with people working toward a common goal with an eye toward teamwork and respect will find it easier to achieve its goals. It is management's responsibility to promote positive organizational culture from the top down (Carabelli). In order to build a positive organizational culture, 


Openness
Transparency and openness is a good first step toward promoting a positive organization culture. An organization that operates in secret and keeps in employees in the dark will foster mistrust

Integrity

A company with honest dealings will have the respect of its employees. If a company engages in illicit or illegal activities, its employees will respond with mistrust and low morale, and ultimately may leave for a more scrupulous company

Delegation of Duties

A company with a positive culture properly delegates responsibilities among its employees. A company should recognize the strengths, weaknesses and talents of its staff. It utilizes this knowledge in assigning positions and responsibilities. If a company stretches its staff thin and has unrealistic expectations, morale will suffer.

Respect

One of the most important aspects of promoting a positive culture is respect. While a hierarchy certainly exists at any job, that doesn't mean that management should look down on or mistreat any employees.

At the same time when organizational culture does not align with the strategic goals of the company, optimal performance will be impossible to sustain. Just as a garden must be carefully tended to keep weeds from taking it over, culture must be consciously maintained to prevent it from morphing into something unintended (Rick, 2018). If top management manage culture poorly and the organization may experience massive setbacks with customer defections, high employee turnover and loss of brand and shareholder values, which will have costly effect across everywhere in the organization.

Corporate culture is an ongoing system of checks and balances that needs to be reinforced at all levels of the organizational and employee life cycle. New hires to the organization can be attracted by a strong corporate culture. However, motivation and job fit must match a desire to integrate into the culture. Unmotivated employees breed a negative culture with those around them and all that work can quickly disintegrate, so realizing what drives all employees from a motivational standpoint and matching that with work and thinking and behavioral preferences is a better, more holistic approach to hiring, training.


References

Miller M (no date), What Is Corporate Culture and How It Affects Performance, [On line] Available at <https://www.emergenetics.com/blog/corporate-culture-affect-performance> [Accessed on 28th July 2018]

Rick T (2015), Corporate Culture - Organizational Development, [On line] Available at <https://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/culture/organizational-culture> [Accessed on 29th July 2018]

Carabelli C (no date), Characteristics of Organizations With a Positive Culture, [On line] Available at <https://smallbusiness.chron.com/characteristics-organizations-positive-culture-52125.html> [Accessed on 28th July 2018]

Rick T (2018), The Costs of a misaligned organizational culture, [On line] Available at <https://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/culture/business-impact-of-a-weak-or-misaligned-organizational-culture/> [Accessed on 29th July 2018]


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Talent Hunt and Interviews

Talent Hunt In search of right people with right skills and attitude could be termed as Talent Hunt. This may yield the right and the expected results in terms of people. It was also said that “When you hire people who are smarter than you, you prove that you are smarter than they are”, so said Robert Henry Grant. There was a saying in recruitment perspective ‘people are your most important asset’ but is not always accurate, says Jim Collins. He claims that rather than “people”, it is the “right people” that make up the best asset of an organization.  Acquiring the best candidate for a job role can be strategic move in order to gain the competitive advantage for an organization. On the other hand, ineffective recruitment and selection can also result in enormous disruption, reduced productivity, interpersonal difficulties and interruptions to operations, customer service and long-term costs.  As it is clearly understood in today’s context, its par...
Read more

Organizational Change Management

Image
Change management is a systematic approach to dealing with the transition or transformation of an organization's goals, processes or technologies. The purpose of change management is to implement strategies for effecting change, controlling change and helping people to adapt to change. Change affects most important asset, the people in an organization. Losing employees is costly due to the associated recruitment costs and the time involved getting new employees up to speed. Each time an employee walks out the door, essential intimate knowledge of your business leaves with them. However, organisational change is a constant in organisations today and can be driven by a number of different forces, including customers, markets and technology. The consequences of not managing change effectively can be devastating and long lasting, so it’s important that people who undertake take the change understand the potential issues and equip themselves with techniques to support chang...
Read more

Conclusion

In today’s competitive world, the key to success in any business relies on customer satisfaction. As a result, servicing customer needs has become a priority for many organizations. However they have failed to act upon the satisfaction of the employees, who are the internal customers of the firm. Employers need to understand that a content and motivated employee has a higher probability of making significant contributions to the organization. Increasingly, successful organizations are realizing that they need to actually put their employees first — not their customers. When employee well-being is a top priority, it’s very likely that workers will be happy. And happy workers translate into happy customers — think service with a smile. As long as employees are engaged with the organization, they become committed towards the work they perform and they become assets to the organization. therefore, employers must do what ever possible to create engaged employees, engaged employee...
Read more