Functions of Organizational Culture

8 Key excerpts on "Functions of Organizational Culture"

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  eBook - ePub

  Multigenerational Communication in Organizations

  Insights from the Workplace

  • Michael G. Strawser, Stephanie A. Smith, Bridget Rubenking(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  ...5 Perspectives on Organizational Culture The remainder of the volume hinges on this chapter as the foundational component of the workplace. Organizational culture will be defined and presented within a historical context; then the authors will reflect on their findings and connect these findings to previous literature. 5.1 Defining Organizational Culture 2020 arguably changed many personal and professional elements of the workplace. For one, suddenly, more than ever before, organizations were under attack for their values or lack thereof. As organizations learned to pivot, downsize, re-establish values, and communicate with various stakeholders, society at large was not the only group experiencing change. Organizations were under a cultural attack in many ways and were forced to reconsider all elements of the business, which collectively contribute to an organization’s culture. Organizational culture is a saturated area of study in management, business, and communication industries. Therefore, the definition of organizational culture can be complex and varied. Typically, organizational culture is defined as a set of values, beliefs, assumptions, and symbols that define the way in which a firm conducts its business (Deal & Kennedy, 1982). Organizational culture is important because it identifies the relevant employees, customers, suppliers, and competitors and defines how an organization will interact with these parties. Organizational culture has been correlated with competitive advantage (Barney, 1986), leadership (Schein, 2010), recruitment (Braddy, Meade, & Kroustalis, 2006), retention (Sheridan, 1992), and unethical behavior (Umphress, Bingham, & Mitchell, 2010), to name a few. Organizational culture helps us understand exactly how organizations accomplish goals and fulfill their missions and purposes (Sanchez, 2011)...

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  Organizational Behaviour

  • Paul Smith, Marilyn Farmer, Wendy Yellowley(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  ...New recruits to an organization have to ‘learn’ the ways of behaving and must partially accept this or leave. Culture is sometimes seen as something that binds people together – for example, ‘organizational culture can be thought of as glue that holds an organization together through a sharing of patterns of meaning. The culture focuses on the values, beliefs, and expectations that members come to share’ (Siehl and Martin 1984, cited in Butler and Rose 2011: 353). Culture has a vital role to play in organizations, as it moulds and shapes the way that people behave, both internally and with the external environment, which includes customers and stakeholders. Yet culture is difficult to explain because it is rather like jelly – it is moulded and set, but it is a struggle to grasp it. Another complication with the concept is that organizations do not employ people to become automatons and all act the same, but they do expect employees to conform. In summary, culture is a vehicle through which an organization's identity emerges in terms of what it stands for, how employees should behave and what it believes in. Another way to think about organization culture has been put forward by Schein (1992, cited in Knights and Willmott 2007), in the form of an iceberg, which has only a relatively small part of its total mass visible above the water. Using this metaphor, some elements of culture can be seen and are easily accessible...

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  Organizational Climate and Culture

  An Introduction to Theory, Research, and Practice

  • Mark G. Ehrhart, Benjamin Schneider, William H. Macey(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  ...Scholars have offered a variety of explanations for this attribute of culture, with some emphasizing the decreased cognitive load that results from employees having shared understandings of how things work and function (e.g., Krefting & Frost, 1985), and others emphasizing that order and rules help employees cope with their insecurities and uncertainties (e.g., Trice & Beyer, 1993). In either case, a function of culture is to clarify what is expected of employees and what is considered appropriate as employees go about their daily work lives (O’Reilly & Chat-man, 1996). In fact, some culture researchers have made rules a primary focus of their definitions of culture, distinguishing between formal and informal rules, and describing how even though individuals create rules, they also come to be viewed as independent structures in the organization (Helms Mills & Mills, 2000). Organizational culture has breadth. As noted by Schein (2010), “Culture is pervasive and influences all aspects of how an organization deals with its primary task, its various environments, and its internal operations” (p. 17). This characteristic is particularly crucial for those who view organizations as cultures, as that perspective implies that all of organizational life can be included in cultural studies. Of course, the downside to being overly inclusive is that the concept can become an ambiguous catchall, lacking clarity in its definition. As described by Alvesson (2002), “Culture is … a tricky concept as it is easily used to cover everything and consequently nothing” (p. 3). Readers will recall a similar issue being raised in our discussion of macro-organizational climate. There we noted that prior to a focused climate approach (“climate for something”), generic or macro climate research contained dimensions of climate particular to each researcher’s interpretation. Organizational culture is a source of collective identity and commitment...

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  Introduction to Human Resource Management

  A Guide to HR in Practice

  • Charles Leatherbarrow, Janet Fletcher(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • CIPD - Kogan Page

    (Publisher)

  ...These seven characteristics: innovation and risk taking, attention to detail, outcome orientation, people orientation, team orientation, aggressiveness and stability, when taken together, define how employees perceive the organisation. Each characteristic may be more or less dominant in different organisations, so defining the perceived prevailing culture. Lorsch and Tierney (2002) suggest that the true nature of an organisation’s culture is what its members do when they are not being observed. Why study organisational culture? By studying an organisation’s culture, it enables HR practitioners, managers and consultants to understand why people in organisations behave as they do. Attempts can then be made to change an overtly negative culture to make it more conducive to the achievement of section, department and overall organisational objectives. Moorhead and Griffin (1992) consider that organisational culture probably exerts the greatest influence on individual behaviour when the culture is taken for granted. One of the major reasons that organisational culture is such a powerful influence on employees is that it is not explicit. Instead, it is an implicit { meaning it is not plainly expressed } part of the employees’ values and beliefs. According to Greenberg (2013, p370): ‘It would be reasonable to think of organisations as unique because of the various cultural forces that shaped them. Indeed, culture plays several important roles in organisations.’ Greenberg (ibid) suggests that culture: provides a sense of identity; generates commitment to an organisation; clarifies and reinforces standards of behaviour. Zhang and Iles (2017, cited in Rees and Smith, 2017) point out the difficulties of offering a silver-bullet approach { meaning – the best/most appropriate method } by suggesting the type of culture that should be adopted to best deliver corporate goals...

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  The Strategic CIO

  Changing the Dynamics of the Business Enterprise

  • Philip Weinzimer(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Auerbach Publications

    (Publisher)

  ...IT organizations, as a whole, have DNA that drives their culture and associated behavior. Left unchanged, IT organizations will develop a set of characteristics and behaviors that form the basis of how they perform and interact with other company personnel. What is organizational culture? John Kotter, the Harvard professor and chief innovation officer, is a well-regarded thought leader on the subject of leadership and change. In a Forbes article, Kotter writes, “Culture consists of group norms of behavior and the underlying shared values that help keep those norms in place.” 2 The culture of an organization impacts the way employees are treated, customers are treated, and business is conducted and a host of other behaviors. The culture of an organization also affects the productivity of the workforce: how people work together creating new products, how personnel communicate, and how personnel work together in teams. Stated in simple terms, organizational culture is cultivated from the behaviors personnel exhibit as they perform their jobs. Many times, the founders define organizational culture. Walt Disney, Microsoft, and Wal-Mart are good examples of this. Other times, market conditions force companies to make changes to products, the roles personnel perform, and the processes used by personnel in their daily work activities. Sometimes, entire organization units are consolidated or eliminated. Look at the auto industry. The major competitors in the United States have completely changed how automobiles are manufactured, their relationships with supply partners, and their focus on the customer. General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford have completely reshaped their organizations. They even changed the way personnel work together. In today’s global marketplace, you can be guaranteed that complacency will not help your competitive position. Regardless of the cause, companies in today’s environment recognize their focus must encompass customer needs and value-based experiences...

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  The WorldatWork Handbook of Compensation, Benefits and Total Rewards

  A Comprehensive Guide for HR Professionals

  • (Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  ...Culture is a major resource for determining what the employees expect and what the organization is willing and able to provide in all of the total rewards elements. As we delve into this important topic, remember that culture establishes the expectations and norms of behavior that employees have formed and value. These expectations and norms of behavior ultimately impact the success or failure of the total rewards strategy. DEFINING CULTURE Culture is an elusive concept for many organizations and its leaders. It seems that everyone has his or her own definition of this concept. Steven McShane and Mary Ann Von Glinow in Organizational Behavior provide a comprehensive definition of organizational culture: It is the basic pattern of shared assumptions, values and beliefs governing the way employees within an organization think about and act on problems and opportunities … It (culture) defines what is important and unimportant in the company. You might think of it as the organization’s DNA—invisible to the naked eye, yet a powerful template that shapes what happens in the workplace. The definition helps frame the importance of culture. We often cannot see or sometimes totally describe all of the aspects of culture. Many of us take a simplistic approach and describe culture “as the way things are done around here.” To help answer the burning question of “What is Culture?” Figure 24.1 identifies elements and behavioral aspects that we often attach to culture. These attributes help us understand how culture dramatically impacts an organization. Values are at the top of the list in Figure 24.1 because it is easy for an organization to publish values that do not necessarily represent the culture. Espoused values are those publicly announced values that were mentioned in the introduction. The real values are harder to define and must be shared by all members of the organization. A good example of a shared value is to place a high value on learning...

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  Inside the BBC and CNN

  Managing Media Organisations

  • Lucy Küng-Shankleman(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  ...Research by Kotter and Heskett (1992) concluded that it could have a significant impact on long-term economic performance. Firms with cultures that emphasised key constituency groups – customers, shareholders, employees – and leadership from all levels, outperformed by a large margin companies that did not display these characteristics. Indeed, culture became the starting place for strategy: strategy must be a natural expression of the potential latent in a culture. Because corporate cultures are unique, the products inspired by a culture can be original and incomparable to the offerings of competitors. Hence, a competitive strategy should begin with the culture of the organisation. (Hampden-Turner, 1990: 253) Schein's concept of culture Culture is to the organisation what character is to the individual. (Schein, 1992: 196) Culture is normally imprecisely defined – typically as an emergent pattern of shared beliefs, norms and values, unique to the organisation concerned. In contrast, Schein 5 offers a definition that is both comprehensive and precise, and therefore suitable as a basis for empirical research. For Schein, culture is: a pattern of shared basic assumptions that a group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore is taught to new members of the group as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems. (Schein, ibid.: 12) Culture is essentially, therefore, nothing more than the accumulated learning shared by a set of members of an organisation. This learning has been acquired as the group deals with the challenges posed by the environment and by the organisation as it develops and matures. In the course of this problem-solving process a number of precepts emerge which repeatedly prove themselves effective...

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  The Complete Guide to Knowledge Management

  A Strategic Plan to Leverage Your Company's Intellectual Capital

  • Edna Pasher, Tuvya Ronen(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  ...Values hold a central position in organizational culture. They reflect the person’s or the organization’s sets of beliefs and assumptions about the external and internal environment. They also serve as the basis of the norms that underlie behavior. These norms, and many of the behaviors associated with them, reflect the organization’s values. This is why it is so important to address values in managing knowledge—they relate to both norms and beliefs. They reflect backward, since changing values can change beliefs, and forward, by affecting norms of behavior. Knowledge management involves instilling certain kinds of values in the organization. These values have at their core a high appreciation and respect for individual knowledge, as well as a commitment toward fostering knowledge interactions through mutual trust. An organizational culture that promotes knowledge management is founded on the perception that everyone stands to gain by sharing and creating knowledge. It is a win-win culture, in which both individuals and the organization benefit. Fostering this kind of culture requires that organizations invest in their knowledge workers (as we discuss in detail in Chapter 5) and that their workers commit to the organization’s goals. In this chapter, we elaborate on the development of the shared values that promote knowledge management. Some of the values, such as trust, respect for the knowledge worker rather than hierarchical command and control, and moral identification with the organization’s goals, are universal knowledge management values. This means that no matter the size or type of organization, successful knowledge management requires an organizational culture that is founded on these values. However, the organization also needs to customize its organiza­tional culture and values to promote knowledge management in light of its particular characteristics and history. Obviously, by definition, we cannot dictate what these customized values should be...

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