Research Question
Why is it necessary to define and identify the optimal cultural traits and basic shared assumptions of an academic library organization?
Three Dialogues
Dialogue 1: Talking about your problem
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Opponent: Why do you need to identify the optimal cultural traits and basic shared assumptions of an academic library?
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Me: Because, failing to understand or acknowledge optimal cultural traits and basic shared assumptions within the organization may fortify traditional and narrow approaches to delivering excellent services and programs to the academic community.
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Opponent: Will you actually be able to change the culture of the organization by understanding its optimal traits and shared assumptions?
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Me: Because we understand the optimal cultural traits and shared assumptions, the organization can develop a strategic plan to address targeted areas for transformation. One case study confirms this premise, “Cisco
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Me: Defining the optimal cultural traits and shared assumptions of the academic library is possible using well established data collection tools and assessment strategies. There are multiple options for assessing the organizational culture, however for this specific question I am focused on two strategies.
Edgar Schein is a respected expert on organizational culture and leadership. He has written numerous books including “Organizational Culture and Leadership” (Schein, 2010). This specific publication outlines a structure for rapidly assessing the culture of an organization. The second method is administering the “Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI), a statistically normed and validated survey used for organizational consulting and change purposes” (Balthazard, Cooke, & Potter, 2006, p. 712).
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Opponent: Won’t it take a long time and be expensive to administer?
One of the many responsibilities of company leaders is to ensure that their organization is able to compete and excel in the global marketplace. One way organizations are reaching this goal is though a shift in organizational culture. According to Thompson (2014), a company 's culture can be defined as its personality or the way in which things are done. When an organization attempts to shift its culture from that of an individual contribution to a team environment, the transition must be thoughtfully considered and strategic steps should be taken to encourage the most positive results. Changing an organization 's culture does not occur overnight, and will take patience and focused attention from its leaders and workforce to engrain these new ways of doing things into the fabric of the company. Team culture can be fostered through assessing the workforce 's key skills, encouraging team development and teamwork, selecting and utilizing the right motivation, and creating a rewards program that drives a team to achieve the company 's goals.
The culture of a company develops over time through shared experience (Schein, 2004, p. 17) or management attempts to dictate the culture, but the employees must embrace the culture for it to be effective. Interestingly, when describing a culture there are many ways to define how things feel within the company, however, this is not an objective evaluation but instead subjective. “Culture is not primarily ‘inside’ people’s heads, but somewhere ‘between’ the heads of a group of people where symbols and meanings are publicly expressed (Alvesson, 2002, p. 4).” Some might describe the company’s climate, philosophy, values, or habits, although no hard and fast method of evaluation pins down a company’s culture by impartial means (Robbins & Judge, 2009, p. 554). Just as companies grow, so can their culture; what began, as an innovative, individualist, growth driven environment, may become a team based, highly skilled, ritualized environment as changes in the company dictate shifts in management and employees.
All Organisations posses a distinct form of culture with some having more than a single culture. This culture is usually very difficult to measure, change and most especially change.
Furthermore, one should think of culture, structure and systems as a “whole system” (Goold & Campbell, 2002) instead of independent, individual elements. The conclusion must be that collectively, these three elements create the foundation of an organization.
1. Assess the organization’s culture as it relates to shared knowledge, then specify the significant issue(s) that you discovered with the culture. Determine the disconnect you observed between the culture and organizational learning using three (3) of the five (5) mystifications. Support your response with at least one (1) example of each selected mystification within the organization.
Assess the importance of the link between a healthcare organization's culture and its structure, relative to the successful implementation of its chosen strategy. Provide one example of such importance--or lack thereof--to support your position.
In the study of humanities, cultural assessment analyzes the subtle meaning of text, images, codes, beliefs and behaviors of a social group or community. However, it does not confine internal comprehension of the nuances of a culture within cultural norms in diverse work groups. Cultural analysis crosses the boundaries between social disciplines but also between formal and informal cultural activities. The major purpose of cultural analysis is to develop analytical tools for reading and understanding a wide range of cultural practices and forms, past and present.
Briefly describe the culture of the chosen organization, noting whether the organization’s espoused values align with its enacted values. To what extent is communication in an organization determined by the organization’s culture?
3. Conduct a survey on the issues of organizational culture (OC). Questionnaires (1. Assessment of the attractiveness of the OC. 2. Social psychological level of organizational development). Video and photo-documentation of the survey process.
According to our text, Deal and Kennedy identified four dimensions of culture. Values, Heroes, Rites and Rituals, and Culture Network reflect how in a large part an organization makes decisions (Lester & Parnell, 2006). An organization’s culture is impressed upon staff beginning at the hiring process and continues throughout their tenure. For example, a Healthcare organization may have a culture that stresses patient safety and satisfaction beyond anything else. In this culture, any decision regarding process improvement or introduction of a new service line would be tailored to either safety or satisfaction. If a hospital were to start a patient lift team, the project team would ask how this departmental addition would impact patient safety
Organizational culture: Assumptions that define the organizational goals and products create a powerful restraint on change, especially technological change.
The culture has a big impact on a process of change, while the culture is always ”the winner” over the strategy. A changed
The choices an organization makes about its strategy rely heavily on its culture – just as patterns of behavior can emerge as strategy, patterns of thinking will shape an organization 's perspective, and the things that it is able to do
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.
Existing culture can in times be very hard to continue with because of the change in the growth or in the strategic change in the organisation. At such appropriate web of culture is important to be identified or that can be a problem in the progress of the organisation. These identified elements will give organisation a bigger picture of what was going wrong and how can they change it towards betterment of the organisation.