Organisational Culture

Meaning:

 

Organizational culture tends to be shared by all or most members of some social group; is something that older members usually try to pass on to younger members; shapes behavior and structures perceptions of the world. Cultures are often studied and understood at a national level, such as the American or French culture.

Definition:

Basic Definition – Gareth Jones

“A set of shared values and norms that controls organisation members’ interaction with each other, and with suppliers, customers and others outside the organisation”

•“Culture is a system of publicly and collectively accepted meanings operating for a given group at a given time.  This system of terms, forms, categories and images interprets a people’s own situation to themselves” – Pettigrew, 1979

•“…organisational culture can be thought of as the glue that holds an organisation together through a sharing of patterns of meaning.  The culture focuses on the values, beliefs, and expectations that members come to share”  -  Siehl and Martin, 1984

•“The pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation, and internal integration, and that have 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 relation to these problems”  -  Edwin Schein, 1985

 

Climate and culture overlap to a certain extent, with perceptions of culture’s patterns of behaviour being a large part of what climate research addresses. However, organization members may describe organizational features (climate) in the same way but interpret them differently due to cultural and subcultural influences (Rosen, Greenlagh and Anderson 1981).

Organisational Culture by k.vijayalakshmi