Organisational culture and competitive advantage: is there a link Discuss - Essay Example

Consequently, culture can be defined as how organisations do things; in a more elaborate way, culture is described as a constant observable pattern of behaviours among the employees and the overall staff. Despite the myriad definitions of organisation culture, there is a common view that culture has a huge effect on the operations of an organisation. As a result, every organisation has invested heavily in establishing a unique code of behaviour that has to be adhered in aligning all individuals towards a common mission.

In this article, it will be argued that organisational culture has a huge effect on the competitive advantage of a particular firm; organisations that have well designed corporate cultures perform much better than fragmented organisations, or those with a weak organisational culture. It will be shown that organisational culture is a versatile tool to achieve competitiveness, and that firms with unique organisational cultures will always set performance benchmarks in the market. To achieve this, several articles will be analysed on their research findings about organisational culture and how it affects an organisation from different perspectives.

The article will review various ways in which organisational culture influences an organisation and how this may affect organisational performance Attracting skilled staff Organisational culture is essential in building a specific employer brand, which is further amplified by an employee who believes in the importance of such brand to be part of the organisation (Ortega-Parra and Sastre-Castillo, 2013). This is the reason behind the current growing trend where companies are linking their values statements to their current organisational cultures.

However, there has to be strategy of translating the words in a company’s culture to actions. If the expectations of employees who are attracted by an organisational culture are not met, such employees will have to leave the organisation. Ortega-Parra and Sastre-Castillo (2013) further argues that human resource management in an organisation involves the use of different practices and approaches towards improving the organisational competence and achieving results. Consequently, organisational culture is the mediator of human resource management, as the manager has to source and employ competent people who can operate within the strict pattern of expected performance in the company; this is especially in mass production where standardisation of approach and products has to be emphasised (Janicijevic, 2012).

Therefore, organisational culture has to involve bottom line values that are formed in accordance with economical concepts and managerial efficiency. Organisations try to reinforce performance culture through reward systems to motivate employees and discourage them from acting contrary and then training to ensure their skills are in line with the expected performance of the company (Janicijevic, 2012). Employees in this case have to live and share the spirit of the organisation, which improves on their performance with reward systems encouraging them to perform more.

With culture reinforcing commitment in an organization; companies that have strong cultural practices have their employees committed towards the same, with human resources management working towards reinforcing such commitment towards organisational pe