Organizational Culture

Organizational Culture:
Culture is an environment within the organization where people are able to share values and
believes allowing creating a philosophy of interaction across the organization. Culture enhances
the productivity level of employees as well as their emotional commitment with tasks. Structure,
strategy and culture these components are interlinked with each other. Culture of an organization
is stem from the national culture, climate research and human resource management and
traditions, Furthermore, it consist on norms, beliefs, and principals which have a strong
combination with each other and extract the organization character (Song & Chermack, 2008). In
organizations rituals and ceremonies included annual awards and ceremonies when
organizations use their physical layout, status of different, designs languages and terminologies,
mission statement as well as slogans and mottoes of the organization e.g. Nikes Just do it, or
Mc Donald Im Loving it. Organizational culture have three distinct levels in which included
surface manifestations (rituals, beliefs, ceremonies and languages).Values (refer to the affairs of
one state to another), Basic assumptions (how organizations should do their functions).
According to Schein an organization must have strong culture with its clearly define values,
what is beneath of the surface. An organization culture is consist of pattern of feeling, behaving,
self sustaining and thinking.
Relationship of the organization and the stakeholder with each other is called organization
culture. The stakeholders include employees, suppliers, customers, government and the
community. The way in which organization treats with its stakeholders and in response to that
treatment the behavior of the stakeholders generates the culture of the organization.
Advantages and Disadvantages of strong organizational culture:
Some advantages and disadvantages of strong organizational culture which occurred from
different types of the culture are clan culture, hierarchy culture, adhocracy culture and market
culture. Clan culture in an organization provides very friendly and supportive environment to
their employees, however, disadvantage raise employees consider this environment very friendly
and lightly ending by engaging themselves by gossiping and wasting time; A good example to
mentioned here my previous company which was associated based on family business where all

the family members brought their relatives and friends to run the business, it crashed few years
later due to many conflicts, individual interest and blaming spirits ending up destroying the
culture of the organization. Several trials to overcome the situation even after hiring new
qualified candidates but unfortunately, the existent culture was dominant and contaminated the
new joiners. Hierarchy culture is about the rules and the regulations and procedures which gives
the positive results from the employees however, disadvantage is probe become occur when it
take a lot of time to fix. Adhocracy culture has advantage speedy work and tasks, goals from this
culture and disadvantage is there is no innovative environment through this culture within the
organization.
Introduction:
According to Martin, organizational culture is about values, beliefs and behavioral expectations,
which build the relationship between the members of the organization. It has three operational
levels in which art facts which is observable, values & norms and subculture level(Ashkanasy,
Wilderom, & Peterson, 2011). There are different types of organizational culture in which
included along with examples tough-guy macho culture (culture investment banking and
management consulting), bet your company (oil companies), work hard culture (sales
organizations, computer companies) and process culture (Banks & Insurance, Accounting firms).
Organizational culture have great impact on the performance of the employees. On the other
hand culture has four types are considered from many researchers which have particular
structural form in which power, role, task and person.
Main Body:
Organizational culture refers to the beliefs and values of the organization. Beliefs of the staff and
their values and norms towards the work will influence their attitudes and behavior, which will
give the better results in future and consider for long term. Carrefour a leader in FMCG retails
business, applied its seven values for more than 25 years (Freedom, responsibility, sharing,
respect, integrity, solidarity and progress). Those values were posted on the walls or proclaimed
during meetings. However, when the management realized that those values lost its actual morals
and reflection, they decided to redesign new values by reflecting a new organizational style
(Bold, Passionate and Together). Those three values were powerful since it was expressed in

actions and tangibly impact the way Carrefour operates. The implementation was based on
quantitative goals, objectives, strategies and initiatives designed to promote growth and
development of the business.

In management field organizational culture has some main

perspective in which functionalist perspective which provides the role of organizational culture
for improving the performance of employees. Organizational culture has relationship with
employee-related variables, such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment and
performance. Organization consists of the staff, individual members which positively effect on
the outcomes. Cultural research is not considered as common field basically it has to investigate
what are the factors which influence on it and make the positive results for an organization (Tsai,
2011).
It is very important to mention the example of Google culture where Sergey Brin and Larry page
are the founder of the Google built the search engine and introduced the self service program and
Ad words as well as advertising solutions it helped thousands of business to grow. Google
provided the way of digital mapping and anyone can easily upload the videos and then
introduced the products like web related in which Google chrome, search. Mobile product in
which mobile app. Media ,Geo, social and specialized search are the products of the Google.
Google provided the unique and innovative workplace culture for employees. Google
organizational culture is not typical it effects on the firms organizational structure but emphasis
on excellence, innovative environment and supports the small company-family rapport.
Employees feel free to share their ideas, innovation is the heart of the Google as well as
maintains small company family feel. Googles organizational culture promotes the innovative
environment through sharing of capabilities and ideas which rapidly respond to the market
(Smithson, 2015).
Culture is the some of values, beliefs and symbols basically a thought process which is
transmitted generation to generation. Geert Hofstede presented cultural value dimensions in
which included power Distance Index, Collective Index, Femininity Index, Uncertainty
Avoidance Index and long term/short term orientation. High power distance indicates the caste
system and this dimension is highly rule oriented with laws, rules and regulations. Collective
index indicates the collective nature of individuals who perform their tasks. High masculinity
indicates the high degree of gender differentiation. In these culture males are the significant

portion of the society or female. High Uncertainty indicates low tolerance and this creates the
rule- oriented society (Hofstede, 2011).
In recent years, national culture influence on the globalization and internationalization of
business as well as national cultural difference influence behavior in organizations. Some issues
and challenges that an organization culture are: it is the challenge for any company is to maintain
the healthy organizational culture environment By Maintaining the organizational culture will
increase the level of employee engagement. Then it will create the better fit between the values
of the company and its members as well as increase their level of job satisfaction. and reduces
the turnover. Another challenge is organizational culture must involve all employees. It will help
the organization to built the team, rather than having it imposed on them by management. Some
problems of organizational culture include ambiguity, poor communication, and inconsistency
which create the unpleasant workplace then workers become less loyal with their tasks.
Conclusion:
There must be a strong relationship between organizational cultures and subcultures in dynamic
organizations. Strong culture organizations have strong relation with the stability then
organization enjoy the better performance than do weaker culture organizations. Strong culture
organizations are not for long-term survival, particularly face the dynamic environments.
Subcultures should focuses on the relationship between subcultures and strong culture
organizations for making an organization more agile. Here is a suggestion in contrast to the
popular notion that strong organizational cultures may preclude subcultures from emerging,
strong cultures may actually sew the seeds of subculture emergence. According to Martin and
Siehl there is relationship between different types of subcultures that vary in terms of the extent
to which members agree with overarching cultural values. Organizational effectiveness is build
by bringing autonomy to the front line by guiding and giving clerks the chance to do things on
their own. Carrefour allowed their salesman and customer service team to take initiative by
resolving customer complaints and take initiatives, propose new ideas for promotions and be
engaged by styling and suggesting new store layouts, etc. Furthermore, Carrefour created a
Goal Hierarchy and defines priorities that can be considered as complements rather than
obstacles. Consequently, the change of orientation from survival to growth was supported by a
reward and recognition approach pushed employees to be more customer-oriented and

participated on enhancing the current system, which at the end has showed a significant
improvement on customer satisfaction. Yet, still objectives not achieved and more focus and
management involvement is needed to promote a consistent communication, ensure transparency
and identify successful areas and celebrate success, more investment is needed in the training
and welfare.

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