Organization Culture

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Table of Contents

Executive summary
Abstract
Introduction
Strong vs. weak culture
A cohesive organizational culture
Benefits of a cohesive organizational culture
Recommendations
Conclusion
References

Executive summary

Firms are faced with progressively more dynamic environments, which are distinguished by significant and impulsive variations in economics, politics and social aspects. The ability of an organization to respond rapidly to these changes depends on the organizational culture.

These cultures therefore exert stabilizing force on organizations by encouraging cohesion, organizational commitment and desirable working conditions among the employees.

Organizational culture is well known to have a particular definition of being collective shared customs and values not forgetting the expectations that are shared between individuals and groups in an organization where it governs their interactions amongst each other and also how they interact with the stakeholders of the organization.

Therefore, it is a collection of mental hypothesis that steer the interpretations and events in an organization through giving a clear definition of the right behavior for different situations (Ravasi and Svchultz, 2006 68).

This definition brings into light organizational values which in turn can be defined as ideologies concerning the goals members of an organization should aim at and eventually achieve having used the appropriate standards of behavior. In simpler terms, organizational culture is what is expected for an employee to do so that he/she can fit in and enhance efficiency of the organization.

Abstract

The purpose of the research below is to evaluate the changes that are interconnected with organization culture and how these changes can be incorporated into the organization for effective success and accomplishment organizational goals. The paper focuses on organizational cultures that influence change in organization and how the changes should be implemented.

The research done mainly relied on literature works that clearly defined organizational culture in relation to the need of change in an organization. Several challenges that prompted the need for change have been discussed. Most of these challenges have been identified from different literatures. The discussions have been augmented with possible solutions.

Introduction

Organizational culture is a collection of mental hypothesis that steer the interpretations and events in an organization through giving a clear definition of the right behavior for different situations (Ravasi and Svchultz 2006, 91). Organizational culture can be described in terms of norms and practices.

Norms represent beliefs on how members of an organization ought to behave while practices are the routines used by an organization to carry out its operations (William and Jeffrey 2010, 112).

Thus, organizational culture can also be defined as a set of perceptive which are shared by a group of people that are fundamentally understood among the members and are undoubtedly appropriate and characteristic to the specific group and they eventually are passed onto new members.

Strong vs. weak culture

Due to the fact that all organizations have cultures there are some that have stronger cultures than others. An organizational culture can be either weak or strong and both of these have their merits and demerits. A strong organizational structure co- exists where members of an organization respond effectively to the organizational values and this is vital to organizations since it enables proper execution of duties.

A weak organizational culture on the other hand occurs when there is little or no alignment of organizational values between members of an organization and intensive procedures in addition to bureaucracy ought to be put into action for normal operations of the organization to prevail (Cunha and Cooper 2002, 52). For a strong culture, a lot of emphasis was put on

The extent of constancy of values and ideas in members of the organization.
The articulacy of consistent beliefs, hypotheses and performance.

Various components of organizational culture had the assumption that a strong organizational culture had numerous benefits to almost all organizations since it motivated the members and created solidarity among them that brought about commitment to the organization thus leading to the facilitation of internal amalgamation and dexterity.

On the other hand, it was realized that a strong culture is more essential to several categories of organizations than others for instance; volunteer organizations must be emphatic on culture than organizations that deal in business.

A strong culture may be undesirable at times since it has numerous probable dysfunctions and a good example of this is where an individual could put unconstraint stress on him/herself because of a strong culture and the internal controls that are related with it and by this, it acts as a barrier to adaptation and change. Not leaving out the fact that a strong culture can be a way of manipulation and co-optation (Dean and Gerald 2004, 61).

A strong culture could lead to the disarticulation of aims and objectives indicating that the behavioral values and methods of carrying out activities in an organization could turn out to be so vital that they start overlooking the main purpose of the organization (Alan, 2000).

However, a weak culture opens up the opportunities for each member of the organization to explain concerns exclusive to them while on the other hand a weak culture can lead to the encouragement of individual thinking and contributions and this could really help an organization that requires innovation to grow (McKeown 2008, 98).

A cohesive organizational culture

The term ‘cohesion’ in social policy means the link and bond between members of a society hence in organizational structures; cohesion is the term used when referring to the emotional aspects of organizations.

In a cohesive organizational culture, all members of an organization work together and there is efficient coordination of the organization’s operations. In this organizational structure, members of the organization are usually on the same page.

Benefits of a cohesive organizational culture

A cohesive organizational structure has numerous benefits to the organization and organizational science researchers used metaphors to intricate the importance of organizational culture. Organizational culture has the ability to be measured and this assists managers and their relevant organizations to carry out an assessment and examination of organizational culture hence upgrading the performance of the organization.

Also, a strong organizational culture is highly related and prone to other concepts of interest such as innovation and knowledge management; a factor that boosts the efficiency of the organization. One of the benefits of a cohesive organizational culture in an organization is the increment in financial growth.

This culture has a strengthened internal communication system, a high employee input and it encourages risk taking in the organization that eventually leads to innovation. A cohesive organizational culture benefits an organization by improving its performance and gradual growth.

Work group cohesion in an organization leads to proper coordination of operations and the employee output generates tremendous financial results for the organization (Ahmed 2008, 106). Also, a cohesive organizational culture is good for the organization because it gives the members the capability to generate innovative ideas and strategies. This factor is quite profitable and beneficial to the respective organization.

There are several changes that should be implemented by management of BSG Ltd in order to tackle the issues of larceny, low level of job contentment, poor group work, lack of unity amongst employees and low levels of trust between the management and employees.

It has been proven that organizational culture affects the efficiency and performance of an organization despite the fact that it is implicit on organizational activities (Cullen 2002, 45; Mathew 2007, 10). A change in the management should consider putting into practice is that of offering support orientation to the employees. Support orientation is the assistance given to an employee either through counseling or by being trained.

Support orientation is an aspect of organizational structure whereby the problems that employees experience are commonly categorized as personal and work related. For instance, an employee problem that is work related concerns official relationship issues while an upcoming retirement is a personal.

Offering financial help to employees during their hardships is a form of support orientation. Before implementing any changes the management must conduct extensive research to note the problems that are present in the organization in order to make sure that the changes implemented will be used to effectively sort the problems at hand. These challenges include:

Lack of cohesion among the employees

As an organization, the management has to put that into consideration today because of the rapid environmental changes since human resource is a critical part for a competitive advantage.

Without a good human resource management, the organization faces a likelihood of failures as compared with when the human resource is has a better human resource management as it provides the opportunity to work with highly competent employees. How employees relate with each other and the management defines the effectiveness of achieving set goals.

Cohesion is uniting people together in a bid to achieve a common goal (Glisson 2007, 104). Cohesion is considered among the most important influences on organizational performance therefore lack of cohesion among the employees may be due to a number of factors these factors may include:

Absence of clear and common goal

If employees are not aware of the organizational goals then there is a high probability that employees will lack a sense of cohesion among them. Any organization trying to be successful has to have a clear vision that will guide employees to strive and achieve even in the future. Inability to communicate (lack of effective communication) these goals may result to conflicts and lack of cohesiveness among employees.

Communication and trust

People build trust through communication. Lacking an open communication process is a contributing factor to lack of cohesion among staff. It is therefore the duty for organizations’ management team to ensure that there is open communication between the management and the staff. In many cases, conflicts arise due to lack of effective communication among individuals especially when people do not trust each other.

Culture

A cohesive organizational culture is an organization whereby all members of staff labor together and there is competent harmonization of the organization’s operations. An organizational with a sense of culture is an organization that provides its members of staff with the ability to see things in the same way hence they are usually on the same page (Glisson, 2007).

Without organizational culture there are no clear understandings of what behaviors are important, what attitudes are appropriate, or what kind of consequences shall be vested to those not abiding the place culture for the company to strive for success

Fairness

Achieving cohesiveness among employees relies significantly on the capacity of the management to treat employees fairly and employees treating each other fairly. “Fairness is easily realized when people exercise mutual respect arising from a fair power balance that may be as an outcome of marketplace-driven difficulties in finding good human resources or philosophy driven legal restraints on employee’s rights” (Cowin 2002, 45).

One of the changes that should be implemented is changing the hostile culture to progress organizational performance hence increasing its degree of competition.

Low levels of job satisfaction

According to Cowin (2000, 85), job satisfaction is an emotional state resulting from an individual’s attitude about their job. This is the extent to which one feels positively or negatively about intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of one’s job. Low level of job satisfaction can result from shortages, poor management or lack of organizational support.

When the organization faces a shortage in manpower, it results to heavy workload to the few members of staff which later may lead to development of job stress leading to low job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is defined within extrinsic and intrinsic values.

Extrinsic values comprises of the tangible aspects of a job. These include wages, bonuses and benefits. Intrinsic values on the other hand comprises of intangible aspects of a job like, status, recognition, personal and professional development opportunities and other comparable factors (Cowin 2002, 86).

Reasons for employee’s dissatisfaction may be due to lack of involvement in decision making process, poor relationship ties with the management low salaries and poor benefits, lack of job security poor recognition and lack of flexibility in scheduling. It is important to note that job satisfaction has been found to be better predictor of intent to leave as compared to availability of other employment opportunities.

Organizations commitment

Organization’s commitment has arguably been correlated to output, work attendance, revenues, retirement, involvement and consideration for welfare. It is an exogenous variable that predicts the result of both hypothetical and practical interests for organizational analysts. Thus analysis of organization’s commitment roots from apprehension of the behavioral effects that are assumed to be an outcome of job satisfaction.

According to William and Jeffrey (2010, 201), “organizational commitment is a step in the right direction as it expresses behavioral intentions which can be defined as the intention to remain with the organization being primary but it too suffers the problem that weighed down job satisfaction”.

Low level of trust between management and employees

The relationship between an employer and his/its employees is the basis of what makes an organization effective. A good relationship depends on respect and trust whereby, trust is a social mechanism that has been approached by many economist and organizational theorist.

Trust is significant in promoting consensual relationships and facilitates cooperation between individuals within organizations. Where there is mistrust between the management and the employees, the organization is bound to fail. Lack of trust becomes one of the top priority problems in an organization

Poor work team

Teamwork involves groups of interdependent employees who work cooperatively to achieve group outcomes. Effective team implementation can enhance the motivational properties of work and increase job satisfaction.

Although there are various advantages of team work, sometimes these teams may fail to yield the expected outcomes for individuals and organizations. Poor team work impacts negatively on the ability of the organization to achieve its goals.

However, there are many reasons for poor team performance such as, the team may not have clear goals or performance metrics, the team may be composed of the wrong people with the wrong set of skills for the task at hand, the team may not be in a position to foster creativity or good decision making or also poor teamwork may result due to individuals trying to dominate a group by imposing their opinions and solutions so as to meet their own needs most of which vary from the needs of the team.

Largely, poor team performance is mainly because of a team’s inability to systematically engage in team building activities like team processes for evaluating the team’s performance and engaging in problem-solving activities that lead to improved team performance (Mathew, 2007 13).

In order to curb the poor team work problem, management should encourage knowledge sharing between members since this improves organizational effectiveness and efficiency not forgetting its overall output (Wubbolding 2006, 142)

Staff turnover

The ability to manage and maintain human resource in an organization is a challenging task since workers do not always behave ideally as managers would want. There are instances when people leave suddenly due to various reasons; they get sick, take maternity leave or retire early, the coming in and going out of employees is what is referred to as staff turnover.

Staff turnover may be caused by several factors which maybe due to low or high unemployment figures or feeling of insecurity due to reports of poor performance which maybe a reason for an employee to leave an organization. High staff turnover rates create continual human resource problems for any organization’s management.

Recommendations

To restore employees’ cohesiveness in the organization, the management is advised to develop and communicate clearly common organizational goals to its employees. Employees should also be aware of the organizations vision and mission. They are advised to ensure that the employees are included and recognized as part of the organization stakeholder to ensure that the company is growing to achieve the company’s growth.

This can be done through bonus schemes, which stimulates employees to attain higher work performance levels and it can also be used as a great motivator to accomplish organizations goals.

In addition, employee stock options is a kind of compensation package which could be implemented because these two options grants an employee a physically powerful reason to work for the growth of the company as they feel that they are valued hence will stay with the company.

There is need for management and employees to trust each other so as to build strong cohesion within the company. Trust can only be rated in terms of actions and intentions carried out over a timed period.

This is a two way process, therefore it needs efforts from both the management and the employees although the management has to be on the forefront for structuring and strengthening this trust (William and Jeffrey 2010, 41).

The organization has to have strong cultures where values and norms are shared and strongly held which in turn leads to an organization enjoying better returns on investments higher net income growth and bigger increase in share price than counterpart organizations with weak cultures.

The management must be concerned with team performance because most of the work done today requires it to be successfully completed in a team environment. It is important to note that no single person is capable of developing, manufacturing and selling any type of product single handedly.

Therefore teams of individuals with complementary knowledge must coordinate effectively in order for an organization to be successful hence there is need for teamwork.

To be a high performing company in today’s competitive market, it requires one to have high performing teams these are members with skills, attitudes and competencies that will help an organization realize and meet its goals, encourage team members to be optimistic in terms of productivity and give them morale as they are the most important factors to attain a high performing team (Ahmed, 2008 49).

High performing teams do not just happen; it is the management’s duty to ensure they are developed and natured. As a result, it always takes the combined efforts of the visionary leader and willingness of the team members to come up with a high working and performing team. One way of encouraging team work would be rewarding performing teams while punishing poor teamwork behavior.

Organizations administrators must ensure that they are aware of the number of employees that are at risk for leaving employment at any given time. Most of the time employees leave their present employment environment in such of new opportunities that would adequately meet their needs. Getting to know your staff will help you notice some of the warning signs of potential staff turnover.

Another way to curb staff turnover would be to develop new strategies to improve retention over time. Once the administration is aware of factors such as age, education marital status social support and employment tenures of their employees, it would greatly impact job satisfaction one of the core factors in staff turnover.

The organization can also ensure its employees experience job satisfaction by ensuring that the level of job supervision is of high quality. Proficient supervisors who treat employees with respect and think about the needs and interest of the employees when they make decisions tend to foster high levels of job satisfaction in the organizations employees (Cullen 2002, 47)

Employees’ participation in developmental activities may be influenced by their level of job satisfaction. Employees who have high job satisfaction are prone to participate in developmental activities to enhance the probability of maintaining of their current job or remain a member of the organization.

Organizations executives are also encouraged to be flexible and recognize when particular situation calls for them to change tactics. There are several other ways for the organization to increase on job satisfaction. For example, rewarding the employee with a pay raise or amending employee’s job description to match employee’s interest is likely to increase worker job satisfaction.

Conclusion

An organization will only achieve its goals only if its human resource management is competent. This is the body that brings together the view points of personnel staff and is in line with supervisors with an effort to get the most effective workers to help the organization attain its goals.

Management should measure the organizational culture because by doing so, organizational utilities such as employee performance and improvement are thus influenced and pragmatically observed. A strong organizational culture is highly related and prone to other concepts of interest such as innovation and knowledge management; a factor that boosts the efficiency of the organization.

References

Ahmed, N., 2008. Corporate governance around the world Volume 1 of Routledge studies in corporate governance. London: Routledge.

Alan T. B., 2000. Leading the learning organization: communication and competencies for managing change. New York: SUNY Press.

Cowin, L. S., 2000. The effects of nurses’ job satisfaction on retention: An Australian perspective. New York, NY: John Willey.

Cullen, J. B., 2002. Multinational Management. Kansas: South-Western College Publishing

Cunha,R., and Cooper, C., 2002. “Does privatization affect corporate culture and employee well being?” Journal of Managerial psychology. Vol 6 Issue 1. p. 56-89.

Dean, S. Gerald, D. B, John K., 2004. The Carolina way: leadership lessons from a life in coaching. London: Penguin.

Glisson, C., 2000. “Assessing and changing organizational culture and climte for effective services.” Research on Social Work Practice. Vol 4, issue 2. p. 45-114.

Mathew, J. 2007. “The relationship of organizational culture with productivity and quality.” Employee relations. Vol 14, issue 2. p. 4-14.

McKeown M., 2000. The Truth about Innovation. London: Prentice Hall.

Ravasi, D. and Schultz, M., 2006. “Responding to Organizational Identity Threats: Exploring the Role of Organizational Culture.” Academy of Management Journal Vol 6, issue 9. p. 65-94.

William, G. D. and Jeffrey H. D., 2010. Team Building: Proven Strategies for Improving Team Performance 4^th ed. Edition. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Wubbolding, R., 2006. Employee Motivation: What to Do….when What You Say Isn’t Working! New York, NY: Sage.

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