Growing effective organizational cultures - CREATING AND MANAGING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

10 important questions on Growing effective organizational cultures - CREATING AND MANAGING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

The set of shared values and norms that control organizational members’ interactions with each other and with people outside the organization.

General criteria, standards or guiding principles that people use to determine which types of behaviours, events, situations and outcomes are desirable or undesirable

Differences in global values and norms
The values and norms of different countries also affect organizational culture.

  • Cultural differences such as diverse communication styles, different approaches to completing tasks, different attitudes toward conflict and different decisionmaking styles are major factors that hamper coordination in outsourcing relationships that require contact between people form different countries.
  • There are many ways in which culture can inspire and facilitate the intense kind of personal and team interactions that are necessary to develop organizational competences and obtain a competitive advantage.
    • Cultural values are important facilitators of mutual adjustment in an organization.
    • Organizational culture is a form of informal organization that facilitates the workings of the organizational structure.

How is an organization’s culture transmitted to its members?

The ability of an organization’s culture to motivate employees and increase organizational effectiveness is directly related to they way in which members learn the organization’s values.
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Organizational members learn pivotal values from:

Socialization and socialization tactics Newcomers to an organization must learn the values and norms that guide its existing members’ behaviour and decision-making. To learn an organization’s culture, newcomers must obtain information about cultural values. From the organization’s perspective, the most effective way for newcomers to learn appropriate values is through socialization.

Stories, ceremonies and organizational language The cultural values of an organization are often evident in the stories, ceremonies and language found in the organization.

  • Types of ceremonial rites to communicate cultural norms and values.
    • Rites of passage Mark an individual’s entry to, promotion in, and departure form the organization.
    • Rites of integration Such as shared announcements of organizational success, office parties and company cookouts, build and reinforce common bonds between organizational members.
    • Rites of enhancement Such as awards dinners, newspapers releases, and employee promotions publicity recognize and reward employees’ contributions.

Organizational stories and the language of an organization are important media for communicating culture.

  • Stories about organizational superstars provide important clues about cultural values and norms.
  • The concept of organizational language encompasses not only spoken language but how people dress, the offices they occupy, the company cars they drive, and how they formally address one another.

Where does organizational culture come from? Organizational culture develops form the interaction of four factors:

  1. The personal and professional characteristics of people within the organization
  2. Organizational ethics
  3. . The property rights that the organization gives to employees
  4. The structure of the organization

1. The personal and professional characteristics of people within the organization

Organizations A, B and C develop distinctly different cultures because they attract, select and retain people who have different values, personalities and ethics.

Designing organizational culture::

1. Try to identify the source of the values and norms of your organization’s culture and analyse the relative effects of people, ethics, property rights and structure on influencing organizational culture.
2. Use this analysis to produce an action plan for redesigning the culture of the organization to improve effectiveness.
3. Be sure that the action plan takes all four factors into consideration, because each one affects the others. Changing one factor alone may not be sufficient to change organizational culture.
4. Make the development of ethical organizational values one of your major priorities.

Why be social responsible? Several advantages are argued to result when managers and organizations behave in a socially responsible manner:

  • Workers and society benefit directly because organizations bear some of the costs of helping workers.
  • It has been said that if all organizations in a society were socially responsible, the quality of life as a whole would be higher.
  • It is the right thing to do and companies that act responsibly toward their stakeholders benefit from increasing business and see their profits rise.
Some people argue that business has only one kind of responsibility: to use its resources for activities that increase its profits and thus reward its stockholders.

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