Week 10 Post 2: Organizational Culture

Organizational culture is a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs, which governs how people behave in organizations. These shared values have a strong influence on the people in the organization and dictate how they dress, act, and perform their jobs. There has been a lot of debate to what organizational culture really means. There is a universal consensus that organizational culture does in fact exist, and that it plays an important role in shaping behaviors in organizations.

I found an article on The Harvard Business Review, in which the author created a discussion board on LinkedIn and asked people to post what they thought organizational culture was/meant.

Some of the responses are as follows: (taken directly from the HBR article - https://hbr.org/2013/05/what-is-organizational-culture)

- “Culture is how organizations ‘do things’.” — Robbie Katanga

- “Organizational culture defines a jointly shared description of an organization from within.” — Bruce Perron

- “Organizational culture is civilization in the workplace.” — Alan Adler

- “Culture is the organization’s immune system.” — Michael Watkins

- “Organizational culture is shaped by the main culture of the society we live in, albeit with greater emphasis on particular parts of it.” — Elizabeth Skringar

- “It over simplifies the situation in large organizations to assume there is only one culture… and it’s risky for new leaders to ignore the sub-cultures.” — Rolf Winkler

- “An organization is a living culture… that can adapt to the reality as fast as possible.” — Abdi Osman Jama

The response that I found the most interesting was the one that said culture is the organization’s immune system. I found it interesting because I would never have thought of it like that. However after reading how the author explained it, it made a lot of sense to me.

The author said, “Culture is a form of protection that has evolved from situational pressures. It prevents “wrong thinking” and “wrong people” from entering the organization in the first place. It says that organizational culture functions much like the human immune system in preventing viruses and bacteria from taking hold and damaging the body. The problem, of course, is that organizational immune systems also can attack agents of needed change, and this has important implications for on-boarding and integrating people into organizations.” (https://hbr.org/2013/05/what-is-organizational-culture)

I found another article that said the most important thing about culture is that it’s the only sustainable point of difference for any organization. Anyone can copy a company’s strategy, but nobody can copy their culture. I agree with this statement and believe that an organization’s culture can have an immense influence on why employees want to work for your organization. I also believe that the culture plays a big role in employee satisfaction.