Examine organizational culture of an organization and how it impacts its success
a Case Study
Key Learning Outcomes
By the end of the case, students should be able to:
- Understand what is meant by organizational culture and its significance to organizations
- Understand the impact of organizational culture on companies and how it leads to organizational growth and development
- Learn how to apply organizational cultures to real-life companies
1.0 INTRODUCTION
The current business world has strongly transformed and this transformation is attributed to communication and emerging technologies. Currently, businesses employ people from different nations, languages, cultures, and backgrounds to run the business and manage it effectively. With the current expansion in the business world where people from different nations are employed, international companies have a lot more to consider when trying to penetrate into the market and be successful. There are a number of factors among which the most important is that of culture. Successful companies in several countries or regions are required to fully understand the various cultural differences across the nation. There are various aspects of culture and primarily these include; religion, political philosophy, economic philosophy, education, language, social structure, and so many others.
What is organizational culture? Organizational culture is defined as the company's beliefs, values, and attitudes, and how these factors affect the behavior of employees and customers, it can also be defined to mean the basic assumptions and beliefs shared within an organization. Armstrong and Taylor, (2017) point out that values are what is believed to be important about how people behave, while norms are the unwritten rules of behavior. Izuogu, (2015) simply put culture as the “way we do things here”. Organizations ought to clearly analyze all the cultural determinants because it is very clear that cultural sensitivity is a critical factor in determining the success of the company globally.
The importance of organizational culture in the strategic management of a business is that it is one way by which it can sustain itself. The company’s structure may be systematic but once its workforce does not adhere to certain cultural traits then it’s bound to fail in the future. Mullins, (2016) explains the purpose of organizational structure as the basis for division of work among members in the business, and the coordination of these activities so that they are aimed at achieving the goals and objectives of the entity. Structure then is defined as the pattern of relationships among positions in the organization and among the members involved. This study is going to examine the organizational culture of an organization and how it impacts its growth and development.