Company Culture

Buchannan & Huczynski defined organizational culture as “The shared values, beliefs and norms which influence they way employees think, feel and act towards others inside and outside the organization" (Buchannan & Huczynski, 2010). Organization culture is created and maintained by strategic leaders; the main purpose for having it is to help the organization cope with its environment. Any new strategy that executive management needs to implement will fail if it is inconsistent with the organization’s culture.

Although it is fist set by management, every employee who joins an organization, adds to the organization’s culture, sometimes they try to change it and others grasp it. For that, while recruiting new candidates, one of the important factors to look at is how easy can this person fit within the culture, and how can he positively affect it. Employees, who do not fit within the culture, usually feel like outsiders and cannot last for too long. To insure that employees will adhere with the organization’s culture, usually the organization put all new employees in programs to teach them the culture and emphasize on its importance.

Schein characterized three levels of organization’s culture as “behaviors and artifacts”, “values” and “assumptions and beliefs” (NDU, n.d.), the first level is visible and noticed by externals, it consists of signs, expressions, dress code, and the physical design and layout of the offices. When any one visits our offices, they will notice straight away the open culture we have, and that by the physical layout of our workspace. Regardless of the employee seniority, all employees have same offices, except for C level (executive management); in addition to that all meeting rooms have glass doors and walls.

This open office culture characterizes open communication and transparency, but mainly it is set to help managers to play a role in directing their subordinates and easier to monitor work by management. From my experience, this culture help me to build close relationship with my subordinates and managers, we discuss everything quickly and effectively, we rarely send emails between each other, it’s easier to communicate and work in groups. However, I experienced some drawbacks from this culture, we sometimes get distracted because of the noise, or because someone just grab his chair and starts chatting. I personally find it less productive and distracts attention, but very useful with having a collaborative work. Open office culture removed communication boundaries between employees themselves as well between employees and executive management, we have a very friendly environment were anyone could chat with top management.

Reference:

Buchanan, David A., & Huczynski, Andrzeg A. (2010). Organizational Behaviour. Prentice Hall.

Frank, K. & Fahrabach, K., (n.d.), ‘Organization Culture as a Complex System: Balance and Information in Models of Influence and Selection’, [Online], Available from: https://www.msu.edu/user/k/e/kenfrank/web/papers/Organization%20Culture%20as%20a%20Complex%20System.pdf

(Accessed 11 June 2011).

NDU, (n.d.), ‘Strategic Leadership and Decision Making, ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE’, [Online], Available from: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu/strat-ldr-dm/pt4ch16.html

(Accessed 11 June 2011).