Management of Organisational Culture - Essay Example

Management of organisational culture Introduction Organisations are organized human activity, with employees from various ‘spheres’ working in-group to accomplish the given tasks. Various ‘spheres’ in the sense, the employees will be from different background having different educational qualifications, skill level, knowledge level and experience, and importantly coming from different religions, race, colour, state, etc, etc. As the employees come from different ‘spheres’ or background, each of them will exhibit particular behaviour or culture. As, the culture exhibited by the employee will be based on his/her background, and as the organisation will have ‘collage’ of employees, there will be different cultures at practice. When each employee displays their own personal cultures or their own unique work culture, there will be no common ground, leading to disunity and each employee following their own cultural practices to accomplish the given work, with often minimum succeed. To reach a common ground and make the employees work in unison and cohesion for organisational success, organisations or management or particularly its leader had to formulate and actualize a common and efficient organisational culture. So, this paper focusing on the role of leader in the formation, evolution and importantly management of organisational culture, will critically discuss how apt management of organisational culture is central to contemporary management ideas and practices, which could optimize employees’ productivity and organisational success. BODY - Organisational culture – Background In the simplest term, organisational culture can be any principle or virtue which is deeply rooted, has a set of pattern and is religiously followed by everyone belonging to the same group or organisation. “Organizational culture refers to a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations. This system of shared meaning is, on closer examination, a set of key characteristics that the organization values.” (Robbins 2005, p.485). Organisational culture can also be said to be a very vibrant trend which is always surrounding the employees and is developed through the interactions between the employees or group of employees. Set of structures, guiding norms, routines, rules and discipline (restricted behaviour) form the basics of any culture. In an organisation the nurturing of culture consists of creation, evolution, embedment and ultimately manipulation. An optimal organisational culture gives structure or a frame to the organisation and its processes, disciplines, stabilizes and makes the organisation more meaningful to the workforce. Though culture in itself does not have a set standard and is rather considered to be intangible, yet the inherent power embedded till the grass root level is very forceful and can make a decisive impact on the working of an organisation. (Schein 2004) Role of leader in Culture creation and its subsequent management The role of the leader will only lead an organisation on the path of success or failure. With ‘living’ group of people or employees and material things like finance, infrastructure, machineries, etc, the founder-leader will establish his/her organisation. In those times, organisational culture can be formulated afresh and can be incorporated in a more impacting manner among the new employees. However, in most cases, a leader could take over an existing organisation and manage it, instead of establishing a new one. With the infrastructure and other setups already actualized and also employees already recruited, the leader has to lead and manage them, taking into consideration that employees will be exposed or working following already set organisational culture. So, in those situations also, a common and effective organisational culture has to be formulated and implemented with the leader playing the main catalytic role in aptly managing it. When a leader establishes his/her own organisation, or given the responsibility to manage an already functioning one, the leader’s first task will be the creation of a common and efficient organisational culture. According to Schein (2004, p.17) “The culture of a group can now be defined as a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems”. Whatever be the nature of the organisation, their functioning can be made optimal, if the leader or management team first formulates a common working culture, then embed that culture into the employees’ functioning as well as the work environment employees, sustain it with more dynamism as well as rectify it, when shortfalls creep into that culture. That is, after the leader starts an new organisation with a new set of employees or after enters an already functioning setup, he/she should try to impose or apply his/hers best of their assumptions, organisation related ideas, effective principles, successful models, etc on the employees and their working style, thereby forming an organisational culture. Typically, the founders as leaders have strong assumptions about the nature of the world, how human relationships will function in an organisational set up, the role those organisations play in that world, etc, thereby forming an optimum personal culture of sort based on those assumptions (Schein 1978, 1983). So, the leaders can apply or impose those personal assumptions and cultures on the employees and particularly in the working environment, thereby implementing a common organisational culture. The newly recruited employees in a new organisation will have a fresh and open mindset to the steps of their leader, likewise, the employees in the existing organisations will most times have fresh as well as open attitude to the incoming leader as well. This being the case, it will aid the leader to impose optimally tuned personal culture of them into the working environment. Focusing on artefacts and managing the organisational culture The deciphering of the organisational culture and its related practices or process, will always be a difficult thing for the new employees. It relates with the superficial experience of viewing, hearing and feeling when one finds a group with different trait of culture. However, if the employees themselves or if the leader helps the employees to focuses on the artefacts featured in the set organisational culture, the adoption can become quicker. “Culture is also a set of more material elements or artefacts. These are the signs and symbols that the organization is recognized by but they are also the events, behaviours and people that embody culture.” (oup.co.uk). That is, artefacts which will be visible as part of organisational culture are physical appearance of the employees, language spoken, technology used, products, creativity style, mannerism, stories, myths about the organisation, rules and rituals, etc. The adoption of the organisational culture can happen easily, if the employee in groups focuses on the artefacts and incorporates the relevant ones during their work. It takes some time and due process to make a particular behaviour or artefact, the culture of that organisation. The analysis includes structural features such as the description regarding the working of organisation, its charters, etc Opposition to culture embedding necessitates the need for apt management However, employees in the already functioning setup may not have open and receptive mindset for their new leaders, and could resist the culture imposition of the new leader as they might have followed a culture already established by their previous leader. Every person has his/her own view points about what is good and what is bad. Everyone has his/her own beliefs including beliefs about how organisation should function or how he/she should work for an organisation, which he/she has either gathered from their own educational or cultural background or from the surrounding organisational and social atmosphere. Because of this formation of personal culture, they will exhibit those cultures during the organisational functioning, particularly during the tasks which involves team work. Thus, the individual response or culture could differ as per his/her background, but in an organisation, where groups or teams are more important and influential, the employee has to accept the culture of the majority, and which is implemented by the leader. So, by placing common organisational culture over their personal cultures, every time when the leader leading the organisation assigns a task or presents an issue before its employees, they have to understand it and accomplish with total team work. Plus, if particular employees quickly adopt the organisational culture and work in an optimal mode, they will garner special attention and even leadership positions. For example, if the organisation wishes to assign a particular job to a group in the organisation, although, the job is to be done collectively by the whole group, the management could approach the leader or the person who is more respected in the circle and present to him/her the whole proposal with its target and bonus incentives. When the leader or the executive has understood the whole job work, he in his own way makes everyone understand the assignment and motivates them to work. ‘Seducing’ the employees to the organisational culture In addition, as they will be working in the same organisation or positions for a long time, they would have created personal cultures of their own. So, resistance to new or tuned organizational culture will be a common phenomenon, with old cultural mindsets fostering cultural resistance (Tichy 1996). As the employees would be working for a long period of time, they will be comfortable with the old paradigm, and so not only would changing their behaviours be difficult, but also getting them to buy into the process will prove to be a difficult challenge. This negativity would erode the embedding of the organisational culture, making it very difficult to foster a climate of change regarding culture. Every individual seeks stability and it can be assumed that if this stability is given to particular person, his anxiety will go down. It is to be understood that if new changes are to be made to the organisational culture, the capacity of adaptation towards change of the workers in that organisation need to be analyzed. To enable cultural change in an organisation, the corporate heads must analyze two factors: How much anxiety this change will cause in the organisation? How capable the work team is to adapt to this change? Does the current workforce have the genetic potential to pick up the changing process and adjust to it? Taking into consideration all these assumptions, an organisation can make changes in its culture if necessary. So, in those cases of resistance, without forcing the culture, the leader with effective actions and by opening up strong communication channels has to ‘seduce’ the employees and make them adopt the new organisational culture. “He had to seduce the employees into a situation in which they had no choice but to rethink their identity.” (Schein, 2004, p. 306). The organisational culture which is created by slowly and steadily making the employees become part of it, will be really effective because the when employees voluntarily adopt the culture, they will work in tandem as part of team, towards the set goal. “Leadership focuses on developing corporate culture and human capability, patiently building trust and emotional commitment to the company through teamwork and communication.” (Beer and Nohria 2000, p.134). The other key part of organisational culture formation and implementation is, the leaders instead of restating the old culture, can formulate a new organisational culture based on the current Human resources issues, organisational targets. Although, it will be always better to retain some of the effective practices of the earlier culture, a new organisational culture based on the changing scenarios will be a better option. This was illustrated by DeSimone, Werner & Harris (2002, p.594) “Organizational cultural interventions involve more than simply restating values, beliefs, or norms and communicating them to individuals. Cultural changes involve a complex process of replacing an existing paradigm or way of thinking with another.” So, this initial stage application of the leader’s optimum personal culture as part of the common organisational culture, and then enticing the employees to adopt that culture, will help in the effective management of the culture. Organisational culture strengthens with teamwork The importance of merging different employees with different culture or mindset into teams and making them work as part of teamwork is also a key or related component of optimal organizational culture. As mentioned earlier itself, every organisation will be like a ‘collage’, with employees from different backgrounds, religion, culture, race, ethnicity, etc. Because of this diverse nature, there could rise of groups and subgroups or subcultures, which will be created by the employees themselves based on their own cultural, racial, national, and uniquely historic experiences. Once such separation and segregation happens, it will be difficult for the employees to adopt a common culture and importantly it will be difficult for them to work as a team. This is where the leadership role comes into the picture, with leaders finding ways to integrate, coordinate, align and influence the employees into teams with a common organizational culture. So, building an effective team or teams is in a way meshing, interconnecting and mixing the employees from different subcultures into teams with a common organizational culture. As discussed above, this can be done by the leader by actualizing common organisational culture, and thereby implementing as well as encouraging the evolution of common goals and common processes for solving problems. In addition, teamwork has to be made part of the organisational culture. That is, after the creation of a common and efficient organisational culture, it is crucial on the part of the leaders to make all the employees follow it by inspiring and influencing them en-masse. All the employees can be ‘seduced’ to follow the set organisational culture and thereby enable them to work as a team, if the leader or other supervisor has the trait of involving the employees as part of all the organisational processes taking place inside and outside the organisation, particularly the decision making process. When any new process is initiated or during the decision-making processes, leaders as part of the above mentioned cultural practice will place for discussion and analysis his/hers ideas, strategies, plans, etc among the employees. With discussions, the leaders should further ask them to give their suggestions and feedbacks about particular strategy or plan or process. This strategy as part of organizational culture can accentuate team work because when a superior gives the chance for the employees to give their inputs, they will become highly motivated to offer good suggestions. This heightened motivation will be visible among all the employees and they will work as a team to give apt suggestions and importantly to actualize those suggestions as part of organisational goals. The sheer number of decisions that must be made as part of corporate culture keeps them occupied with the decision making process, necessitating that intermediaries convey these decisions throughout the company (Carlzon, 1989). Conclusion From the above analysis, it is clear that to create and manage an optimal organisational culture, leaders should play a key role. During the formulation of the culture, the leader with his/her assumptions, ideas and personal culture will play an influencing role in the formation of the common culture. Then, when the culture faces resistance from certain groups of employees, the leaders should manage it aptly by ‘seducing’ the resistant employees. Also, if the practice of productivity involving the employees is carried out as part of the set organisational culture, it will lead to teamwork among the employees. The important thing that can be learned is, when the organization attains some success or great success, the created organizational culture will become adopted more optimally by the employees, then it will become shared among all the employees, thereby leading to team formation. So, the key issue is, the organization and its leaders has to hold on to the culture and make it work, so all the employees have no other option but to follow it optimally, so they can work as teams. References Beer, M. & Nohria, N 2000, Cracking the Code of Change, Harvard Business Review, vol.78, no.3, pp.133-141. Carlzon, J. 1987, Moments of Truth, Harper & Row, New York. DeSimone, RL, Werner, JH and Harris, DM 2002, Human resource development, Harcourt College Publishers, New York. oup.co.uk, Organisational Culture, Oxford University Press, viewed on November 19, 2010 http://www.oup.co.uk/pdf/bt/fincham/Chapter15.pdf. Robbins, SP 2005, Organizational Behavior, Prentice Hall, New York. Schein, EH 1978, Career dynamics: Matching individual and organizational needs, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. Schein, EH 1983, The role of the founder in creating organizational culture. Organizational Dynamics, vol.12, no.1, pp.13–28. Schein, EH 2004, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd. ed. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Tichy, N 1996, Simultaneous Transformation and CEO Succession: Key to Global Competitiveness, Organizational Dynamics, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 45-59 Read More