Issues in the Organizational Culture - Essay Example

The discussion not only centres on the question of whether corporate culture affects or indeed affects organizational effectiveness but also on the very nature of corporate culture. Is the notion of corporate culture a tangible phenomenon, or is it, as suggested by Morgan (1997) a metaphor, through which to explain complex aspects of organizational behaviour? Does the analysis of corporate culture depend upon a homogeneous set of variables through which to analyse those phenomena, or is corporate culture an umbrella for a whole range of cultures within the organization?

These might include a culture that generates an effective response to change (Burnes, 1996), a marketing culture (Carson et al., 1995), a customer-focused culture(Slater & Narver, 1995), a procedure and policy led culture, an enterprise culture (Gray, 1998), a learning culture (Choueke & Armstrong, 1998). The current research focuses on the differences between the perceptions of rank and file and management employees of Kyiv Duty-Free. Through an analysis of such differences, means on how to achieve their end future state could be undertaken more smoothly.

There is a need to distinguish between what might be termed "the formal culture" and "the informal culture". The formal culture being that recognized and often "managed" by the owners or senior management of the organization, and the informal is a consequence of both social and job-related interaction both within teams and departments. Schein (1996, p. 9) articulates the difficulties that can be experienced in communication between groups within the same organization. He identifies three typologies: "executives", "engineers" and "operators", each having a mutually exclusive paradigm on the organization and the key drivers of that The discussion on corporate culture and the question of whether culture has an effect upon organizational development occupies a good deal of space in contemporary academic management literature. However, the focus is largely concentrated on the larger corporate and organizational sectors. A recent exercise associated with this research, using a major online database revealed 200 journal articles related to "corporate culture" between 1995 and 1998. Detailed work on the abstracts of these articles revealed not one single reference to SME. This deficit was a major prompt to the authors in their empirical work that focused on SME owners' managers' and directors' knowledge and understanding of corporate culture, and the effect of corporate culture on the development of their companies. 

Alvesson (ibid) also challenges the term "corporate culture" itself. Whilst he recognizes some of the attributes of "corporate culture" as being present, he suggests that other attributes of organizational behaviour might be more satisfactory in providing effective definitions and explanations. He offers "organizational climate", "corporate ideology", "informal behaviour patterns", "norm systems" or "shared meanings and symbols" as alternatives.