So in order to understand better what the organizational culture is, it is important to define culture. For that we take as reference the presentation of Monica Arango and Sara Saldarriaga and the quote they referenced from Alfred Louis Kroeber and Clyde Kluckholn: “Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values. Culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning elements of future action”.
Now having clear the general idea we could specify on national cultures and how they divide themselves into regional cultures that affect and determine the style of living of people, the structure of the economy… and the way those behaviors, beliefs, attitudes and values are passed on to future generations. But the idea is to define the organizational culture so we will move on. However, it is important to highlight first that cultures influence each other in all directions. For example, regional behaviors play a role in the national culture but some values from that culture finally have influenced the regional one.
So the organizational culture has been defined by L. Hill, and Gareth R. Jones as Monica and Sara showed as: “the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.”
In that way we realize that culture is essential in the organizational level in order to build better relationships with the people we interact and establish some patterns that will make that interaction easier.
In a way that organizational culture can come naturally and implicit like in the families, but sometimes it is more difficult and it needs to be more explicit like for example in big corporations. A company has diverse workers and they come from different backgrounds, which can make complicated find naturally one culture for all of them and finally it makes harder to have a nice working environment. In that way, all business should create an organizational culture taking the best features of their workers and launching a framework of the values, the attitudes they want for their company. They got to let their workers know how it operates and what are they perusing.
And as Monica and Sara mentioned an explicit organizational culture can bring advantages as a control for shaping the behavior, reinforcement of values, identity and commitment to the organization.
To conclude we can say that the organizational culture engages the people at their work and helps them do their best and it translates in happy costumers, more efficiency and many other positive things.
Question: What can do companies in order to take full advantage of the organizational culture?
If companies want to succeed in the application of their organizational culture and have better results with it they should see it as a strategy and find the right leaders to pass it and sustain it in the organization.
As any strategy they must consider each level and each person of the company in the implementation process, it is relevant to make clear that there is a good reason to have an organizational culture and let them know they are considered in the creation of it and even how their values and qualities inspired it.
The right leaders should be selected and in the way values are a core element in the culture, they should implement a values-based leadership. Values affect our behavior and determine our choices as Heather Getha-Taylor mentions in her article “Managing the “New Normalcy” with Values-Based Leadership: Lessons from Admiral James Loy”. Mrs. Getha-Taylor also mentions that once the leader identifies and works on those values they are able to pass on an internal responsibility and commitment that allows each worker to perform its job independently and properly.
That is important since each company needs a common goal and a general commitment of the workers, but finally as individuals they need independence in certain activities.
As if was commented before related cultures influence each other, and the organizational culture can consider some sort of subcultures as the competitive culture, the learning culture, the bureaucratic culture and the participative one, mentioned by Mr. Fard, Mr. Rostamy and Mr. Taghiloo in their article “How Types of Organisational Cultures Contribute in Shaping Learning Organisations”.
Knowing this type of subcultures, what wants to be achieve with them can help the companies to structure way better its organizational culture and take more advantage of it.
They should consider for example, what kind of practices they want to use in order to gain more team work and loyalty through participative culture, or the regulations and centralization systems that held their bureaucratic culture.
Another aspect to have into account is the capability of that organizational culture to adapt itself to the different persons and the changing environment. It needs to be fix and flexible along the way. That is it keeps its essence but is able to develop new values in order to improve and be more adequate to the current needs.
Finally the right application of the organizational culture reflects on the work environment and the image of the company in the way it shapes people, so it would turn out into more competiveness, efficiency and better results.
References:
1. Saldarriaga, S. & Arango, M. 2009. Presentation "Organizations: national and organizational culture" part of the subject Organizations and Cultures.
2. Getha-Tylor, H. 2009. Managing the “New Normalcy” with Values-Based Leadership: Lessons from Admiral James Loy. Public Administartion Review, 69 (2): 200 - 206
3. Fard, H.D, & Rostamy, A.A.A., & Taghiloo, H. 2009. Singapore Managment Review, 31 (1): 49 - 61
