Power And Culture Within Organisations - Essay Example

According to Edgar Schein (1985), organizational culture is that pattern of basic assumptions that are shared, and that a group learns in its endeavour to solve problems of internal integration and external adaptation. Further, these shared assumptions should have well worked in the past and are therefore qualify to be taught to the organization’s new members as a right way to think, perceive and feel with respect to these problems. These values and norms are the ones that control the way people act and interact with one another and with people outside the organization including other stakeholders.

In the actual sense, an organization’s culture is actually its personality according to McNamara (2000). In this sense, different organizations have different organizational cultures more like people have different personalities. An organization may have a weak or strong culture generally (Parker, 2000). A strong culture exists where members of staff respond to stimulus as a result of their respect and appreciation for organizational values. In such a case, people tend to act in a given way since they believe that is the right way to act.

A weak culture on the other hand is in place when staff members have little commitment to the organization’s values and therefore must be controlled through the application of bureaucracy and/or extensive procedures. According to Kennedy and Deal (1982), organizational culture is the way things are “here” done. In one of their research, the two measured organizations using two parameters – risk or uncertainty and feedback or response. According to the findings of this study, Kennedy and Deal noted that organizations may be distinctly classified into four with respected to culture.

The four cultures include the process culture, the bet your company culture, the play hard/work hard culture, and the tough-guy macho culture. The process