Understanding organizational culture must be focus on the different attitudes, values, beliefs and psychology of all the people involved in an organization.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_culture
Some scholars have defined organizations as social entities which share some coordinated activity systems, are goal directed, with a deliberately structured, with an identifiable boundary and linked to the external environment.
Organizations can be seen as an open system where some environmental factors like people, information, resources, among others, are taken by the organizations like their inputs in order to be transform in the process of production, maitance, ect...which lead to modify them and make properly products needed by the final clients.
Organizations have some formal and informal issues that make them different from one another. Organizations differs in their formal aspects such as their policies, objectives, mission and vision, products and services, as well as in their informal aspects such as their values, attitudes, beliefs and feelings. Those aspects make each organization unique and it is quite simple if there are different people working in each organization that has specif goals, chains of command, objectives, expectations, behavior, etc...modeling one specific organizational culture.
Culture is not imposed in organizations. These differences on values, understandings, goals and expectations, are learned by people since the very beginning of their lives in one specific society that pass those aspects to future generations as well. It can be seen as a subconsciusly guide that controls the way people behave in every situation of their lives. However, despite of these unconscious aspects of behavior, rites, ceremonies, stories, symbols and language, are some observable aspects helping to understand these ways of conduct.
Organizations must take into acount these aspects of their employees not only to understand how they react in some circumstances but to win their confidence and minds (whcih provide a better working environment and productive results), obtain information leading the companies to get competitive advantages and influence decision making processes.
The organizational culture in its general sense, has two different functions that help companies to move further succesfully. Firs of all organizational culture provides an internal integration that assist members to know how to relate to one another. In the other hand, organizational culture seeks to provide an external adaptation in order to help organizations to adapt to external environment.
One more important issue of understanding organizational culture and behavior is when managing businesses abroad. Organizations must be more aware of the critical concepts such as time, change and material factors, which riquered special skills in order to succeed. Cultures and tendencies differ in societies as the most important issue to be taken into account. These kind of situations are related with the concept of cross-cultural management referred to the "development and application of knowledge about cultures in the practice of international management, when the people involved have different cultural identities." (Nelson, D.L. & Quick, J.C. 2010. Organizational Behavior: Science, The Real World and You. South-Western College Publication, 7th. Ed. Chapter 1. Pag 16)
Skill is defined as "the ability to demonstrate a sequence of behavior that is functionally related to attaining a performance goal". (Torrington, 1194, p.98. Nelson, D.L. & Quick, J.C. 2010. Organizational Behavior: Science, The Real World and You. South-Western College Publication, 7th Ed. Chapter 1. Pag 16 ). Managers must have an excellent communication skill in order to have better positions within an organizations, as it is considered the most important skill when carrying responsibilities related with employees and diversity. "In addition managers need to be adaptable to the culture and capable of leading its members." (Nelson, D.L. & Quick, J.C. 2010. Organizational Behavior: Science, The Real World and You. South Western College Publication, 7th Ed. Chapter 1. Pag 17).
Managing and understanding the importance of these skills can bring advantages for the organization. Diversity gives more ideas in different perspectives from a certain project. People from different cultures working together in cooperation provide a succesfull output because it fulfilled all possible gaps existing in a project when done by a similar cultural group of employees.
In the other hand, working with diversity provides more creativity to an organization. Howerever, creativity within an organization is only possible when there is understanding and tolerance of cultural differences and when managers have the properly skills to well organize tasks and to give employees administrative and moral support. All of these "allows time for the group to overcome the inevitable process difficulties. Diversity training is provided. The commitment of group members is rewarded. Under appropiate conditions it contributes to firm competitive advantage and to corporate financial performance." (Nelson, D.L. & Quick, J.C. 2010. Organizational Behavior: Science, The Real World and You. South-Western College Publication, 7th Ed. Chapter 1. Pag 19).
Finally it can be conclude that understanding of culture within an organization provides positive advantages that tend to give success to a company. Nevertheless, culture is not the only important factor affecting all decisions, and issues such as the organizational strategies, the personality and skilss of the boss and employees, as well as external factors, competition, market, among others, influence the way an organization progresses and how they make it differs from any other.
(Discussion above is based on the information of the slides provided by Cristina Robledo. Organizational Behavior & National and Organizational Culture. July 2010).
I want to share a video related with one of the most succesfull organizations all around the World: GOOGLE. It provides an example of an organization applying the properly skills to make an harmonious environment for employees whose main characteristic is the cultural diversity. These diverse group of people are very creative, feel comfortable with what they do, their ideas are the most important factor for the company and the best of all: everybody work like an orchestra!!
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| Source: http://www.fayerwayer.com/ |
GOOGLE: BEST PLACE TO WORK FOR
Another succesful example is the organizational culture within People Ink. They help organizations to create unique cultures based on values and performance, and are proud of it. People Ink. managers say "Our values-based leadership model has evolved over twenty-five years based on our experience developing people-centric cultures for high performing companies such as Southwest Airlines, Doubletree Hotels, JetBlue Airways, and Loma Linda University Medical Center. Our Off-the-Wall Leadership model is the first to provide leaders with five essential principles for creating both a legendary and high performing culture. It starts with developing a Values Blueprint that leaders can use to implement a values-based culture." http://www.peopleink.com/
Here an interview with Ann Rhoades, CEO of the company explaining the source of their success:
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| Source: www.peopleink.com |
SUCCESFUL ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURES
There is a corporate culture in every organization? Can it be modified?
Each organization differs from one another in different points of view. Even when the legal personality is the same, the people, strategies, CEOs, location, varies.
A culture is a set of values, beliefs, attitudes and behavior share by a society and pass generation to generation. In this sense, we can consider that an organization is a culture and due to the different employees an organization has, it is possible to say that it always exists and its main characteristic is to be unique.
Internal and external aspects affect the corporate culture. It is false to argue that because each person has his/her own attitudes, values, beliefs and behavior, and because external factors even when they change due to the dynamics of comerce of management remain quites stable, a corporate culture can not be modified.
It is easy to change the perspectives of employees about their companies, but for CEOs it is a challenge to manage their skills in order to perform the culture of the organization. Some tools have been studied trough years traying to give some ideas to reinforce the positive side of the culture within the organizations. Motivation of employees, division of tasks, harmonization of the environment and some sense os sensibility can improve the situation.
Therefore, it is not impossible to lead organizations in the "good practices" of their cultures. Companies such as GOOGLE or People Ink. are only two examples of succesfull organizational cultures that differ from one another in their main market objectives and goals but share the most importan characteristic to should be implemented everywhere else: respect for diversity, harmonization of the environment and cooperation among members which their only two similarities are to work for the same company and to be proud of it.
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