Introduction:

Organizational culture is the behavior of humans within an organization and the meaning that
people attach to those behaviors. Culture includes the organization's vision, values, norms, systems,
symbols, language, assumptions, beliefs, and habits. It is also the pattern of such collective behaviors
and assumptions that are taught to new organizational members as a way of perceiving, and even
thinking and feeling. Organizational culture affects the way people and groups interact with each
other, with clients, and with stakeholders.
Ravasi and Schultz (2006) stated that organizational culture is a set of shared mental assumptions
that guide interpretation and action in organizations by defining appropriate behaviour for various
situations. Although a company may have its "own unique culture", in larger organizations there are
sometimes conflicting cultures that co-exist owing to the characteristics of different management
teams. Organizational culture may affect employees' identification with an organization.
Schein (1992), Deal and Kennedy (2000), and Kotter (1992) advanced the idea that organizations
often have very differing cultures as well as subcultures.
According to Needle (2004),[6] organizational culture represents the collective values, beliefs and
principles of organizational members and is a product of such factors as history, product, market,
technology, and strategy, type of employees, management style, and national culture. Corporate
culture on the other hand refers to those cultures deliberately created by management to achieve
specific strategic ends.
Usage
Organizational culture refers to culture in any type of organization including that of schools,
universities, not-for-profit groups, government agencies, or business entities. In business, terms such
as corporate culture and company culture are sometimes used to refer to a similar concept.
The term corporate culture became widely known in the business world in the late 1980s and early
1990s. Corporate culture was already used by managers, sociologists, and organizational theorists by
the beginning of the 80s.
The related idea of organizational climate emerged in the 1960s and 70s, and the terms are now
somewhat overlapping.