Organization culture

1. Organizationculture
It is a system of shared meanings held by members that distinguishes an organization from
other organizations.
J.C. Spender defines it as “a belief system shared by an organization’s members”
It is the set of values that helps the organization’s employees understand which action are
considered acceptable and which unacceptable
Features oforganizationalculture
 Innovation and risk taking
 Attention to detail
 Outcome orientation
 People orientation
 Team orientation
 Aggressiveness
 Stability
 Radical change
 Customer orientation
Cultural concepts
 Dominant culture: it denotes the core values which are shared by majority of
employees in the organization. it is macro-cultural perspective that presents the
organization’s personality.
 Sub-culture: they are denoted by unit/departments/geographic separations.they are
mini cultures within the company.
 Core values: they are primary or dominant values, those are accepted by majority of
organizational members.
 Strong cultures: values which are intensely held and widely spread are called strong
cultures. They have great influence on the employee behaviour.
 Weak cultures: in it the organization’s core values are lightly held and occasionally
shared. example indian railways is more concerned towards its customers.
 Mechanistic and organic cultures: the most important aspect of organization in
public sector companies include hierarchies ,supervision, control, formalisation, flow
of authority and communication from top to bottom etc rather than the results or
outcome. Organizations with these characteristics are termed as mechanistic
organizations.
 The company which is a continuous learning organization from the environment is
termed as organic structure. It motivates the able employees to be competitive and
innovative.
 Authoritarian and participative cultures: culture of concentration, authority and
power at central level is called authoritarian culture.

2.  Communication flows not only from top to bottom but also from bottom to top .Such
type of culture is called participative culture.
Organizationalculture vs organizationalclimate
• Some managers feel that these two are quite different terms while others feel they are
similar concepts as both of them are concerned with overall work atmosphere in
organization.
• Culture is based on anthropology and sociology while climate is based on psychology.
• Climate refers to current situations in organizations whereas culture refers to
historical context and its input on employee behavior.
• Culture deals with values and norms and it is difficult to alter it in short run but
climate does not deal with values and norms, it is concerned with the current
atmosphere in an organization.
How organizationalculture is created?
 Establish strategic and cultural values- Management decides the values to achieve
the strategies.Strategic values are basic beliefs about an organization’s environment
those shape its strategy.
 Cultural values are the values that employees need to have and act on for the
organization to act on strategic values.
 Culture creation is based on strategy as ‘culture follows strategy’.
 Combining strategic and cultural values-the next step is appropriately combining
these two values. management should encourage employees to involve in decision
making process, appreciate their ideas and considering them when the strategic values
are participative styles on the part of management.
 Strategy implementation-after the appropriate culture is created and implemented it
contributes for proper implementation of strategy.employees with creative ideas
invent new products, add function to the existing products, find new markets and
customers.these enable the company to achieve its growth strategy.
Maintaining organizationalculture
 Selection of entry level personnel: Gujarat gas company has special recruiters to
screen the candidates at entry level based on organization’s norms, values and beliefs
in addition to technical knowledge and skills.

3.  Placement on the job: information technologies limited normally assigns the work to
new employees more than their abilities in order to judge the employee’s placement
on the job.
 Job mastery: most of the emerging organizations like HCL technologies and Hughes
software systems believe that suitability of candidate to an organization should be
judged based on emotional balance rather than intelligence or technical competence.
 Measuring and rewarding performance: Hindustan beverages limited set three
performance areas viz sales/profit, adherence to the cultural values and team building.
employee’s performance is measured and rewarded based on performance.
 Adherence to core values: employees who sacrifice their personal comforts are
rewarded by connecting the costs of sacrifice to higher human values.
 Reinforcing the stories and folklore: the best way of folklore is stories with morals
that the company wants to reinforce in its cultural values.
Approaches to culture
The ouchi framework
1. Period of employment- Japanese companies provide lifetime employment.
typical US company do not have culture of providing employment
commitment to its employees.
2. Evaluation- theory z firms concentrate on evaluation and training and
promote the employees slowly but the typical US company promote the
employees at faster rate.
3. Career paths- Japanese firms follow the culture of very general careers
whereas American companies adopt the culture of highly specialization.
4. Decision making- Japanese firms and theory z firms have participative
decision making whereas US have the culture of individual decision making.
5. Control- Japanese companies have culture of implicit and informal control.
US companies have culture of explicit and formal control.
6. Responsibility- American companies and theory z firm share the same culture
of individual responsibility. Japanese companies follow the culture of group
responsibility.
7. Concern for people- Japanese firms are concerned with total life of the
employees. The American firms’ culture is limited to worker’s work life only.
Organizationalchange
 It implies the creation of imbalances in the existent pattern or situation
 Change requires individuals and organization to make new adjustments
 Change could be both active and proactive

4.  A proactive change has necessarily to be planned to attempt to prepare for anticipated
future challenges
 A reactive change may be an automatic response or planned response to change
taking place in the environment
Reasonsfor change
Changes in organization are a must whether brought about deliberately or unwillingly. the
reasons for change are:
 Changes in business conditions
 Changes in managerial personnel
 Deficiency in existing organisational patterns
 Tecnological and psychological reasons
 Government policy
 Size of the organization
Forces forchange
 Nature of the workforce: cultural diversity and need for unification,Increase in
professionalization, Increased formal education, Positive attitude
 Technology: faster and cheaper computers, Total quality management, Business
process reengineering
 Economic shocks: Asian real estate collapse, Changes in oil prices
 Competition: global competitors, Managers and acquisitions, e- business
 social trends:c1o2(career first and others second), increased career orientation among
young ladies
 world political system: collapse of the soviet union, black rule of south africa
Reasonsfor resistance
Economic reason
 Fear of reduction in employment
 Fear of demotion
 Fear of workload
Personal reasons
 need for training

5.  boredom and monotony
 no participation in change
Social reasons
 Need for new social adjustment
 Taking change as imposed from outside
 Other considerations
Principles of change
 Understanding the change itself, its purpose, its benefits and then making them
understood to employees.
 Estimating the reasons for possible resistance to change and preparing to allay their
fears
 Mindful of channels of authority
 Preparedness for all the questions and criticism
 Listening to the suggestions and criticism of employees and incorporating them in the
scheme as far as possible
Planning and implementing change