Organizational Culture as the Deciding Factor in the Success of the Organization - Term Paper Example

Introduction The culture has been considered as the genetic code of the organization and will be significant from different perspectives. There is large number of organizations in the world which is culturally embedded. This article will be covering the organizational culture in lieu of real world examples. Norms will be telling people to behave and culture will be having an influence on thinking, feeling and sense making. Any type of culture has to be seen as advantage and disadvantage position and each culture will not be easy to imitate. Cultures can be a liability in the sense that it will be creating a barrier in the organization to change and will be creating barriers to organizations to diversify and get into mode of mergers and acquisition. The organizational traits like the image that it represents on the mind of the consumers, the things, the events, the mission statement and the constitution of an organization will be giving a analysis of the culture that the organization is trying to project and achieve. There are usually four metrics to the organizational culture like the hierarchy, adhocracy, clan and market. The hierarchy model will be representing more of process driven organization and adhocracy will be representing the more flexible nature of the organization. Real world example of positive organizational culture that has led to organizational effectiveness Indian organizations founded by Tata, Godrej and various other organizations have been maintaining a typical kind of culture over the decades.( Roy,2004)There are new type of organizations like NIIT, Wipro, Ranbaxy, Sundaram Fasteners and others which have evolved being market driven. (Roy,2004) A brief history of the Southwest airline Southwest airlines have grown from a four plane regional carrier to become United States fifth largest airline in less than thirty years. Moreover the company has grown to become a $4 billion company and has been serving fifty two cities in 26 states.( Charles A. O'Reilly, Jeffrey Pfeffer) The company has been famous for its low cost services and highly acclaimed services like on-time performance, the issue of lost bags and effectively dealing with customer complaints. Southwest airlines have been ranked as one of the safest airlines of the eighty-five major airlines. It has been said as the sole US airline that has been in profit for the last 36 years and that has been attributed mainly to the offbeat culture of having fun with employees and customers. (Charles A. O'Reilly, Jeffrey Pfeffer) The leadership has been people oriented and the famous question that everyone will have is if success is there for Southwest airlines then why no one is replicating it? There has been many attempt on the part of small start up airlines like Vanguard,America West,Reno,Kiwi Air, and has failed to have the model replicated successfully that can be said as easily understandable by a three year old child .Southwest has been on the path of uninterrupted growth throughout.( Charles A. O'Reilly, Jeffrey Pfeffer) Southwest Airlines has been found by Rollin King, Lamar Muse, and Herbert Kelleher and it was in the year 1968, Southwest has been allowed to fly over Texas. That had got into legal tangle and it took more than three years before the first flight took off. Southwest started off with three Boeing airlines on its carrier and Southwest lost $ 3.7 in the first year flying. Southwest got into profit books in the year 1973 and Southwest had to sell a plane when it started making it have only three planes. (Charles A. O'Reilly, Jeffrey Pfeffer) The company had the courage of saying the truth to employees and devised a plan of flying the schedules with three planes. That was beginning of the concept of flying around very faster.” Make Love not war” has been the theme that has been used by Southwest airlines and Southwest airlines has encouraged employees to identify with others and deliver great customer service and have fun. Southwest had a zero market share in the year 1989 in California market and it become the leading passenger boarding in the year 1993.Southwest has been having a pricing strategy that matches car transportation.( Charles A. O'Reilly, Jeffrey Pfeffer) There are lot of literature that has been written on understanding the culture in organizations, the relationship with capability and performance and how culture can lead to effective management and leadership in organizations. Angle,(2001)has shown that the understanding of cultures will be offering the managers everyday solutions and ideas .The culture will be helping the organizations to eliminate contention, helping the organizations to increase capablibity,productivity and profitability. Understanding organizational culture more in depth Schein (1990) has suggested that understanding business culture will show how culture will be influencing the success of the organization. The complexity of varying cultures that exist within an organization will have to be developed to create an amiable condition within the organization. The organizational culture has to be used to improve efficiency, delivering high quality services and meeting the demand of clients. Laschinger (2001) has stated that the mission statement will be giving an idea of the perceived culture that the organization is trying to achieve and this can be given as an example in the sense that mission statement will contain a sentence that the organization is trying to achieve or give expert customer service but in reality, the organization may be having strong hierarchical nature that will not be allowing the employees the full freedom to give customer service and that means the mission statement will not be met. The organizational culture will be facilitating an induction process to the new comers and induction is a process by which the new entrants are socialized and incorporated to the expectation of the organization and there will be also awareness of the cultural practices that has been followed by the organization.( Miroshnik,2002) The organization will be following the process in very different manner and that means there are organizations that will be allowing the new comers to choose any area of interest to know the organization more. For example central governmental organization in India will be having a time period of one year training period to understand the working culture. Promotion of organizational culture may be the crucial factor in improving the quality of the products and it has been seen that the organizational culture would be promoting a sense of belief, values and assumptions that would be influencing the behavior of the staff.( Lok,1999) The negative effect of organizational culture on organizational effectiveness The company culture would be prescribing to certain emotions and expression and there are certain traits like being positive, optimism, and friendly that has been celebrated by organizations. (Knight,2000)There are organizational culture that would be not encouraging a focus on difficult actions and that can mean in these trying times of the economy, the organizational culture may not be encouraging to take tough measures like cost cutting, reduction or downsizing the staff. The good organization culture should be adaptable and should be changing with times .( Knight,2000) There has been a failure of marketing campaign by the organization of refusing to accept the change that is to be needed for new markets which would be international and these can be given as examples Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux had used the following words in American ad “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.”( Hansen ,1999) The General Motors had a failure when it introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, The reason was that “no va” means “it won’t go.” (Hansen ,1999) Multinational Companies have been failing to read the cultural foundations and organizational culture foundation as they move from country to country in times of globalization.( Benkhoof,1997) The companies have always felt that the organizational culture that had delivered success in home country would work in other countries but in reality it has not been so in many organizations. Characteristics of successful culture: Leaders will be willing to lead and teach others to become leaders. Organizational leaders should be ready to take responsibility of failures and allow success to be given to others. A display of positive attitude There has to be displaying of optimism by the organization in case of trying times and this can be attributed to Southwest airlines. The opinions of employees are valued Best organizational culture will be giving importance to junior and senior employees. The organizational culture will be giving a statement that everyone will be free to give opinion and it is the opinion that matters most rather than the position that speaks the opinion. Interdependent relationships are present in every part of organization Best organizational culture will be maintaining sure that top management doors will be kept open for the lower and middle management and everyone feel that the organization is theirs and organization needs them most. Senior management understands that the people doing the work are the ones that know how the work should be done There will be better encouragement of innovation and creativity from every employee and each employee will be empowered to take faster decisions and they need not wait for the approval of senior management. The senior management will be willing to respect the talent that has been in the organization. The people will be satisfied with their role in the organization, jobs and the morale of employees will be high Personal experience and Personal opinion of organizational culture It is frustrating to find out that the airline that we are intending to travel is late but not for Southwest airlines. It will be case of fun when the plane is delayed. I have seen that the gate staff of the Southwest airlines would be introducing fun filled games that would be like finding the weight of gate agend,and to all those who are interested would be given a five colored pipelines so that they could make a pair of spectacles within five minutes. These fun filled games would make the waiting more fun and easy to tolerate. This is the type of organizational culture that should be encouraged. There has been a famous example of Southwest airlines customer service that I have read and that can be given like this. A customer has been living in Texas El Paso and the customer had been notified by the hospital that he would be receiving organ transplant if he went to Houston(Texas).The customer after getting the information had called the Southwest reservation service and was quoted the Sunday reservation service.The customer had indeed wanted the Saturday schedule .The customer showed at the airport on Saturday and the flight has left. The customer wanted to get as soon as possible to Houston. The employers were empowered to take a decision and Elpaso week end manager took the matters seriously and hired a jet to take the man to Houston. This multimillion dollar question would have made sure that the manager would have lost the job in some other airline. (Shajahan,2006)Since the manager was empowered to take the decision that had helped the customer service of Southwest airlines to increase. (Shajahan, 2006) .According to me this has satisfied the “Senior management understands that the people doing the work are the ones that know how the work should be done” theory discussed earlier. Conclusion As the article has suggested, organization culture has been seen as being the right tool in increasing the organizational effectiveness and there has been instance when the organizational effectiveness has been a failure. The organizational culture that would be taking a eye away from the modern technology that has been taking place around the world will be doomed and it will be like taking a step away from web site management for a marketing company or like not using online safe e-commerce site. This can be also applied to a studio photography organization that can refuse to use photo editing tools like Photoshop and so on. The article has been trying to drive the point that the organizational culture would be the deciding factor in the success of the organization. Reference Angle,2001,”An assessment of organizational culture and organizational effectiveness”, Management science quarterly,Vol 26(1),pp.1-14. Benkhoof,1997,”Organizational effectiveness”, Personnel review,vol 26(1),pp.114-120. Charles A. O'Reilly, Jeffrey Pfeffer,2000"Southwest Airlines ,If success is so simple why is it hard to imitate",Hidden value,21-25. Hansen ,1999,”The relative impact of organization culture to the success of the organization”,Strategic management journal,Vol 10(3),pp.400-411. Roy,2004,” a model of organizational culture and organizational effectiveness in India”, Journal of management,vol 20(1),pp.15-41. Knight,2000,”failures of branding strategy and organizational effectiveness in preventing it”, Management journal,Vol 6,pp.75-100. Laschinger,2001,”The impact of workplace commitment”, management review,Vol 26(3),pp.7-24. Lok,1999,”The relationship between commitment and organizational culture and sub culture”,Leadership and organizational development journal,Vol 20(7),pp.365-373. Miroshnik,2002,”culture and international management”,Journal of management,Vol 21(7),pp.521-544. Schein,1990,”Organizational culture”,American psychologist,Vol 4(2),pp.109-119. Shajahan,2006,"Fundamental concepts in Relationship marketing”, Relationship marketing: text and cases ,pp.27-78 Read More