Managing Organizational Culture - Essay Example

Performance, Planning and Decision-Making Contents Introduction 3 Discussion 4 Arguments in support of the ment 4 Arguments against the ment 9 Conclusion 13 Introduction In the modern world of cutthroat competition managing organizational culture is very important for any organization. Proper planning, managing and decision making is very important for maintaining organizational culture. Organization culture acts as an adhesive which stick together the whole organization. It is an intangible system which is shared by each and every member of any organization. In the other way we can say that it a philosophy that guides the whole organization. Every organization is having certain cultures. Dominant cultures are core values of an organization which are shared by majority of the employees of that company. Subcultures are those which give clear reflections about the common situations and problems of the employees in the organization. Company employees strictly follow some of the rules, these rules are shared throughout the length and breadth of the organization is called strong cultures. Cultures which are there with the company’s but are not followed that much is called week culture. Organization cultures are sets of norms which influences how the organization will be shaped. Different organizations are with different organizational cultures. Many times organizational cultures depend upon on the national cultures of that company. It is generally being noticed that organizations with great cultures are always having great success story around the world. It channelizes an organization which way it should go. It is very important for any organization to have a follow a particular culture for long time sustainability. It shows behaviour, values and psychological environment of an organization. It might be rules, attitudes, customs and beliefs of an organization. It can be taken as the identity of an organization. Organization cultures can be changed time to time whenever markets demands. These cultures are developed by the particulars company. Every organization is having its own cultures. A culture which is suitable for a company may not be suitable for another company. Organization culture is such a thing that can gives a crystal clear picture about the different attributes of an organization. Great Organization culture can be treated as backbone of any successful organization. All the reputed companies like Apple, CTS and Wal-Mart are having great organizational cultures. Discussion Arguments in support of the statement In this area of discussion the importance of the organizational cultures are going to be discussed. Great organizational cultures are generally transferred into good performance and provide great productivity for the company. In this world of high competition consistent performance is very important for those good organizational cultures are needed. Customers are kings. Customers need good services from any organization. Providing good services to the customer is very important for any organization. Organization culture can be a fruitful guide in the case of customer service. Products are the difference maker of any company. Different companies make different kinds of products. Organizational cultures show a clear path way for product developments. Organization cultures are very important in case of punctuality (Hall, 1993, pp. 607–618).It defines a clear guideline for the employee of the organization. Organization cultures keep one organization transparent and free from any corruption or mal practises. Organizational cultures maintain integrity of an organization. Innovative organizational cultures help the organization to come up with new and innovative products and services. Organization cultures can be decisive in terms of marketing, branding and advertising also. Organization cultures inspire different organization in terms of CSR activities also (Denison & Mishra, 1995, pp. 204–223). It is very clear that organization cultures are very important for organization’s performance. Every aspects of a company are guided by certain cultures. It makes organization culture more important for any organization. Any successful companies around the world can’t ignore the contribution of good organizational culture. In the modern world heights level of management are spending lots of energies to create a good suitable organization culture. It is the organization cultures guide planning, performance management and the decision making of the organization. Loyalty of employees for the company is very important for any organization. Great organization cultures can create good loyal employees. Good loyal employees are very important inside stake holders of any company. Unique identity is very important for any successful organization. Organization culture can provide that unique identity to the organization. It is known to everyone that an organization is having employees from different backgrounds and is having different mindset. It is the organization culture which provides a sense of unity in the mind of the employees (Aycan, Kanungo and Sinha, 1999, pp. 501-510). A united bunch of human resources is dream for any good company. Organization culture also creates a sportsman like attitude among the employees of the organization. Employees engage themselves into a healthy competition among them. Stability is also very important for any organization. It is the organization culture provides that desired stability to the organization. It gives a clear guideline to the company that whether that organization should take any conservative or aggressive decisions. Organization culture helps any organization to formulate any clear strategic vision. It helps them to understand whether any cultural changes are required inside the organization. It is very important for any organization be ethical. Good organization culture inculcates that sense of ethics in the organization. Maintaining legality is also very important for any company. Organization culture develops that thing into the organization. Often organization under the pressure can distracts from its core values but it is the organization culture which keeps it to the right path. Organization culture acts as a friend, philosopher and guide for any organization. Every organization is having a social role to play. In this aspect also organization cultures play an important role for any organization. Organization culture prevents any organization from such a work which can be proved to be detrimental for any society. In this ever changing world change is the only constant thing. Organization culture gives that scope of change for the organization. It helps companies to change according to the need of the hour. Committed employees from top hierarchy to lowest for any company is a great strength. Organization culture indicates the commitment level of any employee. Organization culture makes any organization superior to any individual present inside that company. Steve Jobs was a great leader for Apple. People thought that after his demise the company will be doomed. Initially share prizes of the company slashed but due to strong organizational culture the company recovered that situation pretty well. Organization cultures are some practises which are commonly followed by the organizations for long term profitability. Culture is nothing but a human terrain of any organization influencing its success and performance. It gives rights to employees. It provides a sense of security in the mind of the employee. Once an employee feels secure in any organization, then that organization can immensely benefited out of that company. Different company create their own organizational culture to cope with the competition. Organization culture clearly shows how an organization is approaching for its day to day operations. Organization culture moulds right or wrong decisions. It is very important to take right strategic decision for any organization. One wrong decision can be proved to be very costly. Customers and clients are outside but integral stakeholders for any organization. Organization culture shows the attitude of the company to its customers. It is the organization culture which will help the organization to take any kind of new initiatives. Every decision which is taken for organization shows the cultural related with that organization. Organization culture gives strengths to the inner fabric of the organization. Organization can be act as a guiding torch in the rough water of modern ever changing world. No one can deny the role of organization culture. Organization culture plays an important role for lining the growth of organization and the growth of the employee related with the organization. Employee feels great about their company. They remain very committed towards its work. Attrition rate is a great problem for any modern company. Good organization culture lowers that problem very effectively. In this way organization not only retains it good human resources but also attracts new talents towards the company. A transparent image which is a result of good organization culture can also attract great investment from different financial institutions. Generally Government organizations throughout the worlds tie ups with different companies for their own projects or services. In this aspect also Governmental organization does a great back ground checking where organization culture plays a very vital role. Organization culture creates a unique image not only in the mind of stakeholders related with it but also with that person who are not related with the organization. This kind of people can prove to be very important for company’s brand value. In this way proper organization culture can be very much productive. It helps the organization directly and indirectly. Many people often say that only good management followed by great employees can be a success factor for any organization. Without organization culture it is not possible to be a long time successful. Organization culture plays very important role achieving long term goal. Sustainability is the mantra of any good organization. Organization culture helps an organization to maintain that sustainability. It has been seen that many company around the world started their organization with lots of potential. Dearth of proper organization culture caused their downfall. It is important that good potential should be backed up well by good organization culture. Otherwise starting can be great but sustainability will be at a stake. Organization culture can’t be ignored at any case in terms of any aspect of the organization. Financial results are very important aspect for any profit making organization. Organization culture plays an important indirect role in this aspect also. Different investment into different projects and the returns out of that project indicate the financial mind set of that organization. All the expenditure statements also clearly show different financial attributes of the organizational culture. Managing vendors and suppliers is also a very important part of that organization. Organization culture has its own influence on this aspect also. Many companies don’t believe too many experiments in their vendor lists. On the other hand some company does believe in experiments with its vendors. Quality products do not have any substitute in the market. Company with good organization culture can’t temper with its products. Profitability may be less but still they stick to the product. Absent of organization culture can compromise the quality of the products or services. Organization culture can be a difference maker between two companies of same industry. It can make differences between best and the average organization. Maintaining organization culture is very important for any company. Modern business world is not at all smooth. In this rough terrain of business world organization culture is a gift for every company. Every management throughout the world have able to understand the importance of it. Each and every day they are giving more and more importance to it. Management are spending more time, money and energy for maintaining their culture. It might be rules, regulations, products, services or anything. Organization has understood that deviation from their path can result in disaster. Organization culture is becoming the most talked about matter in the modern day. People from different backgrounds are showing their interest about different organization and on the basis of that they are getting attracted and discarding another organization .Managing organizational culture is very important for organizational performance. Arguments against the statement Culture is not at all important for maintaining the organisational performance as there are many other factors which are important for it. The culture of an organisation is made up of beliefs, norms and values which employees share among them and it reveals the important aspect of the organisation. But culture can be a double edged sword as well. It is unavoidable and every small business has its own culture. Though the owner may be busy with its business and may not give much attention to the culture the culture is growing and it will become difficult for the owner if he does into take it into consideration. He will not be able to lead its employees due to diverse workforce in today’s world. The owner has to look at other factors also beside culture for improving the organisational performance. Motivation is an important factor for improving the organisational performance (Dobre, 2013, pp. 58-61). Motivation indicates the direction, initiation, persistence of behaviour. Incentives are one of the ways of motivating the employees. If the management of an organisation looks after the welfare of the employees then the employees will feel obligated to give the management something in return. Through appropriate motivation the mindset of the employees can be changed to focus only on goal. Thus the employees will be train to act in certain ways to perform at work. This will affect the business performance automatically. Inner motivation is important since the experience of engagement, joy and meaning and interest which is associated with the tasks will make the employees improve the performance of the company (Martins and Terblanche, 1998, pp. 64-74). By creating conditions which will benefit the employees the company will be able to trigger them for better work performance. If the organisation is successful in making the workers experience inner motivation the employees will give an extra hand to the organisation when it is necessary. Motivation will offer the employees the opportunity to develop at work and work actively as a team member and improve the performance of the organisation. If the management of the organisation shows how important the employees are to them and the amount of time and resources which have been invested, then the employees will show tendency to be loyal to the organisation and give its best effort for achieving the organisational performance (Burke and Litwin, 1992, pp. 531-538). Further the performance of an organisation depends on hiring appropriate individual so that the company can allocate them to appropriate jobs. Further it is difficult to have all the employees share common norms and act in a similar manner. For example it is not possible for typist, salesman, CEOs, factory workers, product designers and engineers to have the same culture and act upon it in a similar manner (Osterloh and Frey, 2000 pp. 540-547). Hence division of labour is done in modern organisation so that many multiple sub-cultures are formed within the organisation. Hence it is sometimes argued that organisation culture does not affect the business performance and there are other factors which plays crucial role in it (Knippenberg, 2000, pp. 357-360). Organisational culture is the system to share the assumptions, values and beliefs that the people show in the work place. The values in the work places have s strong impact on the employees working in the organisation and as well as for the organisational cultures. The organisational culture is the fast moving part between the managements. Culture is not seen within the individuals in the work place which very highly affects the behaviours of the employees. People become more aware about their behaviour when it comes between the other organisational behaviour, the culture is very much related with the organisational design as the organisational will design their culture the employees will likely to adopt that behaviour in the work place. As a result culture in the organisation is very much mandatory for healthy working environments (Lee and Yu, 2004, pp. 347-351). The organisational culture is the biggest for the organisation for its goodwill in the outer world scenario; in the whole world the business leaders are taking the organisational cultures as the biggest strategy for the corporate world. A good culture in the organisation can create competitive advantages with the other organisation, whereas the bad culture in the organisation creates a difficulty in the performance (Cameron and Quinn, 2011, pp. 150-159). But in all the aspects we cannot say that the culture plays very crucial roles in the organisation, the culture can be also a problem in the organisation if the goals of the organisation is not been achieved by the members of the organisation. The organisation culture is created by the employees of the organisation. When there is no transparency among the employees of the organisation. The organisational culture is not the effective part of the changing work culture (Awadh and Saad, 2013, pp. 169-171). In the organisational culture leadership plays a very vital role as we know that if there is a good leadership quality in the organisation, than the culture in the organisational changes. In the organisational culture value do not have any other meaning without any other elements. In many organisation cultures are not being followed by the employees who misleads the other employees working in the organisation. Many employees also have conversation regarding their boss which are a type of the misleading the organisational culture. As in many organisation there is no discipline maintained in the work place for which many organisation is also hampering the goodwill of the organisation that have been create. In the recent scenario, there are lots of company that do not follow the culture. As a result those organisations are not having any such futures in the upcoming generation. For maintaining a good work place there should be leadership quality of the mangers that have the potential to understand the work culture of the employees (Griffiths, 2011, pp. 185-190). In this world nothing is unmixed blessings. Organization cultures are not free from them. It can create number of confusions and dilemma in the mind of stakeholders related with the organization. Organization culture cannot be permanent at any means. Problem arises for the organization when they fail to change their culture with time. Change in the organization culture is not an easy task to do. It faces lots of resistance from inside and outside from the organization. When a company is going for a leaner outfit they sometimes downsize their employee strength. It creates a sense of insecurity in the mind of the employee. Insecure employees can result in to the instability in the organization. Every company don’t have that much of potential to follow a fix organizational culture. Organizational performance depends upon different things. Organizational culture is one of them. There are other factors also which improves the performance of organization. There are certain aspects like capital, environment, and leadership ability which are also very important for the performance of any organization. In most of that organization culture don’t have any role to play. Managing organization culture may have some adverse effects on the organization. Often organization tries to over mange its culture. In course of that they spend lots of money. Spending money without any serious output can affect the performance of organization very badly. In that case organization suffers a huge backlog both in terms of money and time. It is very clear that managing organization culture is an aspect for organization performance but certainly not the only option. It sometimes distract from the main focus of the organization. Once the focus of the organization is shifted it creates a negative image in the mind of the stakeholders. Organization culture can hamper the relationship between the higher level and lower level employee. It can bring an atmosphere of animosity in the organization. Different people come from different back grounds in an organization. It is not possible for everyone to fit themselves into a common pattern of organization culture. They feel that they are not the part of the organization. It sometimes destabilise the whole pattern of the organization. Organizational culture should be done in calculated manner after lots of thinking. Its needs expert and experience management otherwise it can be a story of failure rather than a success. Organization culture is very delicate thing to temper with. Much modern management give importance to the other aspects of performance management rather than organization culture. There are lot of organization present in the market focuses on day by day business only. They don’t give that much of importance to organization culture. This kind of organization sees the ratios of cash inflows and out flows as performance measurement system. Much organization doesn’t look for long term goals; they don’t give that much of importance the organization culture. In this way it is evident that organization culture is only a part of performance management but other yard sticks are there which measures how an organization is performing. Conclusion It is difficult to establish direct results of linking organisational performance to culture. There are many factors which contribute to performance evaluation of an organisation. There are cultural themes like intellectual versus action orientation in relationships, time perspective and other cultural rules which is considered important for improving the performance of the organisation. Organization which has complex R &D work will not have organisational culture as important as the motivation of the employees in doing the appropriate work. In such organisation the management needs to make the employees happy with respect to both monetary and non-monetary benefits so that they give their best effort in accomplishing organisational objective. Thus it is not possible to say that a particular or general culture is the only deciding factor for improvement in organisational performance. But at the same time this does not mean that there is no relationship between performance and culture and on some level there is some connection. Some elements of culture does play a vital role in improving the performance of an organisation but there are other non-cultural factors like motivation, communication, teamwork, leadership style, organisational structure etc. which determines the organisational performance. Communication between the employees and their leaders are important for the employees in understanding the role and responsibilities of the employees. Similarly effective leadership style keeps the employee engaged and thus they get motivated to work. Organisational structure supports the activities of the employees and if the organisational structure acts as a hindrance it can make the organisational performance decline. Thus though organisation culture has some effect on performance of the organisation it is not possible to say that it is the only important factor. This study has very clearly showed that organization culture plays a very important role in terms of planning, decision making and performance. Organization culture guides the organization very well. Mark of organization culture is present in all functionalities of any organization. Without any shadow of doubt organization culture is great deciding factor for any organization. In this world everything has its positives and negatives. Organization culture is not free from it. Here organization culture should be taken more of a positive attributes than the negative one. Organization culture lowers the risk of organization failure. It gives the mantra of long term sustainability in the market. It insulates organization from most of the outside hazards. It has an unavoidable presence throughout the organization. Some are very prominent and some are dormant. It is the nerve centre for any organization. References Awadh, A. M. and Saad, A. M. 2013. Impact of Organizational Culture on Employee Performance. International Review of Management Business Research. Vol. 2, Issue: 1. pp. 168-175. Aycan, Z., Kanungo, R.N., and Sinha, J.B.P. 1999. “Organizational culture and human resource management practices: the model of culture fit”, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 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