Organisational Culture
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GENERAL INFORMATION AND IDEAS ABOUT CULTURE
We all grow up in a culture – during our childhood, in our adulthood, when we are at work, in our social life. Because culture is socially learned we tend to become familiar with it and often take if for granted. Nevertheless we are often sensitive to culture change since culture itself tends to be rooted in strong beliefs and values and thus becomes hard to alter.
When we examine organizations, culture becomes important because it is the emotional and non-rational element within an organisation - it provides us with guidelines about behaviour, it indicates standards about what people say and do and it is used to promote strong and shared values. Culture relates to such issues as customs and traditions, rituals, ceremonies, stories, language, all of which are in effect cognitions shared by members of an organization. Culture is a kind of unique identity; it is the outcome of an organisation’s history, the environment in which it is set, its selection procedures and its socialisation processes. Culture is often seen as a conceptual map which helps members to understand preferred attitudes and behaviour.
Culture can also be viewed as a process of social fermentation which goes a long way to building attitudes and behaviours, strong identities and teams It is a descriptive rather than evaluative concept, an organisationally specific set of characteristics. Culture affects job satisfaction and performance - it can stifle, reward, control, motivate; it is important in explaining retention, turnover, selection, promotion. It helps us to understand what is U and non-U. Culture affects how an individual fits into the context of the organisation; it is a part of the person-culture fit theory in which individuals respond to different cultures (i.e. beliefs, values, expectations, incentives, norms - all of which affect attitudes and behaviour). All this makes culture important in organisations. Certain cultures attract certain individuals and vice versa, i.e. people often attracted to organisations whose values are similar to their own. If the values are not the same, then people leave. Thus organisations go out of their way (frequently through the medium of psychometric testing) to recruit people with shared values. In many cases the old question emerges at selection time - will they fit in or will they be fish out of water !
It is important to view culture as the reverse aspect of the rational side of organizational activities such as rules, planning, sanctions, set procedures, directives, quantitative analysis and techniques.
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DEFINITIONS - HERE IS A SELECTION FOR YOU TO CONSIDER
· The meanings and understandings that members of organisations share about their work
· The pattern of basic assumptions a group has invented, discovered or developed in learning to cope with the problems of external
adaptation
· An amalgam of beliefs, ideologies, language, ritual and myth (Pettigrew, 1979)
· Its the way we do things round here (Deal, 1982)
· Culture is the inculcation of a common purpose - an ingrained sense of values
· The social glue which holds an organisation together; sharing in a unique and common psychology
· The meanings and understandings members of organisations share about their work and how this is reflected in their behaviour
· The subtle and implicit ways an organisation influences the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individual members
TRYING TO DISCOVER THE CULTURE OF AN ORGANISATION
While you may can go along with the concept of culture as conveying to members the way we do things round here, to advance your understanding you need to ask and then discover what this actually involves. Trying to discover an organisation’s culture can be interesting as well as presenting problems. You can look for it by observation and listening, by listening to stories and tales, by studying language, by analysing sets of relationships in the organisation within groups and teams or between different sets of colleagues. You can look at symbols or through semiotics (language). The language of funeral directors, software developers and professionals like solicitors or medical practitioners all vary enormously. Again you may look at how rules are employed and also put some to the test (can you get away with certain things and not others, like dress codes or first name terms for the Chief Executive or Chairman).
Various labels or descriptions of different organizational cultures may be of help to you here – here are several examples -
praise or blame cultures; control cultures; rule bound cultures; bureaucratic cultures; creative cultures; repressive and control cultures; professional cultures; production cultures; task oriented or people oriented. There are plenty of other descriptions to be applied to cultures - e.g. formal, conservative, informal, staid, innovative, risk taking or risk aversive, team oriented, orthodox, warm, friendly. The cultures of mechanistic organisations (in the main public sector bureaucracies) tend to vary considerably from organic (more flexible and dynamic) organisations.
ESTABLISHING CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN ORGANISATIONS
Differences are manifest in various ways -
· by overt behaviours in the workplace - how you greet, meet, interact and do business together; Turks and Arabs like to drink tea, Japanese
bow and talk about family before getting down to it, Danes like to have a good laugh to break the ice, Germans frequently shake hands
and Americans often back-slap
· by use of language, words, phrases - the rise of the multicultural workplace can lead to different meanings and interpretation and indeed
misunderstandings and misconceptions.
· by the use of ritual, mystique, pageantry, values, stories, symbols -all important in learning about cultural differences
To give you an indication of how to be successful when working across different cultures, consider the following national traits -
The Chinese place high emphasis on seniority and authority - there is far less emphasis on challenging managerial decisions
The Arabs tend to value authority as well as personal relationships - religious belief is especially significant as well as education and contacts
The Americans in general value independence, action, freedom and transparency - you place all your cards on the table
The Germans value title, degrees, punctuality and efficiency - ensure you are well prepared before any business meeting
The Japanese are concerned with long term relationships, proper introductions and established procedures
SUMMARISING THE DIFFERENT COMPONENTS OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
Symbols, language and jargon, sayings, slogans, rites, rituals, ceremonies, conventions, customs, history, norms, beliefs, values, etiquette, demeanour, socialisation practices, assumptions, ideologies, standards, stories, traditions, mystique - all these interrelate and combine to form an organisation’s essential character and identity. Values relate to the collective sense of what should be striven for; assumptions are shared premises.
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