Understanding Of The Concept Of Organizational Culture

In order to fully comprehend what organizational culture is according to Schein, analysing the factors and variables influencing the organizational at every level (Exhibit 1) would be the most effective method.

According to The Competing Values Framework of Cameron, DeGraff, Quinn, and Thakor (2006), there are 4 types of corporate culture, control-oriented culture, compete oriented culture, create oriented culture and collaborate oriented culture.

Control-oriented cultures put their attention to creating better, faster and cheaper processes, it is all about efficiency and productivity. Create-oriented culture focus maily on innovation and R&D, constantly being one step ahead in terms of innovating products. Compete-oriented cultures’ center of attention is to always be first and win, their attention is put on market share, sales, maximizing shareholder values and customer satisfaction. Collaborate-oriented cultures’ focal point is on developing individuals, involvement of individuals, building skills and individual growth. In general, compete-oriented cultures tend to have cultural clashes with collaborate-oriented cultures, and create-oriented cultures tends to clash with control-oriented cultures. Clashes may be prevented by thoroughly analyzing the potential merger and/or acquisition. By doing so, the company would avoid failure such as the DailmerChrysler M&A.

According to organizational Culture according to Harrison (1992), organizational culture can be split into four different categories, power cultures, role cultures, task/achievement cultures and person/support cultures.

A power culture is an organization where the power is left to only a few key executives and where everything is highly centralized. Role cultures are essentially very autocratic, and roles clearly defined. Furthermore, there are task/achievement cultures, where the focus is mainly put on the task and completing it rather than the process used, these cultures tend to emphasize on team-work, collaboration and creativity, closely relating this type of organizational culture to collaborate and create-oriented cultures. Lastly, person/support cultures focus mainly on individual growth and personal development, such cultures emphasize egalitarianism. Therefore, person/support cultures are closely related to collaborate-oriented cultures mentioned in Cameron’s framework.

Ultimately, organizational culture is a complex external force that may be analysed using several frameworks, however it is still an abstract concept and individuals may analyse another culture, organizational or not, through self-referencing, making organizational culture a rather complication concept to grasp. Many factors influence organizational culture; however, it is constantly evolving through internal and external factors. To best understand organizational culture, a thorough analysis using multiple framework must be conducted., only then can proper statements be made.