The tale of Organisational Culture

Concepts of culture Organizational culture is amalgamation and a perfect blend of various prominent theories and studies carried out. Is is a mix of ideas, beliefs, values, structure, notion, norms of the organization scenario and basically it is the face of the organization. There are various theories defining and redefining the culture of the company as the operating system or the oxygen for the survival of the organization. It is the shared belief of employees and epitome of how things are done. It is a method of workplace civilization and the immune system to sustain the life of the organization. They are dynamic in nature, shaped by the employees and leaders, crafted by social control system. The best of the possible definitions is by Richard Perrin that organizational culture is sum of values which act as a glue to integrate employees of the organization. This best illustrates the concepts of culture and is epitome of strength and cohesiveness of the organization. The picture of culture The organizational culture takes up various forms and faces with different orientations and bends. Clan oriented culture is a cooperative society of workforce teaming up to perform tasks. Such culture is prevalent in the company Pixar, which makes animated movies and regard its culture as the trigger of success. Adhocratic culture is a storehouse of innovation and creativity and hence forms the platform for success and progress. Google is one of the companies following such culture. Market oriented culture is aligned towards quality of goods and services anticipating profits and success. The Phillips electronics company, Xerox and Southwest Airlines are few examples. Hierarchy oriented culture is strict in terms of distribution of power with Mc Donald or Ford Motor company being famous examples. The strength and health of culture and structure of the organization have a direct proportion with the effectiveness of the strategies proposed and implemented. Culture based companies Organizational culture of a company is the face and voice of its success stories. And for the companies based over the concepts of customer satisfaction, the organizational culture determines the hospitality towards the customers to a greater extent. An open, friendly, fun loving culture of the organization promotes healthy and happy employees who in turn go beyond the companys policies sometimes to make their customers happy and hence to win their level of trust and confidence on the brand. The customer serving agencies like Zappos has a culture which best acknowledges its customer base and treats them at the priority. People at work are humble and answerable to the demands of their customers and respect their decisions and feedback regarding the product. Customer satisfaction calls for a corporate culture which is well intertwined into the human resource practices of the organization and forms a part and parcel of the daily routine of the company. The open culture, parties, celebrations motivate employees to serve the best for the customers. Companies ensure that the employees working are a fit for the organizational culture. The recruitment process itself is a screening test for filter out and soak in the best suited employees. For example, the interview of Google consists of logical questions like how can a person make giraffe fit into a refrigerator. Another company Zappos let their employees undergo a training to seamlessly integrate into the culture of the call center but even then if an employee seems to be a misfit, some amount of allowance is given to them to leave the job for mutual benefit of the individual and organizational culture. The organizational culture web of Toyota The cultural web of organizations are intrinsically self motivated and self sustained with attributes of dimensions of culture. The Toyotas culture is self sustained in going to the deep roots of the problem and to understand the core concepts by working together as a team and to make the safety and demands of the customers as the topmost priority and the responsibility. It is an outcome of cultural values and principles inherent in the employees who fit the culture. Toyota as a company promotes corporate culture by dissolving the geographical boundaries and their impacts over the culture in the company. The dimensions of culture can be applied well over the case study of Toyota. The culture of the company is inspired by communitarianism which regards the society above all and pledges to service it. The culture is motivated by catering to specific tasks and looking deep into the problems and resolving them internally. The culture is inner directed and therefore can control the enviro nment with the right guidance. The status of the company is well achieved and that too rapidly with time by a right culture steering in a better direction. The cultural transformation To instill a change, there is a dire need for a leader who is self motivated and have the ability to paint the picture of change. The two models for change can be closely examined with one being a geometrical model with attributes like achievement, avoidance or reactionary and is a model specifying typology and the second one being intensely descriptive about the corporate culture. Though pictures speak a lot more than words but a clear, complete and correct description of the picture is essential for deep understanding and execution for the same. The theoretical cultural web woven for the successful corporate culture describes the six basic elements of the principles and paradigms of culture. The elements are symbols, control system for culture, stories or myths, organizational structure, power structure, and rituals and routines. The views of the author is based on strong evidence supported by describing impactful arguments regarding the effectiveness of the theoretical model. To t rigger a change, various small modular changes need to be put into practice and by well understanding of the model, changes can be well crafted, executed and sustained. For example, the culture of a call center was once negative myths or stories showcasing low morale, poor management and blunders happening in there. A lack of leadership was the most demotivating factor for the culture of the type of organization. But leaders brought out a complete change over in the culture and lead to a clear, transparent, open, goal oriented, trained, responsible, accountable, positive culture of the workplace. This was possible because of direct implementation of the cultural web model by the leaders by becoming able to plan, implement and analyze the changes in the culture without any external help. The typology type on the other hand is illustrative and have deep impact over the memory and effective application of it by the people. The typology triangle is one of the most suited examples of the organizational cultural change.