Employee Organizational Culture Essay

Organizational culture could almost be considered the roots of a company. The way a company’s employees think, the way the customers feel, and the company’s decisions are made are all based around the culture that the company has laid for itself. An employee’s values, thoughts, and actions should reflect those stated in the company’s mission. Southwest Airlines and American Airlines, while both attempting to create a culture that is comfortable and pleasing to their

Organizational culture shapes and reinforces certain employee attitudes and behaviors by creating a system of control over employees.

According to The Journal for Quality and Participation, "a company's culture is embedded in its DNA." With that being said, establishing a productive organizational culture is a crucial component to the success of the company, even before they are in business. In a nutshell, "organizational culture is a system of shared assumptions....which governs how people how people behave in a culture." When employees of a company are aware of what is expected and accepted, they are more likely to perform their jobs according to those set standards. Whether it be how they dress, speak, or respond to diversity, each area in an organization is highly affected by the culture. Due to the fact that organizational culture is what ultimately

*  People Shape the Culture. Personalities and experiences of employees create the culture of an organization. For example, if most of the people in an organization are very outgoing, the culture is likely to be open and sociable. If many artifacts depicting the company’s history and values are in evidence throughout the company, people value their history and culture. If doors are open, and few closed door meetings are held, the culture is unguarded. If negativity about supervision and the company is widespread and complained about by employees, a culture of negativity, that is difficult to overcome, will take hold.

“Organizational culture consists of a set of shared meanings and values held by a set of members in an organization that distinguish the organization from other organizations” (Baack, 2012). These shared values have a strong influence on the people in the organization and dictate how they dress, act, and perform their jobs. Culture plays a huge role in the guiding of the behaviors of employees of an organization. There are three stages of culture that interact with one another to influence the behaviors in the organization. These stages are: observable artifacts, espoused values, and enacted values.

Not only is a strong corporate culture good for business by increasing customer satisfaction, it also can help to decrease turnover and save on human resources expenditures. Internal integration should start the minute a new employee enters a company. Training of new employees should include some way of helping them to understand the company's culture. The new hire training program currently in use at Wal-Mart stores includes videos and other information about the founding of the company as well as other general and specific information about the company's culture as well as expectations related to this culture. This is important because a company's culture is not always easily apparent to newcomers and this is what keeps Wal-mart's culture strong (Berg, 2001).

A strong culture is important to today’s organizations in a fast pace environment affected by a diverse internal workforce (Baker, 2002 p. 4). Schein (as cited in Baker, 2002) defined organizational culture as an arrangement of shared beliefs that the group learned through problem solving, and adapting to internal and external environments (p.4). Culture is not only a means of bettering internal coordination, but is important in facilitating environmental adaptation (Baker, 2002 p. 4).

Organizational culture is not a new concept in the world of organizational behavior. Yet despite its age, it still has many varied definitions as well as philosophies on its importance and impact to the success of a company. One definition is that organizational culture is a cognitive framework consisting of attitudes, values, behavioral norms, and expectations shared by members of an organization (Greenberg, 2013, p. 368). Greenberg (2013) further explains organizational culture through an analogy of a tree. Organizational culture are similar to the roots of a tree.

In this paper I will discuss the effects and responsibilities leaders have on an organizational culture. I believe leaders have an enormous effect on the well-being of an organizational culture. Leaders must take an active role within their organization's culture. Whether positive or negative, in an organization, things tend to follow suit "down hill." A leader has the power and influence to maintain, create, or repair an organizational culture. However, this can prove to be a delicate and challenging task.

An organization’s culture governs day to day behavior. This type of power may be seen as a control mechanism, which businesses use to manipulate internal and external perception. Every organization has a set of assumed understandings that must be adopted and implemented by new employees in order for them to be accepted. Conformity to the culture becomes the primary basis for reward by the organization. “The role of culture in influencing employee behavior appears to be increasingly important in today’s workplace, as organizations have widened spans of control, flattened structures, introduced teams, reduced

Edgar Schein, a famous theorists dealing with organizational culture, provides the following definition for the term: "A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems that has worked well enough to be considered valid and is passed on to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems." (organizationalculture101) However, organizational culture is more than sharing assumptions used by a group to solve problems; it is the combination of the points of view, ineffectual processes, education, backgrounds of all the staff which are part of an organization way of doing things. Corporation culture should uncover from the board of the directors to the rest of

Study in organizational culture began in the early 1980s. Organizational culture is “work group culture” and involves organization’s personality. Organizational culture includes shared philosophies, ideologies, beliefs, feelings, assumptions, expectations, attitudes, norms and values (Fred Lunenburg, Allan Ornstein, 2012, p. 55). Most organizational cultures include observed behavioral regularities, norms, dominant values, philosophy, rules, and feelings. Organizational cultures includes certain input such as the energy imported by organizations from the environment in the form of information, people, and materials (Fred Lunenburg, Allan Ornstein, 2012, p. 55). This input energy must guide organizational behavior toward shared goals and process. Organizations produce an output because of the input into the

Organizational culture has been described as shared values and beliefs that underline a company’s identity. A strong culture that encourages employees from the top to the bottom in adaptation and change can increase organizational performance by energizing and motivating employees, shape behaviors, unify personnel in the goals / objectives and align employee’s actions with the priorities of the company (Daft, R., 2013). Creating a constructive culture should be a manager’s top priority because the right culture will propel a company into a top performer in its industry.

The culture of an organization is the set of values, beliefs, behaviors, customs, and attitudes that helps its members understand what the organization stands for, how it does things, and what it considers important"(Griffin, 49). In other words, "the way things work around here" (Dr. Williams). In order for any small business or large corporation to be successful, the employees must understand what is expected of them. While things might be slightly different in a large corporation versus a small "mom and pop shop", the goal of both is the same. MAKE THE BUSINESS MONEY. The topic of my paper will be on makes a good corporate culture.

Organizations should no longer ignore cultural forces within the workplace when looking to implement change of any kind. Organizational culture as a concept has recently came to the forefront, although, many concepts have touched on aspects of culture. In earlier research, characteristics of culture were