Overview of Organization Culture

The term organizational culture was introduced to the field of management and organization studies in the late 1970s, and it began to attract lots of scholarly attention in the early to mid-1980s. It developed with insights from sociology and anthropology. Organizational scholars disputed that organizations could have unique cultures, or sets of shared values, beliefs, and norms that direct the attitudes and actions of organizational members.

Researchers pointed out that organizational culture could considerably affect organizational outcomes, reasoning that culture could be used as a resource to influence employee actions, differentiate firms from one another, and create competitive advantage for those with superior cultures. As such, understanding organizational culture has conventionally been seen as a platform for providing business leaders with the tools needed to facilitate effective performance through the creation and management of an appropriate culture. Therefore, organization culture can be defined as the values and behaviors that add to the distinct social and psychological environment of an organization. Organizational culture encompasses an organization’s expectations, experiences, philosophy, and values that hold it together, and is expressed in its self-image, inner workings, interactions with the outside world, and future expectations. It is based on shared attitudes, beliefs, customs, and written and unwritten rules that have been developed over time and are deemed to be valid. Also called corporate culture, it’s shown in:

The ways the organization carry outs its business, treats its employees, customers, and the wider community

• The degree to which freedom is allowed in decision making, developing new ideas, and personal expression.
• How power and information flow through its hierarchy
• How dedicated employees are towards collective objectives.

It has an effect on a business’s productivity and performance, and provides a framework on customer care and service, product quality and safety, attendance and punctuality, and concern for the environment. It also extends to production-methods, marketing and advertising practices, and to new product creation. Organizational culture is distinct for every organization and is a difficult thing to change.

Organizational culture points to culture in any type of organization including that of schools, universities, not-for-profit groups, government agencies, or business entities. In business, concepts such as corporate culture and company culture are sometimes used to refer to related concept. The term corporate culture became extensively known in the business world in the late 1980s and early 1990s.Corporate culture was already used by managers, sociologists, and organizational theorists by the beginning of the 80s.The related idea of organizational climate come out in the 1960s and 70s, and the terms are now somewhat coincide.