Organisation culture Essay -- Business and Management Studies

Organisation cultureOrganisation culture can be defined as the collection of relativelyuniform and enduring beliefs, values, customs, traditions andpractices which be shared by an brass sections members and which aretransmitted from one generation of employees to the next. One view inthe scope of governing body culture is the culture metaphor. A metaphoris a word or phrase applied to an object or action which it does notliterally denote.1 Metaphor can be powerful means of communicatingideas and are in common use in many organisations. It asserts thatculture is a intellectual state that has to be tolerated since it isincapable of being changed by management. It adopted aphenomenological standpoint and conceptualised culture as a processof enactment not as something that exists out there separate frompeople, but which was actually manufactured by company employees asthey interacted with one anformer(a) on a daily terra firma within theworkplace.2 In highlighting the symbolic sig nificance of virtuallyevery aspect of organisation life, the culture metaphor thus focusesattention on a human side of organisation that other metaphors ignoreor gloss over. The culture metaphor opens the way to areinterpretation of many traditional managerial concepts andprocesses. It as well as helps to reinterpret the nature and significance oforganisation environment relations.Culture of the organisation plays a key role in determining astructure that would suit. The organisation stance towardsparticipation and risk-taking will have an impact on the decisionpertaining to number of levels and delegation of authority. Congruencebetween culture and structure is important. Lack of congruity canresult in mixed signals across the organisation. Organisationalculture is based on differences in norms and shared practices whichare learned in the workplace and are considered as valid within theboundaries of a particular organisation. Therefore the efficiency ofan organization structure i s determined by how well it fits into theculture in which it is set.The environments stir the structures chosen by organizationaldecision-makers through their societys cultural expectations.Organisational structures are designed to insure survival throughsocial legitimacy by reflecting the surrounding cultures values andbeliefs (Birnbaum-More a... ...se of authority here. For the mostpart individuals are encouraged to perform their tasks with fewquestions asked though important decisions are apparent to be made as aresult of political manoeuvring. The greatest strength of powercultures is their ability to react quickly but their success by and largedepends on the abilities of the person or people at the centre.In conclusion, organisational culture exercises a potent form ofcontrol over the interaction of organisational members with each otherand outsiders. By supplying people with a toolbox of values, norms,and rules that tell them how to behave, organisation culture isinstrument al in determining how they interpret and react to asituation. Thus, an organisations culture can be a source ofcompetitive advantage.References1. Andrew Brown.1995, Organisational Culture Chap1, p132. David Buchanan & Andrzej Huczynski. 1997, Organizational Behaviour Chap 18, p5143. David Buchanan & Andrzej Huczynski. 1997, Organizational Behaviour Chap 22, p681 extra Referencesl Gaeth Morgan. 1986 Images of Organization2 Laurie J Mullins. 2005 Management and Organisational Behaviour