1. Introduction
Our personalities shape our behaviours whereas the personalities of organization shape its culture within. Organizational culture comprises the assumptions, attitudes, experiences, psychology, beliefs and values (personal and cultural values) of its members and their behaviours. Deal and Kennedy (1982) defined organizational culture as the way things get done around here. One of the most prominent theorists of organizational culture, Edgar Schein (1993), defined organizational culture as a pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid ...view middle of the document...
People Orientation
The degree to which management decisions take into consideration the effect of outcome on people within the organization.
Team Orientation
The degree to which work activities are disseminated to teams then individuals.
Aggressiveness
The degree to which people are aggressive and competitive rather than easy going.
Stability
The degree to which organizational activities maintaining the status quo in contrast to growth.
Culture is a descriptive term because it concerns with how employees perceive an organization’s culture, not with whether they like them. While job satisfaction measure affective responses to work environment, such as how employees feel about the organization which is an evaluative term. A dominant culture expresses the core values that are shared by majority of the organization’s members, and it is always refer to when talking about an organization’s culture. Subcultures tend to develop in large organizations to reflect common problems, situations, or experiences of members.
Sorensen (2002) mentioned that it has become increasingly popular to differentiate between strong and weak cultures. In a strong culture, the organization’s core values are both intensely held and widely shared. It has great influence on the behaviour of its member, increase cohesiveness and result in lower employee turnover. It helps firms operate like well-oiled machines, cruising along with outstanding execution and perhaps minor tweaking of existing procedures here and there. A strong organizational culture increase behavioural consistency and act as a substitute for formalization. High formalization creates predictability, orderliness and consistency.
3. Creation and Development of Culture
The founding of an organization is a critical period in the life of the organization and the development of its culture. An organization’s culture originated from what it has done before and the degree of success it has had, and the founders of an organization usually have a major impact on the early culture because they have a vision of what the organization should be. Schein (1996) described that culture creation occurs in three ways. First, founders only hire and keep those who think and feel like they do. Second, by indoctrinates and socializes employees to their way of thinking and feeling. And finally, the founders own behaviour is a role model that encourages employees to identify with them and thereby internalize the beliefs, values and assumptions. What is crucial to recognize at this stage is that if the organization is successful and the success is attributed to the founder, his entire personality becomes embedded in the culture of the organization.
Organization needs to keep the culture alive once it is in place, in order to do so; three forces play an important role by keeping the culture alive.
Selection – to seek out those who fit in and will benefit the organization successfully in term of...
