Organization Culture
1. How would you define organization culture? Describe its various manifestations. Using this framework describe the culture of your current class room.
Organizational culture is a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs that helps individuals understand which behaviors are and are not appropriate within an organization. It also includes an organization's expectations, experiences, philosophy, and values that hold it together, and is expressed in its self-image, inner workings, interactions with the outside world, and future expectations. Cultures can be a source of competitive advantage for organizations. Strong organizational cultures can be an organizing as well as a controlling mechanism for organizations. Made up of its members’ shared values, beliefs, symbols, and behaviors, culture guides individual decisions and actions at the unconscious level. As a result, it can have a potent effect on a company’s well being and success. Professors Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn have identified four basic types of organizational culture: Collaborate, Create, Control, and Compete. Each one carries different attitudes, behaviors, and work patterns that must be recognized to enhance effort and performance.
Organizational culture manifests itself at three fundamental levels; a) basic underlying assumptions, b) values and c) observable artifacts. At the deepest level, below our awareness, lie basic assumptions. These assumptions are taken for granted and reflect beliefs about human nature and reality. At the second level, values exist. Values are shared principles, standards, and goals. Finally, at the surface, we have artifacts, or visible, tangible aspects of organizational culture. When one enters an organization the first thing s/he observes is its artifacts: its physical environment, employee interactions, company policies, reward systems, and other observable characteristics. Observing the physical environment, how people dress, where they relax, and how they
Organizational culture is a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs that helps individuals understand which behaviors are and are not appropriate within an organization. It also includes an organization's expectations, experiences, philosophy, and values that hold it together, and is expressed in its self-image, inner workings, interactions with the outside world, and future expectations. Cultures can be a source of competitive advantage for organizations. Strong organizational cultures can be an organizing as well as a controlling mechanism for organizations. Made up of its members’ shared values, beliefs, symbols, and behaviors, culture guides individual decisions and actions at the unconscious level. As a result, it can have a potent effect on a company’s well being and success. Professors Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn have identified four basic types of organizational culture: Collaborate, Create, Control, and Compete. Each one carries different attitudes, behaviors, and work patterns that must be recognized to enhance effort and performance.
Organizational culture manifests itself at three fundamental levels; a) basic underlying assumptions, b) values and c) observable artifacts. At the deepest level, below our awareness, lie basic assumptions. These assumptions are taken for granted and reflect beliefs about human nature and reality. At the second level, values exist. Values are shared principles, standards, and goals. Finally, at the surface, we have artifacts, or visible, tangible aspects of organizational culture. When one enters an organization the first thing s/he observes is its artifacts: its physical environment, employee interactions, company policies, reward systems, and other observable characteristics. Observing the physical environment, how people dress, where they relax, and how they