An important issue in the global business world today is whether companies which rely strongly on traditional culture should preserve or abandon this type of culture. Before globalization almost all companies had a traditional culture which was mostly influenced by the society in that nation. Now with the ever growing hunger for globalization many companies have been changing this very traditional approach to doing business. This issue is very important as it concerns international business at a very high level. This essay supports the argument that companies like Matsushita should abandon their traditional culture. This essay will strongly put forward the reason why companies should abandon their traditional culture.
Organizational culture is the personality of the organization. Culture is compromised of the assumption, values, norms, and tangible signs of organization members and their behaviors. Members of an organization soon come to sense the particular culture of an organization. Culture is one of those terms that are difficult to express distinctly, but everyone knows it when they sense it. Culture can be defined as “A system of knowledge, of standards for perceiving, believing, evaluating and acting . . . that serve to relate human communities to their environmental settings.” (Allaire and Firsirotu 1984).
The culture within an organization has a significant impact on the ability of the organization to produce efficiently. Hence the ability to define and itemise the individual aspects of organizational culture is key to the leaderships ability manipulate the culture in such a way that productivity within the organization is advanced.
The authors of the article ‘Meshing cultures in a Consolidation’ emphasize the importance of understanding and assessing an organization’s culture as it can mean the difference between success and failure in today’s fast changing business environment (Walker, 1998). Rapid changes, such as emerging new technologies,...