Human Resources Management

“Organizational culture has been a much written about topic over the past 20 years (Kemp & Dwyer, 2001). Although numerous definitions and descriptions emerge in the literature, there is a general agreement among researchers that organizational culture is "a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes that organization from other organizations." (Shein, 1985, p. 32).” (5)
The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of organizational culture. Besides, will be discussed several theoretical definitions of organizational culture and examined the characteristics of culture in organizations.
An organizational culture includes behaviors, customs, values, beliefs, and attitudes that help members of organization to understand its value.
Years of direct experience order FirstMatter a team to the irrevocable conclusion - all business problems are introduced in cultural problems. Certainly there is any number of problems (releases) from pressure of territory, to regulation, to human questions of resources, to competitive pressure, which are in essence business - central, but the culture of the company really dictates, as it is good - or even if - those problems will be addressed. The large companies similarly to the Federal Express train and Nike have the large general cultures and enjoy the large business success. The broken companies like Kmart and Arthur Anderson have disfunctional, curved cultures and businesses that are in shuffles. In a today's business environment, which is characterized by a high level of consolidation both merge of the companies and activity of purchase, the cultural problems become strengthened. Almost inevitably, the merges of the companies come to an end by creation two (or more) cultural "camps", whose the wages of the adherents are passive - aggressive general cultural wars, while they at the end do not leave the company. Cumulative damage, that this process of the not conscious passive cultural reasons of creation is measured in billions dollars.
O'Reilly, Chatman and Caldwell (1991) identified seven characteristics, that when is considered as a whole, determine the essence of culture of organization.
1. Innovation and capture of risk. To what degree is creative potential of the employee, innovation and taking risk encouraged?
2. Attention to detail. What is expected level of accuracy of the employee and detail of attention?
3. Orientation of Result. Does the management is focused more to results or on process, and the methods had usage to reach those results?
4. Orientation of the People. Does the management examines, how their decisions mention of the people within the limits of organization?
5. Orientation of a Team. Are the actions of work organized around teams rather than individuals?
6. Aggression. Are the people within the limits of organization aggressive and are competitive faster than easygoing?
7. Stability. The organization is interested with maintenance the status quo rather than growth or downsizing? (O'Reilly, Chatman, & Caldwell, 1991, p. 491.)
The authors mean, that these characteristics are submitted in all organizations to some ex-rent payment, and that, estimating these seven properties in any company, the culture of organization can be clear (p. 499). There are a number of examples of definition of culture of organization through the application of these principles can be found among today's corporations. Microsoft has strong individuality, taking risk, and the employees are encouraged to take opportunities, to bear failure, and then to study from their mistakes (Gates, 1996). “Some organizations have achieved success through a strong outcome-orientation focus. For Nordstrom's the desirable outcome is excellence in customer service while Ben & Jerry's Homemade is structured around preserving high ethical standards and social responsibility (Collins & Porras, 1994). Still other organizations can be defined by their strong people orientation. This is the case with Hewlett-Packard where the employees are vital to their culture and the organization is committed to recognizing the value and worth of its employees by having the employees share in the company's profits and success (Rogers, 1994).” (5)
Despite these assertions, there are often one or more subcultures operating within the dominant culture of the organization (Jermier, Slocum, Fry & Gaines, 1991). Sachmann (1992) defines the dominant culture as "the core values that are shared by the majority of the organization's members" (p. 19). As this definition means general perception or "shared meaning" among the members of organization, it is sensible to undertake, that the organization will have only one dominant culture. This representation of dominant culture reflects the idea of the majority of the members in organization, but not necessarily reflects opinion concerning those in authority.
In addition to dominant culture, subcultures frequently develop within the limits of departments or separate geographical sites, which reflect general experiences of their members, situation or problem. These subcultures will include the basic values of dominant culture plus additional values, unique to group or department within the limits of organization (Jermier, Slocum, Fry & Gaines, 1991).
The employees frequently study and learn culture of organization through histories, rituals, material symbols and language (Pettigrew, 1979). The histories have an effect and repeatedly have an effect in the companies concerning all from the last curtailments of production, histories of success, and as the mistakes were processed, to the main organizational changes or resettlements, which have taken place. These histories serve to settle the present with the past, and are sometimes used to explain the current methods (Boje, 1991). Rituals are repeated actions, which tend to express and to strengthen values of organization. One known common ritual is compensation pink Cadillacs by Cosmetics Mary Key to their top salespeople each year. Annual glitzy gives ceremony, as it is supposed, confirms outstanding (outstanding) commercial performance (work) and transfers to complete commercial optimism of force, that they also can reach(achieve) success (Beyer and Instant, 1987). One of most direct ways for serving to study concerning culture of organization is through material symbols, which include a site of the company and means of service, attire of staff(state), the executors of top of automobiles receive, size of offices, and elegance of conditions. At last, the organizations frequently use language or terminology as means of the allocating members of the certain culture or subcultures(Deutsch, 1991). This language usually matters only to members of organization, which share in that culture.

"To distinguish leadership from management or administration, one can argue that leaders create and change cultures, while managers and administrators live within them" (Schein, 1992, p. 5).
"Culture is the result of a complex group learning process that is only partially influenced by leader behavior. But if the group’s survival is threatened because elements of its culture have become maladapted, it is ultimately the function of leadership to recognize and do something about the situation. It is in this sense that leadership and culture are conceptually intertwined" (Schein, 1992: p. 5).
There is a unique culture in every single company. HR manager should think about the values, beliefs, principles, practices, behaviors, and meanings that are active for the employees. For example HR manager can find answers :
-- what are our beliefs?
-- what are our principles?
-- what are our practices and behaviors?
-- what are our values?
-- what meanings do our principles and practices have for us?
“"Culture" can be defined and described as: . . . the underlying values, beliefs, and principles that serve as a foundation for an organization's management system as well as the set of management practices and behaviors that both exemplify and reinforce those basic principles. These principles and practices endure because they have meaning for the members of an organization. They represent strategies for survival that have worked well in the past and that the members believe will work again in the future. . . . the values, beliefs, and meanings that underlie a social system are the primary source of motivated and coordinated activity (Denison, 1990: 2). Schein’s article tells us the fundamentals about the general content and process of culture. O’Reilly’s article tells us about why and how culture is linked to commitment in corporations so that we can understand when culture is important in a company, the process through which cultures are developed and maintained, and how cultures themselves can be managed.”(6)
The organizational cultures can not be a product of individuals working by their own, but instead demand that the individuals should cooperate with each other - and it means interaction between the leaders and followers as well as among the followers, is direct attributes of organizational culture include, both ideology and behaviour. The ideologies cover believes, values, and norms, which direct individual and collective action.
Schein gives two examples, how the concept of the help of "culture" shines(covers) organizational situations, when before us stands some of more incomprehensible and irrational aspects of groups and organizations:
1. Company of Action
2. Multi Company
When he became confused concerning, why his recommendations for change were ineffective in the solving of problems in these companies, he began to investigate his own assumptions, how the things must and were in systems of the client - that is, he began the cultural analysis. He has found out the basic values, beliefs, meanings, and basic assumptions, which invisibly order national actions and behaviour. To make behavior change (that is, performance) in these firms, Schein must have helped the clients "to see" their cultural artifacts, and work at change them ("artifacts" - any things, which are man made - beliefs, the actions, rules, policies norms, the procedures, etc. all are made by the people to conduct the social control).
Schein explains that one of the critical aspects of culture is that certain things in groups are shared or held in common and this includes the following:
1. Observed behavioral regularity, when the people cooperate (language, customs house and traditions, rituals)
2. Norm of group
3. Maintained values
4. Formal philosophy
5. Rule of game
6. Climate
7. Enclosed skills
8. Habit to reflection, intellectual models, and - or linguistic paradigms
9. Divided(shared) meanings(importance)
10. Metaphor of a root or symbols of association
"Culture" also implies a "patterning or integration" of all the constitutive "parts" that "is the essence of what we mean" by the term (Schein, 1992, p. 10).
"The most useful way to think about culture is to view it as the accumulated shared learning of a given group, covering behavioral, emotional, and cognitive elements of the group members’ total psychological functioning" (Schein, 1992, p. 10).
Three conclusive points to keep in mind about culture in Ed Schein’s article:
1. The problem of socialization - (p. 13) " culture - mechanism of the social management and also can be the basis be obvious managements of the members in perception, reflection, and feeling by some ways. "
Think about: how did you see this in the ValuJet Airlines case?
2. The problem of behaviour - (p. 13) "frank" behaviour can not be included "quite" as a part of the cultural analysis, which you do, because it is always determined (p. 14) by cultural cultural predisposition and the situational contingencies arising from the external environment.
3. Can a large organization have one culture? - Pay attention, that each organization includes some various cultures, though there can be a set of blockings of values, beliefs, assumptions, norms, and samples of behaviour, about which think as general(common) culture as a whole. So for example, there can be one subculture within the limits of marketing, another within the limits of book keeping, a little in limits HR or Finance, etc.
Look at ValuJet-- were there different cultures (subcultures) within each of the employee levels?
Was there an overarching set of values, beliefs, actions at the "top" or "overarching" level of the corporation?
"Culture and leadership are two sides of the same coin in that leaders first create cultures when they create groups and organizations. Once cultures exist, they determine the criteria for leadership and thus determine who will or will not be a leader. But if cultures become dysfunctional, it is the unique function of leadership to perceive the functional and dysfunctional elements of the existing culture and to manage cultural evolution and change in such a way that the group can survive in a changing environment" (Schein, 1992, p. 15).
If you are interested in the increasing obligation of the employee, study, both quality of products and services, and the processes - then think how to bring in the contribution to culture, which will support those purposes.
O'Reilly Offered:
Identify Strategic purposes of unit
* analyze existing values and norms
* search for norms, which the useful norms interfere,, which are absent; the conflicts between necessary and now renumerated
* After identification above mentioned, the programs can be developed to begin to form or to develop desirable norms.
In the theory of organization, this process of a transfer of the founders' values into the members' practices has already been recognized by Weber (1948: 297): ". . . when the organization of authority becomes permanent, the staff supporting the charismatic ruler becomes routinized." In Weber's typology of social action, among other types he distinguished action toward a value (wertrational) from action dominated by habitual response ("traditional"; Burrell and Morgan, 1979: 83). Our findings suggest that actions by ordinary organization members are more often traditional than wertrational.
“If members' values depend primarily on their demographics, the way values enter the organization is via the hiring process: a company hires people of a certain nationality, age, education, and sex and, therefore, with certain values. Their subsequent socialization in the organization is a matter of learning the practices: symbols, heroes, and rituals.” (7)



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