Preview

Leadership and Org Culture

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1457 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Leadership and Org Culture
Abstract
Culture permeates all aspects of any society. It acts as the basic fabric that binds people together. Culture dictates tastes in music, clothes, and even the political and philosophical views of a group of people. Culture is not only shared, but it is deep and stable. However, culture does not exist simply as a societal phenomenon. Organizations, both large and small, adhere to a culture. Organizational culture determines how an organization operates and how its members frame events both inside and outside the organization. This paper explores the basic concepts of organizational culture. It describes what organizational culture is, its importance, how it is formed, various types of organizational cultures that exist and the role of leaders in influencing the organization culture. Organizational Culture
A plethora of definitions exist for organizational culture. Various scholars define culture as how an organization goes about meeting its goals and missions, how an organization solves problems, or as a deeply rooted value that shapes the behavior of the individuals within the group. In reality organizational culture is all of these things. In its entirety organizational culture consists of an organization's shared values, symbols, behaviors, and assumptions. From an organizational perspective, the collective values and beliefs of the individual members of that organization represent a phenomenon called, "organizational culture". It constitutes a pattern of basic assumptions held by the people in the organization that it uses to address its problem of adaptation and integration (Schein and Edgar, 1990)/ Xenikou and Furnham (Xenikou, Anthena and Adrian Furnham, 1996) identified a number of factors related to organizational culture. Four of these factors can be seen as a type of organizational culture. Following is a discussion of these factors.
Openness to change/innovation culture types group the following concepts together: humanistic

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Through decades of empirical research, scholars have established abundant links between organizational culture and organizational performance. While previously businesses were either unaware of culture’s importance or believed it too difficult to manage, today they recognize that it can be used for competitive advantage. This is something that Apple Computer gets. By leveraging their culture of innovation toward product as well as internal processes, they have been able to survive — despite incredible competition — as well as venture into new and profitable markets. But in order to use culture strategically, a company first needs to understand its culture. And there’s the rub. Culture is a complex issue that essentially includes all of a group’s shared values, attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, artifacts, and behaviors. Culture is broad — encompassing all aspects of its internal and external relationships—and culture is deep in that it guides individual actions even to the extent that members are not even aware they are influenced by it. Scholars tend to agree…

    • 2702 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Hobby Lobby

    • 1123 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Organizational culture is the summation of the underlying organizational values manifesting as collective assumptions, attitudes, beliefs, expectations and norms. Grounded in the customs and values of the organizational construct as well as in the experiences and interactions of the people within its walls, culture is the personality of an organization. In order to unravel the complex dynamics of culture within an organization, Edgar Schein offers a theory which categorizes culture into three basic elements, artifacts, espoused values and basic assumptions (Nelson & Quick, 2011).…

    • 1123 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    “Culture is made up of the values, beliefs, underlying assumptions, attitudes, and behaviors shared by a group of people. Culture is the behavior that results when a group arrives at a set of - generally unspoken and unwritten - rules for working together. An organization’s culture is made up of all of the life experiences each employee brings to the organization. Culture is especially influenced by the organization’s founder, executives, and other managerial staff because of their role in decision making and strategic direction.” (1)…

    • 1720 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Organizational culture is a system that refers to a shared meaning held by distinguished members of the organization. Culture is a descriptive term, it is concerned with how employees perceive the characteristics of an organization’s culture, not whether or not they like them. When an organization’s culture is strong the management is not concerned as much with developing formal rules and regulations to help guide employee behavior. Cultural differences will affect employee satisfaction and performance. Organizations that operate with people from high power distance such as most of Latin America, find that their employees are much more accepting of mechanistic…

    • 264 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    An organization ' 's culture encompasses everything it does and everything it makes. That is, it not only affects the manner in which managers manage (and consequently shape employee behaviour), but it also affects the way in which the organization processes its product and provides services to its customers.…

    • 1996 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Like all social mechanisms, an organization 's culture performs certain social functions, some or them intended and some of them unintended. Like organizational structure, culture is difficult to observe measure or map. In some cases, culture supports or reinforces structure, in others it conflicts with structure. In yet other situations, cultures acts as a functional alternative to reducing behavioral variability in organizations. These are the most commonly discussed functions of organizational culture…

    • 1561 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The concept of corporate culture has captured the imagination of executives for years. For executives struggling to manage organizational change, understanding their organization’s culture has become paramount before undertaking such a change. They realize that significant strategic and structural realignment cannot occur if it is not supported by the organization’s norms and values. Organization cultures are created by leaders and, therefore, one of the most important functions of a leader is the creation, management, and sometimes the destruction of a culture. An organization’s culture reflects the values, beliefs and attitudes of its members. These values and beliefs foster norms that influence employees’ behaviors. Organizational cultures evolve imperceptibly over years. Unlike mission and vision statements, they are never written down, but are the soul of an organization. Cultures are collections of unspoken rules and traditions and operate 24 hours a day. They determine the quality of organizational life. Cultures determine much of what happens within an organization. While managers are aware of their organization’s culture(s), they are often unsure about…

    • 6426 Words
    • 26 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Buchanan, D. and Huczynski, A. 2010, Organizational culture is the behavior of individuals who are associated to any company or organization. Culture comprises the organization principles, visions, customs, systems, codes, philosophy, and behaviours. In addition the model of such joint behaviors and supposition that are trained to latest organizational associates as a means of observing, and even thinking and sentiments. Organizational culture has an effect on the means people and groups act together with each other, with customers, and with shareholder. Ravasi and Schultz (2006) state that organizational culture is a set of mutual psychological supposition that direct understanding and act in organizations by defining appropriate behavior for a range of circumstances (Buchanan, D. and Huczynski, A. 2010)…

    • 3503 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    termpaper

    • 3835 Words
    • 16 Pages

    The values and behaviors that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization are called organizational culture. This is the behavior of humans who are part of an organization and the meanings that the people attach to their actions. Culture includes the organization values, visions, norms, working language, systems, symbols, beliefs and habits. There are four types of organizational culture: Clan, Adhocracy, Market, and Hierarchy.…

    • 3835 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Best Essays

    An organization’s culture is a combination of the founder’s beliefs, values, ideas, and norms. Every organization is different and presents a different culture for its employees and customers. With most organizations the culture is strong and very difficult to change. Within these organizations there are dominate cultures and well formed subcultures. In the few organizations remaining, changing the organizational culture is easier, but requires time.…

    • 1597 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Introduction Understanding of organizational culture is fundamental to examine what goes on in organizations, how to run them and how…

    • 5590 Words
    • 23 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Since the last decade the concept of culture has been used by some organizational researchers and managers in order to show the overall environment and ongoing practices which are made by the organizations in order to handle people or to maintain the values of the organization. Organizational culture means that the ways in which people in organizations are linked through shared values, beliefs and behaviours (Grey, 2012, lecture 6). The culture of an organizations shows the image of an organization and it can be used to attract and motivate the staff of the organization, culture also affects the performance of the organization and tells the workers that how they have to work (Ann cunliffe, 2008 cited in Bunchanan and huczynski, 2010). Culture is consist of the values which managers of the business want to introduce into the organization. It is through culture that rituals, climate, values behaviour are bound together in one thing (Schein, 1992). Culture of an organization shows the overall environment of the business. It reflects the personality of the organization and through culture it can be seen that how day to day activities takes place in an organization, how the employees in the organization do their work and relate with each other. Culture has no physical appearance as it is intangible so the culture of the organization can be analyzed through symbols such as logos, slogans, and names. These all can communicate culture to the employees of the business and to those who are sitting outside the organization. Dress code, physical appearance, buildings all reflect he organizational culture. Cultures in an organization are developed by the leadership of the business. Leaders in an organization create and manage culture and through their talent and skills they work it in those organizations and make other people in organization to follow the culture,…

    • 2051 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The organizational culture literature itself is fraught with epistemological debate. Practitioners are interested in management by measurement and manipulation of culture. Theoreticians of culture, however, aim to understand the depth and complexity of culture. Unresolved issues remain regarding how to define culture, the difference between culture and climate, measurement/levels of analysis, and the relationship between organizational culture and performance.…

    • 13730 Words
    • 42 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Organizational Culture has been defined in several different ways. In its most basic form, organizational culture can be defined as the shared values and beliefs that enable members to understand their roles and the norms of the organization” (Hidgetts, Luthans, & Doh, pg. 10).…

    • 731 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Organizational Culture

    • 1632 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Organizational culture, mainly discussed about in the field of business management, is usually related to the characteristics of the organization, which is rather differing from those of other countries. Thus, organizational culture can be used as a tool of distinguishing the different organizations. In addition, different organizations become themselves according to their differing organizational cultures to a great extent. The reason why the organizational cultures are different in differing organizations is based on the formation of organizational cultures. Organizational culture is formed with habits, beliefs, values, experiences and rules of the people in the organization, which is supposed to reflect the purpose of the organization and the standards or principles of behaviors of the staff…

    • 1632 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays