Organizational culture
Understanding and assessing your organization's
culture can mean the difference between success and failure in today's fast
changing business environment. On the
other hand, senior management, particularly the CEO, often has a view of the
organization's culture that is based more on hope than a view grounded in
objective fact. This
paper will explore some of the problems associated with understanding the
reality of an organization's culture. It will also focus on the role
of the leader in creating or maintaining this culture.
Finally, it will discuss the perils of confronting the leader with an assessment
of the organization that flies in
the face of his/her preconceptions.
Basically, organizational culture
is the personality of the organization. Culture is comprised of the assumptions,
values, norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of
organization members and their behaviors. Members of an
organization soon come to sense the particular culture of an organization.
Culture is one of those
terms that's difficult to express distinctly, but everyone knows it when they
sense it. For example, the culture of a large, for-profit corporation is
quite different than that of a hospital
which is quite different that that of a university. You can tell the culture
of an organization by looking at the arrangement of furniture, what
they brag about, what members wear, etc. -- similar to
what you can use to get a feeling about someone's personality.
As every teacher knows, a positive
classroom environment helps children learn. But what are the characteristics
of a classroom culture that helps every child
achieve?
An organization's ability to learn
may make the difference between its thriving or perishing in the years ahead,
says author Peter Senge.
Cultures do have distinctive learning
style patterns, but the great variation among individuals within groups means
that educators must use diverse teaching
strategies with all students
This study explored the relationship
between organizational identification and organizational culture in a retail
sales organization. Participants included 76
employees from 31
different store locations who completed Cheney's (1983b) Organizational Identification
Questionnaire and Glaser, Zamanou, and Hacker's
(1987) Organizational Culture Survey.
