Roy T.

Domanais, RN
MPA204 – Saturday, 8-11AM
Assessment Task No. 4

PROCESSES INVOLVED ON WHAT MAKES AN ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

EFFECTIVE

Organizational culture is quite complex. Every company has its own unique personality,
just like people do. The unique personality of an organization is referred to as its culture.

n groups of people who work together, organizational culture is an invisible but powerful
force that influences the behavior of the members of that group.

There seems to be wide agreement that organizational culture refers to a system of

shared meaning held by members that distinguish the organization from other
organizations.

Organizational culture is a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs, which

governs how people behave in organizations. Organizational culture includes an
organization’s expectations, experiences, philosophy, and values that hold it together,
and is expressed in its self-image, inner workings, interactions with the outside world,
and future expectations.

It is based on shared attitudes, beliefs, customs, and written and unwritten rules that
have been developed over time and are considered valid.

These shared values have a strong influence on the people in the organization and
dictate how they dress, act, and perform their jobs.

Every organization develops and maintains a unique culture, which provides guidelines
and boundaries for the behavior of the members of the organization.

Organizational culture/corporate culture includes-

 The ways the organization conducts its business, treats its employees,
customers, and the wider community,

 The extent to which freedom is allowed in decision making, developing new

ideas, and personal expression,

 How power and information flow through its hierarchy, and

 How committed employees are towards collective objectives.

Characteristics of Organizational Culture

As individuals come into contact with organizations, they come into contact with dress
norms, stories people tell about what goes on, the organization’s formal rules and
procedures, its formal codes of behavior, rituals, tasks, pay systems, jargon, and jokes
only understood by insiders and so on.

Organizational culture is composed of seven characteristics that range in priority from

high to low. Every organization has a distinct value for each of these characteristics.

Members of organizations make judgments on the value their organization places on

these characteristics, and then adjust their behavior to match this perceived set of
values.

Characteristics of organizational culture are;

 Innovation (Risk Orientation).

 Attention to Detail (Precision Orientation).

 Emphasis on Outcome (Achievement Orientation).

 Emphasis on People (Fairness Orientation).

 Teamwork (Collaboration Orientation).

 Aggressiveness (Competitive Orientation).

 Stability (Rule Orientation).

Roles of Organizational Culture

Culture plays an important role in organizations. Some organizations which

developed a strong corporate culture, they increased their goodwill and got a good
position in the market.

The various roles of organizational culture are given below:

 Culture unites (brings together) employees by providing a sense of identity with

the organization.

 An informal control mechanism.

 Facilitation of open communication.

 Culture enables organizations to differentiate themselves from one another.

 Culture often generates commitment, superseding personal interests.

 Culture sets organization norms, rules, and standards. Thereby, culture enables
employees to function in an organization, by teaching them how to behave.

 A shared understanding.

 Culture becomes especially important in a program/project-based organization.

In such an organization, the hierarchy is flat and decision-making is moved to the
project/program purpose units and departments. In this context, culture provides the
guiding light towards the achievement of goals and objectives.

 Enhanced mutual trust and cooperation.

 Fewer disagreements and more efficient decision-making processes.

 A strong sense of identification.

 Assisting employees in making sense of their behaviors by providing justification

for behaviors.

Types of Organization Culture

The practices, principles, policies, and values of an organization form its culture.

The culture of an organization decides the way employees behave amongst themselves
as well as the people outside the organization.

Let us understand the various types of organization culture:

 Normative Culture,

 Pragmatic Culture,

 Academy Culture,

 Baseball Team Culture,

 Club Culture,

 Fortress Culture,

 Tough Guy Culture,

 Bet your Company Culture,

 Process Culture,

 Power Culture,
 Role Culture,

 Task Culture,

 Person Culture.

How Organizational Cultures Start

Some organizational cultures may be the direct, or at least indirect, the result of actions
taken by the founders.

However, this is not always the case.

Sometimes founders create weak cultures, and if the organization is to Survive, a new
top manager must be installed who will show the seeds for the necessary strong culture.

Although organizational cultures can develop in a number of different ways, the process
usually involves some version of the following steps:

 A single person (founder) has an idea for a new enterprise.

 The founder brings in one or more other people and creates a core group that
shares a common vision with the founder. That is, all in this core group believe that the
idea is a good one, is workable, is worth running some risks for, and is worth the
investment of time, money, and energy that will be required.

 The founding core group begins to act in concert to create an organization by

raising funds, obtaining patents, incorporating, locating space, building, and so on.

 At this point, others are brought into the organization, and a common history
begins to be built.

 Most of today’s successful corporate giants in all industries basically followed

these steps.
Ways of Managing Organizational Culture

We highlighted in our last post that there are plenty of frameworks for managing
strategy, talent, leadership, and performance, but not culture.

Culture has been this elusive, mysterious subject.

Survey action plans, engagement events or programs, and other improvements fall
short of building a strong culture foundation the entire organization can understand and
manage with clarity and speed.

Most leaders of successful cultures learn from experience and other mentors, peers, or
experts, how to piece together their improvement approaches because there isn’t a
clear guide to follow.

While some guides exist, they are not broadly known and applied like other
improvement disciplines.

Every organization that excels at the building, reinforcing, and leveraging their unique
culture in support of delivering sustainable performance has built a strong “culture
foundation.”

Steps of managing organizational culture;

1. Evaluate your current culture and performance,

2. Clarify your initial vision.

3. Clarify values and expected behaviors.

4. Clarify strategic priorities.

5. Engage your team in defining SMART goals.

6. Clarify and track key measures,

7. Maintain a management system for priorities and goals.

8. Manage communication habits and routines.

9. Build motivation throughout the process.

Step 1 – Evaluate your current culture and performance

1. Define your 1-3 critical performance priorities – e.g. growth, profitability, customer
satisfaction, etc.;

2. identify your 3-5 value/behavior strengths and

3. identify no more than 1-3 value/behavior weaknesses that are holding back your
organization from achieving its full potential with the performance priorities you defined.

Step 2 – Clarify your initial vision

Define your vision for improving results with only one or two of the performance
priorities from step No. 1 and how you will build a culture advantage by leveraging the
value/behavior strengths and improving the weaknesses.

Clearly, communicate how you will work together to improve the weak areas since they
are holding your organization back from supporting your purpose and stakeholders.

Step 3 – Clarify values and expected behaviors

Define supporting expected behaviors for the 1-3 weaknesses that you identified in step
#1.

These behaviors would be consistently exhibited in your organization if you were “living
your values.” People interpret values from their own perspective so define expected
behaviors like Zappos, The Container Store, and others.
Step 4 – Clarify strategic priorities

Define and clearly share the 3-5 actionable strategic priorities that your organization will
focus on to support the 1-2 performance priorities included in your initial vision from the
Define steps.

If the performance priority is growth, will it be achieved through new products or

services, revised sales strategies, growth with current customers, or other strategies.

Employees want and need to understand the big picture.

Step 5 – Engage your team in defining SMART goals

Engage your organization and utilize extensive feedback and prioritization to define the
objectives that support each strategic priority. These goals need to define in a way to
support the expected behaviors for the 1-2 weaknesses you identified from the Define
steps.

For example, if accountability is a weakness, goals should include more disciplined

plans, measures, reviews, recognition, and other approaches to support the behavior
you need.

Goals also need translating to all levels in larger organizations so people understand
how to work on their goals and measures impacts the broader organization.

Step 6 – Clarify and track key measures

Identify a small number of overall measures that support one or two top performance
priorities from the Define steps. It may help to have one highly visible “unifying metric”
even if some employees don’t directly influence it.
Step 7 – Maintain a management system for priorities and goals

Most organizations have a system to track or monitor the status of priorities and goals.
These reviews need adjusting to focus additional time and attention on the top
performance priorities and value/behavior shifts identified in the Define steps.

The focus must be on results and supporting the behavior shift through recognition,
coaching, removing barriers, etc.

Step 8 – Manage communication habits and routines

Transparent, genuine and consistent communication is needed about your performance

improvement journey and the role of culture so all employees feel part of the process.

Regularly scheduled sessions with two-way communication and extensive informal

approaches are needed to emphasize expected behaviors and results. Use these
sessions to clarify plans, answer questions, expose rumors and reduce drama.

Step 9 – Build motivation throughout the process

Feedback and recognition are critical to the process.

Share and celebrate progress in a transparent manner as a standard part of regular

communication activities. Confront reality when improvements don’t go as planned and
re-engage your team to prioritize adjustments.

Guidelines for Changing Culture

Despite the significant barriers and resistance to change, organizational cultures can be
managed and changed over time. This attempt to change the culture “can take many
different forms.
The organizations and managers in the global relations “must learn to communicate
across the cultural divide; each must understand that the other perceives and interacts
in a fundamentally different way.

Three-fourths of companies believe their alliances failed because of an incompatibility of

the country and corporate cultures. Simple guidelines such as the following can be
helpful;

 Assess the current culture.

 Set realistic goals that impact the bottom line.

 Recruit outside personnel with industry experience, so that they are able to
interact well with the organizational personnel.

 Make changes from the top down, so that a consistent message is delivered from
all management team members.

 Include employees in the culture change process, especially when making

changes in rules and processes.

 Take out all trappings that remind the personnel of the previous culture.

 Expect to have some problems and find people who would rather move than
change with the culture and, if possible, take these losses early.

 Move quickly and decisively to build momentum and to defuse resistance to the
new culture.

 Stay the course by being persistent.

Also, organizations attempting to change their culture must be careful not to abandon
their roots and blindly abandon their core, but distinctive, competencies.
References

Deal T. E. and Kennedy, A. A. (1982, 2000) Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals
of Corporate Life, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1982; reissue Perseus Books, 2000

The Business Dictionary. Organizational culture

Schein, Edgar H. Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010.
Print.

Cummings, Thomas G. & Worley, Christopher G. (2004), Organization Development

and Change, 8th Ed., South-Western College Pub.

Boisnier, A. Chatman, J. (2002). The Role of Subcultures in Agile Organizations.

Leading and managing people in dynamic organizations. Forthcoming, 2002.