Nature And Functions Of Organizational Culture Management Essay

Culture is a term originated from anthropology which points to the fundamental values, beliefs, ethics and the way of doing things in a particular community which differentiates it from the others. Culture is mightily subjective and it reverberate the meanings and reasoning that we usually attribute to solutions , the understanding and the method of finding a solution for a problem differs in each culture. Likewise each organization has their own culture which might be different from others. It reflects the personality of an organization. An organizational culture is the totality of its values, artefacts and the norms followed by the people within the organization. Organizational culture is the single most factors which plays a pivotal role in any organization’4es failure or success, (Deal and Kennedy 1982). They have singled out four cultural dimensions which are:

Values – the underlying belief which is the essence of the organizational culture,

Heroes- the employees who exemplify values

Rites and rituals- the day to day interactions within the organization which projects mighty symbolic attributes.

The culture network – the grapevine in the organization

In the case of Asda they uphold some organizational values such as teamwork, respect for one another. As operating in the retail sector one major focus of Asda is customer satisfaction which is the base of all its operations. If a store is taken into consideration the store manager is the one who leads the colleagues with the following of the norms. There is a good relationship between the management and the colleagues.

Nature of Organizational Culture

The behaviour and the mode of decisions taken in an organization is significantly linked to its organizational culture. In Most of the organization its culture and the way of working have a major impact on the employee’s behaviour like the companies encouragement on innovative ideas (Flamholtz 1995). As in the case of 3m one of the most innovative company in the world innovation is the part of its organizational culture

Functions of Organizational culture

Organizational culture helps to inculcate a clear distinction between the organization and the others in the industry. The mode of working in the organization will be different that to its rivals. The culture provides a sense o unity among the employees; it spreads a sense of identity to the organization and its members. The employees might be coming from different social and ethnic backgrounds and the ideas and the ideologies of these individuals will be sea apart but when it comes to the functioning of the organization the organizational culture binds them together and motivates them to provide better commitment to the organization sacrificing the individuals interest. The culture is the factor which binds its employees together providing them an identity. The two important parts played by culture in an organization are the synchronization of the inner systems and the processes of the organization and the in-depth understanding of the firms external environment.(Schein 1992;Trice and Beyer, 1993)

Organizational culture and performance

It’s a widely spread belief that an organization with strong organizational culture outperform firms with weak organizational culture. The studies conducted by researchers like Peters and Waterman (1985), Kotter and Hesket (1992) have concentrated on the fact that the positivities of the organizational culture motivates the employees and they have proved this by usind the Denison Model (1996). Many researchers have come to these understanding based on the intuition that good organizational cultures motivates employees to work together to achieve the company goals thereby enhancing the firms performance ( O’Reilly and Chatman,1996 : 166). The better performance is regarded as a result of the companies norms and values which provide better coordination between the employees which enhance the goal setting and goal sharing capabilities which in turn result in better employee effort. Many Quantitative analyses done on the performance of the firm have thrown light on the fact that organizations with weaker culture are outperformed by the firms which inculcate strong culture. (Burt et al.,1992). Strong organizational culture will not only benefit the organization in the long run but also in identifying the factors for success or failure of the company. (Kotter and Heskett 1992).

Measurement of corporate culture

The in depth understanding of the current corporate culture of an organization is vital in developing strategies in the organization. The best way to get an in depth idea is measuring the corporate culture. Many of the studies conducted to measure culture were qualitative. (Siehl and Martin 1988) The corporate culture is mostly based on the conscious elements such as norms and values and the ways of doing things in the firm. The more accurate way of measuring culture is the mixed method which is the mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods that includes tools like structured or unstructured observation, interviews and questionnaire. (Rosseau 1990).In the “organizational culture inventory” (Cooke and Lafferty’s 1989) have developed a questionnaire and another researcher (O Reilly et all, 1991) have developed an” organizational culture Profile”. Researcher’s Denison and William Neale had developed a tool to quantitatively analyse the impact of corporate culture on the monetary performance of the organization . The” Denison Organizational culture survey” analyses the link between the financial indicators such as company growth, Market share and the satisfactory level of the employees and the customers.

Organizational structure

Organizational culture and change

Cultural innovation

Cultural maintenance

2.2 Research Methodology

2.3 Research Philosophy

2.4 Research Approach

2.5 Research Strategy

2.6 Time Horizon

Chapter Three

3. Data collection Methods

3.1 Non Probability Sampling

3.2 Secondary Data

3.3 Primary Data

Chapter Four

4.1 Ethical Implications

4.2 Time Scale