ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE AND CULTURE

Organization Structure and Culture



Table of Contents

Organization Structure and Culture3

Introduction3

Task 13

Organization Structure and Culture3

Task 23

Maintaining a Clear Standard3

Communication within the Organization3

Conclusion and Recommendations3

References3

Organization Structure and Culture

Introduction

Organizational culture, and the organizational structure that both partially defines, and is partially defined by, that very culture. Understanding how the internal structure and culture operates, and machinery behind the scenes that runs it, will allow those within the organizational culture to organize and strengthen the good, cut away the bad, and actually manufacture an environment that breeds and encourages success among its members.

Armstrong (1999) cites the work of Furnham and Gunter (1993) defining culture as 'the commonly held beliefs, attitudes and values that exist in an organization. Put more simply, culture is 'the way we do things around here'. With shifts in the product strategy and the recent collaborations came the difficult task of changing aspects of the cultural values of the organization. The company traditionally embraced what theorists would generally refer to as a role culture. This referred to organizations operating in relatively stable environments with more of a focus on procedure, hierarchy and bureaucracy rather than dynamism (Amstrong, 2000 citing the works of Harrison, 1972; Handy, 1976; Schein, 1985 and Williams et al, 1989).

For the organization to succeed in the more volatile and competitive environment it found itself, its cultural values need to be revised to a certain extent. It started to become necessary that the top management understood the major changes that the company was undergoing and the need for refining of thinking processes and general management values. Though it is clear from the case that the new cultural values were widely communicated, it is not very clear about the levers for change that had existed in the organization and the way they were used. The commonly identifiable levers could deal with the areas of performance, commitment, quality, learning and values among others.

From the initial response by the organization, it appears that the organization did embrace the new values, but only as a short-term response to the ensuing financial crisis and not really through an understanding of the business' long term strategy. Though the Core Management Programme managed to eventually address the long-term strategic need for cultural change, a criticism may be levelled that this approach should have been adopted initially.

Task 1

Organization Structure and Culture

Why is the culture and the internal processes so important? Many leadership theorists and coaches have found that ineffective leadership often tends to be one of the major causes of an organization's diminishing and weakening. Even a government example from history can be ancient Rome. During a series of terrible emperors, the structure and culture was strong enough to often overcome it, even for decades at a time-but without strong top end leadership eventually the mid level governing and organizational culture collapsed, resulting in the eventual failure of the culture.

To be healthy for the long term, a corporation must have strong leadership and a strong organizational culture. Even though some of the strongest companies or ...