Organizational culture involves a system of shared beliefs, values, norms, symbols and traditions common in an organization. In this regard, these cultures determine how organization members conduct and treat others. It also determines how people think, feel and react towards the organization set of rules. These cultures involve mental processes or exercises that require the use of intellectual knowledge for sight or wisdom, imaginations and intelligent judgment considered as the correct ways that define what is important or unimportant.
However, there are several sets of artifact that define organizational culture such as (a) Observed Behaviors: These are noticeable symbols and signs of an organization’s culture, for example, the physical appearance of the environment, mode of dressing, manners of address, and emotional display and the organization reputation stories told. (b) Espoused beliefs and values: published lists of values and its observable rituals and ceremonies define organizational culture. For example, let’s take an organization like Nokia, if sales for Nokia phone begins to decline, sales manager would say “Advertisement can increase our sales” this is due to his/her belief that advertising always increases sales. If the manager’s idea yields positive results, then everyone is convinced “Advertisement increases sales” hence becoming a shared value that was once an assumption (Schein, 2010).
Organizational culture has stretched its impacts to individual’s capacity to change, and those who fail to transform as per set of the organization culture, hence exposed to excommunication that might lead to expulsion from the organization. Espoused values are critical to the running of an organization since they remain to govern how the organization runs. For example, ethical or moral rules remain conscious and explicitly articulated because they serve the normative or moral function of guiding members of the organization. As discussed earlier, those who fail to observe ethical norms to the later finds themselves in slender line of remaining in the organization.
Organization’s culture has positive and negative impacts in running activities in an organization. For example, a set of ethical rules can govern how people behave. Ethical values are significant in that they determine how people deal with matters and become a guide to dealing with conflicting issues in workplaces.
In most organizations, culture is nonfigurative since through evaluation, research has indicated that some beliefs and values statutes contradict on how they mutually relate to the performance of an organization. Such nonfigurative values leave a large gap of behavior unexplained, leaving people concerned with a feeling of not understanding culture statutes. For these cultures to be useful, people need to understand the pattern and importance in order to participate towards the organization development, and to promote good working environment (Weiner, 2009).
In conclusion, organization culture is a significant object that affects performance of an organization. As discussed in this paper, culture acts as a control mechanism that directs people discipline and behaviors. Well-defined culture puts people together to enhance unity especially in working places whereby if well implemented, serves as fulfillment towards people’s needs. On the other hand, it promotes efficiency and competence to increase chances of success of an organization.
References
Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership (Vol. 2). Wiley. com.
Weiner, B. J. (2009). A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implement Sci, 4(1), 67.
