Organizational Culture

Organizational Culture : Concepts Defining How An Organization Works And Interacts.

Organizational culture is a concept that defines how a organization works together and the beliefs and attitudes that it represents by how they work in that said environment. This is a concept that has been researched for years and has many different theorists who have come up with many many different terms describing the sub-groups or classifications as well as the different aspects of organizational culture.

Many times organizational culture is simply formed in an organization without any sort of training or coaching, it is simply what forms when a group has worked together for many years and it is what is built over time. It is seen in the way that the groups deal with problems, issues or just regular projects and tasks that need to be done. The group of individuals become a team and become accustomed to working with things in a certain manner, thus becoming their Organizational Culture.

Seven different methods have been created to classify Organizational Culture by several researchers and they all have very similar classifications. Charles Handy breaks it down into four different cultures, the Power Culture, Role Culture, Task Culture, and a Person Culture while Deal and Kennedy break it down to The Tough Guy Macho Culture, the Work Hard/Play Hard Culture, The Bet your Company Culture, and The Process Culture.

Although they have different names the concepts and definitions are very much the same. They all describe aspects of basic cultures that you may see in a company. Whether it is micro managed, with many rules in place and power goes from the top down, or there are little rules and teamwork is key for productivity it all is a defined culture that can be effective.

Depending on your business and the people involved all of these cultures can work and not one is better than the other. Leaders in these companies are key because they need to know what will work best for the value system that they want to support. It is important that they are aware of the culture that resides in their organization and know that if it is working for them or not.

Organizational Culture is nothing new to our society but it is now much more recognized and now that it is more widely researched, its effect on businesses has been extremely positive and helped them to flourish. In short the Organizational Culture of a company includes the values, the customs and overall feeling of its environment and is instrumental how a business functions.