Examine the Role of Culture in an Organization a Case Study
Key Learning Outcomes
By the end of the case, students should be able to:
- Understand the concept of organizational culture and how it influences the behavior and performance of employees and managers.
- Understand and identify the types of organizational culture and how they can be assessed together with the benefits and challenges of this concept
- Apply the principles and practices of organizational culture to real-life case studies.
1.0 INTRODUCTION
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 organizational culture of an organization is one of the ways 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. The basic elements of organizational structure are; leadership, Purpose and values, Employee empowerment, All-inclusive well-being of employees, Professional development & growth opportunities, and Effective communication among many others to be addressed in this paper. Organizational culture is built on the values, beliefs, and behavioral norms of an organization namely; the standard of the dress code, language, way of personality, rules, and regulations, and policy, and how the employees cooperate and work together.
Important to consider is that organizational culture has a strong impact on the management of an organization, therefore the stronger the organizational culture, the easier it gets for employees to accept its values. 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 the 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 role of organizational culture in an organization and how it impacts its performance.