The Concept And Significance Of Organizational Culture

Culture is the beliefs, customs, norm, idea, art of a particular society, community, place or time. Organizational culture can be described as a two level construct that includes both observable and unobservable characteristics of the organisation. At the observable level, culture includes many aspects of the organisation such as architecture, behaviour, dress, patterns, rules, stories, myths, languages and ceremonies. At the unobservable level, culture is a structure of the shared values, customs, norms, idea of a organisational members. Therefore, we can say organisational culture is a configuration of these twp levels of characteristics that orients organisational members to manage problems and their surroundings(Hodge Anthony Gales 2003).

According to Edgar Schein, an organisational culture is a pattern of shared basic assumption that a group has learned as it solve its problems of external adaption and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relations to those problems and according to Greet Hofstede, organisational culture is the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes one group from another. Culture in organisation is very essential thing.

Culture direct and influences behaviour of organisational members by providing general guidelines and shape interpretations of events. Culture affect not only the behaviour of managers and employees but also the decision making within the organisation. So to better manage an organisation, one can acquire the culture within the organisation and better nurture it. Utilization culture within the organisation varies from person to person. Generally, one can utilize a culture within the organisation by understanding the culture such as where do culture come from, what are the core values of setting a culture, how can it be maintained, the behaviour, norms, customs, arts, ideas, values of organisation. One can utilize culture by diminishing distinction between thinker and doers and decentralizing implementations within the organisation. By formulating both competitive strategy and vision for organisation and making all members participate in making decisions that will help to achieve vision, in that way one can utilize the culture within organisation.

One of the earliest theorist Fredrick Winslow Taylor stated an idea about work process specially. In 1909, he proposed that by optimizing and simplifying jobs, productivity can increase. This is known as Scientific management. On the other hand, human relationship approach is of making organisational members feel useful and important part of the overall effort. This approach is viewed as the means of accomplishing the ultimate goal of building a cooperative and compliant work force(Raymond E Miles, 1965). Even though there are a lot of similarities between organisational culture and scientific management and human relations movement, there are some differences between them. Such as: According to Raymond E Miles, human relations focuses on individual needs and desire.

On the other hand, according to Fredrick Winslow Taylor, scientific management focuses on the use of scientific method to study work and determine the path of doing work where organisational culture focuses more on shared values between members. According to Raymond E Miles, another suggestion to human relations is to make decision by manager only without involving others where organizational culture emphasis on involve more people in decision making. On the other hand, according to Fredrick Winslow Taylor, in scientific management, managers only do the planning and training where in organisational culture, there are very much less distinction between thinker and executioner. I think tampering with organisational culture, it may causes many serious problems within organisation such as loss of power, loss of skills, loss of time, inability to perform in the new situations, inability to adapt the new situations and to cope with new situations, break of mutual trust, respect and understanding of work groups, fear of new situations etc.