Organizational culture is being considered as a crucial determinant of organization performance and its success. Global researchers and management scholars argue that development of a strong and leaner organizational culture plays a pivotal role in success. Whilst the connection amongst organizational culture and organizational efficiency is far from certain, one cannot deny that every organization belongs to a unique social structure and that these social structures are the driving factors for most of the individual behaviour found in organizations.
A strong organizational culture is a set of informal rules which defines personnel behaviour at all times. In a weak culture, workers waste a lot of time in trying to figure out what they must do and how to do it. Creating and maintaining the Organizational features is one of the key roles of strategic leaders; features that reward and influence collective efforts. The most central to these is organizational culture (Teegarden, et al., 2011).
Schein, E. H. (1984) written article Organizational Culture and Leadership: A Dynamic View reveals that an organization’s culture is said to develop to aid in coping with its environment. Nowadays, several intricate issues are facing organizational leaders in their efforts to create organizational goals in diverse environments. The success of the leader is shaped by how well he understands organizational culture. Most of the issues encountering leaders could be traced to their inability to study and measure organizational cultures. Several leaders in an attempt to implement innovative approaches or a strategic plan extending to a newer vision, will end up discovering that their strategies will backlash if they are incompatible with the organization’s culture.
Cultural norms are referred to as behavioural patterns that are distinctive of particular groups. Such behaviours are adopted from teachers, peers, seniors, and several others whose attitudes, values, beliefs, vision, and behaviour occur in the context of their own organizational cultures. Some norms are beneficial for the organization and contribute to the improvement of the organization while some may not be. Cultural norms usually are so strongly ingrained within an organization that it may be unaware of certain organizational behaviour, unless these behaviours are identified in the setting of a different culture having different beliefs and values (Bolman & Deal, 2008).
The basic observation one needs to make pertaining to organizational culture analysis is that a differentiation between the normative and expressive level must be made to be able to distinguish between the normative and expressive culture.
Normative culture assigns collective set of formal rules, prescriptions, positions, norms, and hierarchies. It is termed as a prescriptive and instrumental culture, primarily adaptive and imitative in nature, placing emphasis on organization, and deals with abidance with the rules and suitable accomplishment of roles and responsibilities. Normative culture is strongly shaped by the organization’s managerial culture and depicts the visible layer in organization culture.
On the other hand, expressive culture is a reflection of feelings, emotions, and aspirations of the organization workforce. Expressive culture is also inclusive of organizational and individual attributes that are linked with various aspects in organizational environment. As opposed to normative culture, expressive culture reflects a less visible layer. Yet, it contains several ingredients that are directly noticeable and indicate the organization symbolism. In this expressive culture, one may include myths and stories of the organization, but their primary focus is in imaginary and collective depiction. It is a concoction of in-depth, hidden and visible aspects, representing the organization real life. In contrast to normative culture that gives expression to the objective and formal dimensions, expressive culture places emphasis on groups and individuals, representing the information and the subjective aspects of the organization.
These two designs overlap and determine one another. Yet, in certain turn of events, one of them may prevail. Finally, culture can be defined in a synthetic way as a common code for an organization which is the most crucial reference system for shaping the organization identity.
Following are the most essential aspects of an organizational culture:
1. Culture acts a promoting catalyst for an ideal that mobilized organizations to achieve it
2. Culture is set on a realism axis
3. Organizational culture brings in diversity, uniformity and unity.
Norms constitute the instrumental area of organization culture, representing the most evident section for a person which comes in direct contact with the organization for the first time. Being derived from cultural values and key assumptions, norms are presented as a set of rules and anticipations that orient to worker behaviour within the organization. Therefore, norms form the contact point for organization workforce with their culture and are the modes of conveying values and core assumptions (Fiedler, 2011).
The aforementioned distinction between normative and expressive culture becomes more practical at norms level. From this perspective, two groups of norms can be defined:
1. Formal, organizational norms that are devised by experts or senior level management hired for this role, and made mandatory
2. Informal norms devised by specific groups or personnel and distributed via stories, myths, etc. Informal rules are the representation of informal culture on the basis of specific values disseminated within an informal space
Such norms are generally developed by “culture engineers” specifically hired to produce various elements of informal expressive culture so as to retain a certain standard in the organization through expressive culture which is regarded their own product; not through official norms which are regarded to be restrictive.
Furthermore, norms have direct involvement in the organizational change process due to the fact that they provide for interventions in a domain easily accessible to individuals. One needs to refer to an organization’s value and philosophical layers to gain a profound understanding and a grasp of its culture. If one wishes to change organizational culture and apply it as development or maintenance tool, they must refer to its normative layer. Indeed, norms express one of the assumptions for culture unity, the reference system of rules for executives and leaders in workforce assessment. Such assessments are most likely to encourage norms strengthening and are usually associated with bonuses. Moreover, cultural norms act as a reference system for the organizational workforce too, whose professional attitude towards them shapes the model that develops organizational ethos.
The reduction of informal rules to organizational culture is taken to explain performance and development, leading to a somewhat cultural-ist misconception. Informal rules are produced at various levels of economic life and process. Some organizations have a cultural and long-term nature, while some have a restricted time span along with a weak relationship with rules and cultural values. Whilst some are strongly resilient, there is different degree of inertia at different levels of economy and society. For example, an informal and culture behaviour traits related to resource shortage have reduced rapidly in all sectors wherein a transfer from a resource-restrained to a demand-restrained economy has been determined in a few weeks/ months. Having said, changes in values and informal rules are usually detected after a few years.
“Organizational culture develops and manifests itself differently in different organizations” (Bedrule-Grigoruta & Agheorghiesei, 2005). It would unpractical for one to make comparisons between cultures, that one culture is different or better than another in certain aspects. Only a good culture exists, not ideal ones, which are suitable to the organization. Clearly, this entails that there can never be a universal formula for the effective management of any organization’s culture, even though there are specific approaches being adopted. Culture management concerns with the execution, the recreation of the existing culture of an organization or the betterment of an obsolete culture (Kane-Urrabazo, 2006). Normally, the approach of the organizational culture can be characterized by many universal considerations such as:
1. Social norms: Creating differences throughout national boundaries that determine how people interact and interrelate socially.
2. Values and attitudes: These vary from nation to nation, in terms of certain circumstances.
3. Religion is another origin of cultural disputes. Practices, holidays, and belief systems vary in very basic ways that must be considered since one tries to shape organizational culture within a global setting.
4. Education or ways by which people are accustomed to learning are different across national borders.
Looking at the aforesaid aspects, it can be concluded that culture management is an analysis and diagnosis issue, followed by the managers’ accomplishing of a number of sufficient interventions or a set of change mechanisms, intending to transforming the organization.
References:
Bedrule-Grigoruta, M. V., & Agheorghiesei, D. C., (2005). Proceedings of the 6th International Conference: Managing the Process of Globalization in New and upcoming EU members. Managing Organizational Culture in a Global Organization: The Case of Romania in the Process of Integration in the European Union. Congress Centre: Bernardin.
Bolman, L., & Deal, T. (2008). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice and Leadership (4th ed.). CA: John Wiley & Sons.
Teegarden. P. H., Hinden, D. R., & Sturm, P. (2011). The Non-Profit Organizational Culture Guide: Revealing the hidden truths that impact performance. CA: John Wiley & Sons
Fiedler, A. (2011). Strategic choice, organisational culture and worker-initiated innovation- evidence from the liberalised German Airport industry. Retrieved from http://final.dime-eu.org/files/Fiedler_B4.pdf
Kane-Urrabazo, C. (2006). ‘Management's role in shaping organizational culture’. Journal of Nursing Management, 14, 188-194.
Schein,E.H.(1984). Organizational Culture and Leadership: A Dynamic View. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
