The Formation of Cultures

Hodge and Anthony, define culture as the set of important understandings (often unstated) that members of a community share in common.

Is the conduct of humans who are part of an organization and the meanings that the people attach to their actions. Culture includes the organization values, visions, norms, working language, system, symbols, beliefs and habits (Schein,1992).

Organizational culture represents the collective values, beliefs and principles of organizational members and is a product of such factors such as history, product, market, technology, and strategy, kind of employees, management style, and national cultures and so on(Needle, 2004.P. 75).

1.2. THE FORMATION OF CULTURE

Because the concepts of culture can be so challenging to grasp fully or to measure, many theorists have differing opinions as to exactly how culture is formed within organisations. Edgar Schein, Christian Scholz and Meryl Louis have their own explanation of culture and its formation as follows:

• Schein’s Steps of culture formation in groups

-People form groups seeking need satisfaction. They bring goals, values and even hopes to the group process and endeavour to find a situation in which, for the most part, they can achieve what they want. Schein has an excellent treatment of the steps of group formation and growth. The group formation and maintenance depend on shared norms, values, and so on as the glue that holds members together so they constantly seek to find and preserve commonality.

-Step one is what Schein terms the “confrontation of dependency” issue. Here, the matter of will lead the group is the focal point, and culture is easily seen as the force in it. The group looks for someone to give it direction. What individual members ...

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...c activity possible: human relationships.

Hampden-Turner and Trampenaars have identified seven “sets” of values that they believe are crucial for economic success:

• Universalism Vs Particularism:

-This determines whether each situation is dealt with according to a universal set of rules or its particular merits.

• Analysing Vs Integrating:

-Are we more effective as managers when we analyse phenomena into parts or when we integrate and configure such details into whole patterns, relationships and wider contexts?

• Individualism Vs Communitarianism:

-This examines the degree of focus on each individual, his or her rights, motivations, rewards, capacities and all attitudes in contrast to the advancement of the organisation as a community of which all its members are a part.

• Inner-directed Vs Outer-directed Orientation:

-Which are the more important guides