Organizational Culture

In order to have a better understanding about Organizational culture, lets define it first and after, lets try to analyze what it is, what it implies and what it does involve. So, lets begin with its definition.

Organizational Culture:

Represents the collective values, beliefs and principles of organizational members. It may also be influenced by factors such as history, type of product, market, technology, strategy, type of employees, management style, and national culture. Culture includes the organization’s vision, values, norms, systems, symbols, language, assumptions, environment, location, beliefs and habits.

After reading the definition a couple of times, we can be sure that organizational culture is what defines a company and what makes them all different. By this, we can of course notice that there are kinds of organizational cultures that are not healthy at all, that instead of helping the company continuously grow, completely tight it to the ground avoiding any improvement.

When there is a need for a cultural change(when things are not going so great or the company does not possess a healthy culture), we can diagnose what is not going good with employee surveys, interviews, focus groups, pure observation and customer surveys as well.

Also, we can follow the next six guidelines in order to improve our organizational culture:

· Formulate a clear strategic vision.

· Display top management commitment.

· Model culture change at the highest level.

· Modify the organization in order to support organizational culture.

· Select and socialize newcomer and terminate deviants.

· Develop ethical and legal sensitivity.

Communication is critical in order to have a healthy environment in our offices, letting the employees know when something went really great and also, looking for solutions and helping them when goals were not achieved can improve the trust and commitment to the company.

Organizations and companies should always strive for healthy organizational cultures in order to increase productivity, growth, efficiency and reduce counterproductive behavior from its employees. Some of these healthy characteristics that companies should promote are accepting each individual and promoting diversity within the company, have a strong communication with all employees regarding policies and company issues and investing in learning, training and employee knowledge.

In conclusion, organizational culture really affects our day to day in the office and the quality of our end products. Maintaining a good environment is a task for all the members of the company, keeping it healthy is our daily job.