Factors That Impact on Organisations Ability to Change Its Culture - Essay Example

Factors that Impact on Organisation’s ability to Change its Culture Osama Saeed [Institution] Factors that Impact on Organisation’s ability to Change its Culture Organisation culture entails values and even behaviours that are upheld by the organisation. It consist of employees believes that are attached to the organisation, experiences and even how employees relate with each other. Future objective and even the ways that the business or organisation performs its operations also form part of the culture. In brief, these are unwritten rules of the organisation that were started by other people but are transmitted from one generation of the employees to the other. In a company the cultures that exist were first started by the founders of the organisation. People therefore follow them or belief them blindly without asking any question because changing them is a very hard task. An organisation can have a culture on how the workforce is reduced, new employees are employed and even how the organisation deal with its previous mistakes (Robbins, Judge, Millett & Waters-Marsh 2010, p. 476).These are well known and upheld as part of the organisation as it has been applied from one generation to the other. The employers are the board of governors who are the policy makers and furthermore the implementers of this policy. Therefore, lack of external forces such as competition which would make these people change these ways of doing things is one of the hindering factors towards these changes. Another factor that impact on the ability to change the organisational culture is that the people who have a mandate to ensure that the change is implemented are the ones who are to be changed as they act as role models to the others in the organisation. An example from my working place; there is a culture of fearing the top managers who tend to distant themselves with the rest of the workers. Their offices have been excluded from the rest of the organisation members which has closed doors. This has instilled fear amongst the junior workers. This has created problems even in communication as it is only the members who hold a high office that can talk or communicate about a problem that has risen in the organisation with the high office. Workers have therefore been subjected to poor working conditions without the knowledge of the top management as the supervisor ensure that this information is not transmitted to the higher office. Management need to be the spear headers of change through opening up the offices to all the employees, relating to each and every employee irrespective of their rank and even work. This is one of the main failures towards integration of the new culture in the organisation as managers expect the lower members to change while they remain unchanged (Ogbonna &Wilkinson 2003, p. 1152). Different myths are associated with the cultures experienced in the organisation. These myths may be true or false but could have a major impact on the company’s performance or even structure. In order to change the people’s beliefs on the myth, training them on the root cause of the myth will be a first step. This would ensure that they understand the vagueness of the myth and therefore do away with it completely (Heathfield 2011, p. 1). Lack of the values and plans on how to eradicate this myth is the greatest problem that is faced by the organisation. They therefore do not define their mission so as to come up with a good solution that will convince the employees to do away with the previous beliefs. Lack of the objectives of what the company wants to achieve after eradicating such a myth is another factor that leads to the organisation’s effort failure. Before a company can succeed in convincing the employees to do away with the previous believe, it is good to first identify and create a new value and believe statement e.g I will work diligently for the success of my company which will work in erasing the previous thoughts in the minds of the employees (Heathfield 2011, p. 1). This change is important in alignment with the new changes in the organisational culture. Reshuffle of the employees to different departments in the organisation is another factor that management do not consider important. Changing of the organisation culture should be accompanied by the general change in the structure of the organisation (Heathfield 2011, p. 1). This helps in creating a new image about the organisation and even a new outlook about the organisation (Heathfield 2011, p. 1). Many organisations therefore have failed through trying to change the culture without changing the organisation structure with the results being unsuccessful. This is because employees see no change and therefore go back to their way of doing things and even believing. Reviewing of the work systems e.g. employee promotion, different practices such as pay and even employee selection practices is important. This will work towards ensuring that the employees are proud to be aligned with the new culture. This was the scenario with my company where the firm wanted to eradicate the culture of poor relation within the workers of different ranks. The firm organised a party which involved all employees of different categories where the main agenda was the integration of all workers for the betterment of the company as coordination is the source of success in any organisation. This was followed by opening up of the offices through ensuring that the high rank officers are educated on the importance of giving an ear to the members of the organisation so that they can air out their grievances. Reputation of the organisation is another culture that always turns to have a lot of implications towards the success of the company. Companies always try to change the reputation through various methods such as advertising the company, promotions and even give some of their products for the market to test. This could cost immense losses to the company leading to poor performance (Schabracq 2011, p.65). Additionally, it would see increased performance of the organisation as a result of working in harmony. This is one factor that leads to the failure of the company as they need to first research on the core problem of poor reputation in the market. The first thing that the company needs to understand is the source of the problem is from within the organisation. This is through enquiring from the employers on what the main problem could be. This is because employers are also part of consumer or market of the company’s goods. By doing this, the company is able to come up with the strategy to use in dealing with the larger market. The first action that company requires to do is to improve the attitude of the internal workers towards their job. This is one factor which if not implemented there can be no change in the culture of poor reputation (Schabracq 2011, p. 66). This has been the case of one of our company’s branch reputation. Many people said that the company had poor working conditions and many of them were unwilling to work with it. The solution to the problem was first to encourage the internal workers to be proud of their working area. This was through recognising their effort by rewarding them, revising their pays etc. This saw tremendous change in reputation of the company as the employees were the agent of change and they spread good message about the organisation to the outside society. Therefore, in a point of changing the company’s culture of bad reputation, companies should first consider this factor. Organisations in their way of changing the culture never look at the interest of individuals and groups in making their decision. This contribute immensely to the failure of different decisions taken to change the culture since an organisation is made up of a group of employees with which each group members has his/her own interests which the organisation must consider in implementing the idea (Schabracq 2011, p. 72). The best way to achieve this is to define the goals that the organisation want to achieve while at the same time taking into consideration the changes that it will impact on both the group and organisation. The firm can therefore emphasize on these goals as the main aim of implementing the idea in the organisation. This would therefore work as an important tool in integrating the new culture to the organisation, group and individual at large. Failure to do this will see one stakeholder being left out of the decision implementation. If things go well it’s also important to reward the torch bearer of change to encourage the others (Schabracq 2011, p.73). For management to spearhead the cultural change, they must be competent to understand the different strategy to use in implementing this agenda. Many organisations ignore this factor and therefore end up failing to achieve their goals of cultural change. Not all managers are competent to undertake the change (Cameron & Quinn, 2011). I have been able to see that not many employees will be willing to listen to their seniors when they are being addressed on the issue of culture change. This is because of either the feeling they have towards them. Many organisations therefore use their employees to bring change but I think it’s better if this change is from outside by a neutral person as people will be willing to listen to him and implement the idea communicated. References Cameron, K. S. & Quinn, E. R. 2011. Diagnosing and Changing Organisational Culture: Based on the Competing Values Framework, Michigan: John Wiley & Sons Heathfield, M. S. 2011. How to Change Your Culture: Organisational Culture Change. http://humanresources.about.com/od/organizationalculture/a/culture_change_2.htm. Viewed 15 October 2011 Ogbonna, E. &Wilkinson, B. 2003. The False Promise of Organisational Culture Change: A Case Study of Middle Managers in Grocery Retailing, Journal of Management Studies, 1151- 1178. Robbins, S., Judge, T. A., Millett, B. & Waters-Marsh, T. 2011. Organisational behavior, 6th edn, Pearson/Prentice Hall: Frenchs Forest, NSW. Schabracq, J. M. 2007. Changing organisational culture: the change agent's guidebook, Amsterdam: John Wiley and Sons Read More

 

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