Understanding Organizational Culture

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Understanding Organizational culture We can understand about organizational culture by viewing it as an individual. Individual human being each has its unique personalities. And each organization has its distinctive culture. This culture that the organization has in fact is a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization (Robbins and Judge, 2012). In addition, according to Edgar Schein (1999) in organizational terms, is the way how cultural elements affect the strategy is determined, goals are established and how organization operates. Furthermore, the key personnel involved are influenced by their own cultural backgrounds and shared experience since these have helped shape their own values and perceptions. As we understand that each organization has its own systems of structuring its own cultural management system, thus it can be viewed as a strategic asset. Products and pricing strategies can be copied but organizational culture is not easily replicated. So despite knowing the culture of successful companies, it is virtually impossible to copy, making culture a strategic asset (Flamholtz and Randle, 2011). Take Apple for example, it has overtaken Microsoft as the most valuable technology company. Usurp Microsoft position which they held for almost two decades. The concept of culture helps to explain all phenomena to normalise them. That is, if we understand the dynamics of culture, we will be less likely to be irritated and frustrated by the irrational behaviours of people in the organization. More importantly, if we understand culture better, we will be able to understand ourselves better and recognise some of the forces that work within us which defines who we are. Culture is not only all around us, but also within us (Schein, 2010). So, culture is within each and every one. However Why would people be interested in
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