Organizational Culture By Military And Corporate Organizations

The overall purpose of this paper is to get a better understanding on how organizational culture is defined and applied by the military and corporate organizations. According to Andrew Brown’s book, Organizational Culture (date), organizational culture “refers to the pattern of beliefs values and learned ways of coping with experience that have developed during the course of an organization’s history, and which tend to be manifested in its material arrangements and in the behaviors of its members.” However there are others (Schein 2009; Tharp 2009; Denison 1995; Allaire 1984; and Meek 1988) who argue that there is no exact definition for organizational culture because the military and corporations such as, Amazon or Google, has their own perception

According to Schein, “culture can be defined as a pattern of basic assumptions that are discovered by a given group, learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integrations, worked well to be considered valid” (21). This definition explains that culture is created when a group comes together and solves problems that might arise in a business setting. He also talks about the different levels of culture as well. The levels of organizational culture are observable artifacts, values, and basic underlying assumptions. Schein concludes with saying that organizational culture is a complex phenomenon and there needs to be a different and more reliable way of measuring organizational culture as compared to using the basic definition of

They both note that parts of culture are both visible and invisible. Gupta (2009), describes visible culture as, “having some physical shape, symbols, or behavior of employees.” Examples of visible culture for both are described as how people dress, documents and publications of the organization, and new hire trainings. Invisible culture is defined by both as values, attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs (Schein 2009 and Tharp 2009). Lastly Schein (2009) and Tharp (2009) suggest that organizational culture plays a role with leadership as well. An effective leader who listens to employees who suggest change in a policy or new ways to promote a product can have a positive effect on an organization. On the other hand, expressed by both Schein (2009) and Thrap (2009), a leader who does not comply with the organizational cultural change can negatively affect the organization because the company may not be able to progress forward without that change. Although change is not easily accepted with the participation from everyone, cultural change can improve both work ethic and