A Discussion On Organizational Culture

To understand the organizational culture of a company, one needs to start by looking at the history. Lakeshore Learning Materials was born from a divorced mother of three named Ethelyn Kaplan, who took a dream and a chance by moving her family to California in 1954 to open a toy store. When she started noticing that teachers were interested in her material, Ethelyn realized that she needed to expand her business into educational materials. 60 years later, Lakeshore Learning Materials has grown into a company with over 2000 employees, 60 retail stores throughout the United States and growing. Lakeshore Learning Materials is currently headed by Ethelyn’s grandsons, Bo and Josh Kaplan. Under the supervision of Bo and Josh, Lakeshore continues to be a leader in the Educational Materials, yet still able to keep the family culture that their grandmother started. Highest quality customer service and hard work are the core values that shape Lakeshore’s Organizational Strategy. These high expectations aren’t hard for employees at Lakeshore because the company is so loved by everyone that works there, that they give nothing less than the best.

The organization culture as a leadership concept has been identified as one of the many components that leaders can use to grow a dynamic organization. Leadership in organizations starts the culture formation process by imposing their assumptions and expectations on their followers. Once culture is established and accepted, they become a strong leadership tool to communicate the leader 's beliefs and values to organizational members, and especially new comers. When leaders promote ethical culture, they become successful in maintaining organizational growth, the good services demanded by the society, the ability to address problems before they become disasters and consequently are competitive against rivals. The leader 's success will depend to a large extent, on his knowledge and understanding of the organizational culture. The leader who understands his organizational culture and takes it seriously is capable of predicting the outcome of his decisions in preventing any anticipated consequences. What then is organizational culture? The concept of organizational culture has been defined from many perspectives in the literature. There is no one single definition for organizational culture. The topic of organizational culture has been studied from many perspectives and disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, organizational behavior, and organizational leadership to name a few. Deal defines organizational culture as values,

Rizescu, M. (2011). Orgainzational Culture Influences on the Organization's Functionality. Revista Academie ForTelor Terestre. 1( 61): 75-82.

Effectiveness is regarded as the most suitable factor to measure the success of any organization. Besides this, there are certain things due to which this effectiveness can be achieved and culture is one of them. A good organizational culture is a key factor in achieving effectiveness. However, on the other hand, some of the researchers are opposed to this fact and according to them; there is no impact of culture on organizational effectiveness.

The organizational cultural inventory measures 12 sets of normative beliefs or shared behavioral expectations associated with three general types of cultures, Constructive, Passive-Defensive, and Aggressive-Defensive.

Organizational Culture exists in every firm, thereby placing a significant impact on the motivational factors of employees. It is communicated through perception using values, artifacts, and the assumption of how things in are done in an organization (Daft & Marcic, 2010). In fact, every firm has its exceptional personality known as culture. The organizational culture presents guidelines and boundaries for the employees’ behavior in a firm, which influences the organizational outcome. It helps the members of the organization to have a common goal of accomplishing the firm’s objectives. Organizational cultures have a substantial influence on the capability to execute the strategy and accomplish the firms’ objectives. Therefore, organizational employees are more inclined to accept change when the firm’s culture is aligned with the goals and objectives of an organization.

Each company has its own beliefs and values that define it. A company culture determines how employees and customers perceive the company, client treatment and how the company should react to various changes in the environment. An organizational culture is a mirror of the company leadership. Different styles of leadership ensure maintenance of various corporation cultures. The climate within an organization determines a company’s financial performance. To ensure their propositions are deemed important, a quality company culture integrates each employee or customer. Job-related problems, either personal or work related, are listened to, and the top management find the best means to solve them. Work is delegated to employees while managers work by the employees’ side to ensure perfection (Alvesson, 2002).

To define organizational culture we must first understand what a culture is in relation to an organization. Culture can be defined as the acquisition of knowledge that individuals may use to try to interpret experiences and facilitate a social behavior that is appropriate (Deem, DeLotell & Kelly, 2015). Eaton & Kilby (2015) examines culture as an entity that is always with us, it is all around us. It is created and expanded by our constant interactions with others.

An organisation culture is developed when the members of an institution shared a set of common values, traits and symbols (Helms, 2001). This culture represents an identical trend in patterning and integration (Schein, 2004), in which the ways of thinking and believe are similar in the members of the unit (Marquis & Huston, 2009). However, an organisation culture does not just form by itself. According to Schein (2004), culture and leadership are fundamentally interlaced and are able to influence each other. On one hand, Schein described leaders as the architect who formed the culture, but he also stated that culture can also influenced and shaped the type of leader. In this article, the influence of culture in determining the type of

Low-Context culture is the new concept for organizational studies that critically examine the outside as well as inside venture culture with more pragmatic ways. It is an elements and distinguishing feature of culture. Historically speaking, this new term is not so much new for 21st century. It is term that has used first time by the most famous anthropologist named as Edward T. Hall. This low-context culture has been using for deepest study of culture as a whole. This cultural term, is more familiar with intentional behavior can observed by producers of culture in reality. (Borelli & Lenzerini, 2012)

Power distance - The degree to which a society expects there to be differences in the levels of power. A high score suggests that there is an

Organisational culture, also known as corporate culture, encompasses the principles, backgrounds and views of all the employees of an organisation (Homburg & Pflesser 2000 pp.449-462). This often provides each company with their unique corporate identity, as no two businesses or employees are the same. The idea of individuality leads to companies striving to achieve a ‘strong culture’, which involves the entire work cohort sharing consistent goals and motivations, in hopes of potentially garnering higher profit margins as there many advantages that come with a stronger culture. Such benefits include greater productivity levels, loyalty and the unity of all of an organisation’s employees. While having a ‘strong culture’ is

There is no single definition for organizational culture. The topic has been studied from a variety of perspectives ranging from disciplines such as anthropology and sociology, to the applied disciplines of organizational behaviour, management science, and organizational communication. Some of the definitions are listed below:

Organizational culture is a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs, which governs how people behave in organizations. These shared values have a strong influence on the people in the organization and dictate how they dress, act and perform their jobs. Many would ask how culture shapes an organization; in the following paragraph I will explain different views of organizational culture of various people. Culture is powerfully shaped by incentives. The best predictor of what people will do is what they are incentivized to do. Culture is a process of “sense-making” in organizations. Sense-making has been defined as “a collaborative process of creating shared awareness and understanding out of different individuals’ perspectives and

This essay will argue that organizational culture can and, should be managed. Increased business competition, amalgamations, globalization, acquisitions, business alliances, and other developments have created the need for management of organizational culture. The context of management of organizational culture is fundamental to much of the successive work on organizational efficiency.