The Organizational Culture of Quinlan's
Introduction
Quinlan has been UK’s foremost retail giant for a long period of time. By end of 1998 there was evidence of a crisis and since then the company has been on a decline. The company has been ignoring market changes and trying to maintain its corporate image and identity. This has caused the customers to drift to more fashionable brands causing huge loss of business to Quinlan. Presently the company is on a restructuring exercise to improve sales with particular emphasis on customer satisfaction and marketing.
Organisation culture at Quinlan’s
Organisation culture can be defined as the set of key values, beliefs, understandings and
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This culture gives prominence to achievement and competitiveness. Employees usually work long hours to achieve certain goals.
c) Clan – This culture is reflected in organisations that emphasise on employee’s participation in meeting changes of the environment. Particular attention is paid to employee well welfare.
d) Bureaucratic - This type of culture is visible in organisations that follow a well-defined way of doing things. Employees are not encouraged to take risks and rewarded for following rules. This is suitable for a stable environment that is hard to find in these modern days.
It is visible that Quinlan’s culture was bureaucratic. In particular Quinlan had:
a) Properly defined rules and procedures to function in a predictable and routine manner
b) Roles were clearly defined and labour was divided based on these roles
c) A hierarchical chain of command
d) Clear separation of ownership and control
Culture and organisation success
Daft, Management, 2003, chapter 3 explains that an organisation has two main environments: the external and internal. The external environment includes elements that exist outside the boundary but have the ability to affect the organisation. Eg. competitors, resources, technology, customers. The internal environment consists of
Organizational culture is the “values and beliefs that people have about an organization and provides expectations to people about the appropriate way to behave” (Kinicki, 2013, slide 3). Corporates can change Changing organizational culture can be a process using one or more of the eleven strategies, (1) formal statements, (2) slogans & sayings, (3) stories, legend, & myths, (4) leader reactions crises, (5) role modeling, training, & coaching, (6) physical design, (7) rewards, titles, promotions, & bonuses, (8) organizational goals & performance criteria, (9) measurable & controllable activities, (10) organizational structure, and (11) organizational systems & procedures (Kinicki & Williams, 2013, p. 236-137). Like stated before organizations
Armstrong (1999) cites the work of Furnham and Gunter (1993) defining culture as ‘the commonly held beliefs, attitudes and values that exist in an organisation. Put more simply, culture is ‘the way we do things around here’.
Culture can be defined as “a set of basic tacit assumptions about how the world is and ought to be that a group of people share and that determines their perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and, to some degree, their overt behaviour” (Schein, 1996). Organizational culture is depend on differences in norms and shared values which are learned in workplace and to direct behaviour of members in the particular organisation. (Cabrera, Cabrera& Barajas 2001) Organisational culture was built on its shared beliefs and values which was the guidance to solve problems.
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.
Organisational culture describes the values, beliefs and behaviours which provide norms for the environment of an organisation (Anon., 2012). The culture of an organisation sets out to provide structure for employees within a business and often culture shows to be a strong factor in certain organisations. Edgar Schein, a culture theorist explains that the definition of organizational culture must be general otherwise factors may be eliminated which may contribute to culture within a business. (Anon., 2007). Culture impacts on the working procedures in which a business performs and effects the way in which the organisation is run on a daily basis.
5. Discuss the relation between the “hard” and “soft” elements of a firm’s corporate culture in the context of this case.
Before this chapter I thought organization’s culture was only internal and outside factors only affect the brand and sales of the company. But I have now learned a lot more about the
Organizational cultures that can be a liability to an organization include those that create barriers to change, create barriers to diversity or barriers to mergers and acquisitions. (Robbins, S. P. 2011) Organizational cultures are also good for change and revitalization of a company. This paper will provide background information on Best Buy and the ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment) Program. This paper will describe the culture of Best Buy. This paper will also discuss the approach to organizational change that the ROWE program illustrates. This case has sources of stress and this paper will discuss the sources that are apparent in the case. Changes have occurred
Organizational culture can be values, beliefs and norms which define how members think, feel and behave. More specifically, organizational culture is defined as shared philosophies, ideologies, beliefs, feelings, assumptions, expectations, attitudes, norms, and values (Schein, 2011). It is important to understand organizational culture has tremendous influence on its members, their views of the workplace, their efforts and their productivity. Culture is created by leaders, members and the environment in which the organization finds itself in. However, I believe it is primary the leadership’s responsibility to uphold the standards of a positive culture. As leaders, we must understand the culture we’ve created and how to maintain it or improve it. The Debra Woog McGinty and Nicole C. Moss corporate survey exhibited I’m in an Established/Stable culture.
Organizational culture can be divided into four categories through the competing values framework: clan culture, adhocracy culture, hierarchy culture and market culture. Clan culture is characterized by employee development or empowerment, teamwork, commitment, participation and loyalty. Market culture is oriented toward the external environment and it is focused on transactions with external constituencies, including customers, suppliers and regulators etc. (Cameron & Quinn, 2011) A clan culture is more like a family-like type of working environment that emphasizes consensus and commonality of values and goals.
“Corporate culture refers to the beliefs and behaviors that determine how a company's employees and management interact and handle outside business transactions (Investopedia.com, n.d.).” With regard to corporate culture, we will initially decipher the results gained by participating in the McGinty/Moss assessment and determine whether or not the results conformed to our expectations or the results created a new revelation for us. Secondly, we will determine the level to which, the aforementioned assessment and the McNamara information discloses to us similarities and differences about our own organization. Subsequently, we will discover whether or not a combination of the assessment and the McNamara categories assisted us with
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the culture, the internal, and the external factors in an organization. Our job is to examine the entirety of the organization. That would include the structural and environmental elements that effect the operation of the business. We will also take an in depth look at the perspectives of employees, managers, owners, and clientele.
Organisational culture is defined as “the set of beliefs, values and assumptions that members of an organization share in common.” (Rao, Rao and Sivaramakrishna, 2008, p. 448). Handy (1985) characterised organisational culture into four types of structure- the Greek Temple, the Spider’s Web, the Cluster and the Matrix. These are often referred to as Role Culture, Power Culture, Person Culture and Task Culture. It could be argued that the description of Role Culture, as relying on committees, structures, schedules and analysis (Rao, Rao and Sivaramakrishna, 2008) is the most applicable to a retail organisation. Although these are the four main types of organisational culture, a criticism of Handy’s work is that more than one type of culture usually exists within the same organisation, moreover, organisations usually change over time- suggesting their organisational culture may also change. As culture appears to be an ever-expanding research area and retail appears to be an ever-changing culture, it may be more applicable to analyse the culture of Next Plc via the 7-S Framework, developed by The McKinsey Organisation (Waterman, Peters and Phillips, 1980). This model asks seven questions, focusing on the style, structure, skills, systems, strategy, staff and shared values of the organisation. As a retail store, the strategy of Next Plc is based largely on their products and meeting customer-needs; to achieve this, customers can order products online and in-store, reserve products and receive text message notifications when their order is ready for collection. Next Plc has a divisional organisational structure- although most of their stores are in the United Kingdom and Ireland, they have 200 stores in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. They can therefore be considered as a tall structure with multiple levels of staff. The systems used include employee recruitment and development, managing customer relationships and
Studies have indicated that most of the organisation’s priority is to meet or exceed their business objectives. The success of executing any strategy is dependent on how effective the leadership is communicating the strategy, as well as the performance of the employees who contribute towards its implementation. Therefore it is desirable for the leaders of organisations to make sure that the strategy they are driving is aligned with the culture that they want to instil in the organization. This being said the leaders need to be aware of the culture that is being practiced in the organization to ensure that it is aligned with the objectives to be implemented and what they would like to achieve. Employees are the ones who