Essay: Critically evaluate the following proposition: (a) Organisations have a single, overarching culture. (b) Strong cultures make an important contribution to organisational success.
Culture is not a simply defined concept. The corporate culture of a business will often be reflected its mission statement. There is no single definition for organizational culture. According to Edgar Schein, an MIT Professor of Management, His fundamental view is that culture is the sharing of meanings and sharing of ‘basic’ assumptions among organizational employees. Our goal in this essay is to argue on two important points: a) Organisations are more effective and flexible in today’s world by adopting to sub cultures. b) Strong cultures make an important contribution to organisational success. The essay is divided in 4 sections. In the first section we will introduce the essay. Then in section 2 we will look at the different kinds of culture which prevails in the organization. It will then be followed by Section 3 where we will discuss our essays key premise and it will be followed by section 4 in which we will look at our conclusion.
According to the diagram given above you can observe the main steps of an organizational culture forming. It starts from the values set by organization’s founder, which flows into essential and desirable criteria which are forwarded to the top management. On the next stage top management coincides with selection criteria into socialization. On the final stage when Socialization and the top management combine together they form an Organizations culture.
Management today is all about getting things done through people (Hofstede, 1980). There are different kinds of corporate culture. Studies have shown that there are different ways of sorting corporate culture. John Kotter and James Heskett (1992) suggested there are two types of culture.
Adaptive culture: In business with adaptive cultures, Managers introduce a culture that allows a...