Human Resource Management
Organizational Culture
Organizational culture is the sum of the beliefs, values, and assumptions that represent shared meaning among members of an organization, guiding their behavior. It is related to the organization’s identity, much like an individual’s personality. Every organization has a culture and every organization’s culture is unique. Here, we examine the meaning of culture in work organizations and its important features. By understanding the nature and levels of culture, we can learn how to maintain it and how to work toward necessary changes.
The Concept of Organizational Culture
A famous management expert once said, “an organization is a body of thought thought by thinking thinkers” (Weick, 1979). This is a word puzzle that is meant to make us think, and it does. After all, one of the most common definitions of work organization, found in many textbooks, is that it is a goal-directed system of cooperative effort. This standard definition says nothing about thinking. Instead, it focuses on a rational approach to collaborative work, driven by official goals that come down from top management.
In contrast, body of thought implies that an organization is not something tangible, but rather that it is whatever we think it is—it is cognitive rather than physical in nature. This conceptualization of our organization comes from the ways that it has been thought about over time as it has evolved. Further, this conceptualization comes from “thinking thinkers,” or the people who have reflected on their work and how it is done most effectively in this organization, and who continue to do so. The culture continues to evolve even today as people make sense of what they do together.
For example, do we work in offices with walls and doors or in open cubicles? Which way works best? What meaning does an open cubicle have for us? Accessibility and open communication, or lack of trust and little privacy? If our organization has both, who gets offices rather than cubicles and why is that? What does that tell us about who and what are valued? The answers to these questions are not apparent in our standard definition of organization, but they tell us a great deal about the organization as it is perceived by its members. These answer will be unique in every organization—the physical cubicles may look the same, but could mean very different things in different organizations.
From the perspective of organizational culture, many aspects of an organization are symbols that have meaning for members of the organization. The organization itself is subjective in nature, defined by the group of people in it. In sum, organizational culture can be seen as the beliefs, values, and assumptions that represent shared meaning among members of an organization and that guide their behavior.
It becomes part of the identity of an organization, much like an individual’s personality. An organization’s culture can lead to better organizational effectiveness and performance (e.g., customer satisfaction and sales in a for-profit setting) (Boyce, Nieminen, Gillespie, Ryan, & Denison, 2015).