Managing Changes Renewing Organizational Structure and Culture
In their 2005 book, Understanding and Managing: Organizational Behavior, Jennifer George and Gareth Jones define organizational structure as "the formal system of task and reporting relationships that controls, coordinates, and motivates employees so that they cooperate and work together to achieve an organization's goals." A logical consequence to an organization's structure is the resulting culture, which George and Jones further define as "the set of shared values, beliefs, and norms that influences the way employees think, feel, and behave toward each other and toward people outside the organization." Finding the right structure for one's organization is vital to its strength and longevity. Appropriate structures are commonly found by trial and error; most continue to evolve as the organization enters different stages of its existence. Structures are defined and redefined in accordance with the organization's strengths and weaknesses, maximizing one while attempting to decrease the other. Over the course of change of structural eras', so too will the culture change.
Culture is more than just a word; it embodies several ideas: Culture refers to the perspectives, practices and products of a social or professional group. An organization's culture holds within it, its integrity, its ethics, its personality and attitude. Organizational culture is the invisible billboard and silent announcement proclaiming its rules of engagement. Culture is a group's particular ideas about authority, hierarchy and communication styles. Culture is shared values across an organization, along with consistent business-related (and to some degree social) ways of behaving t...
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Just as there are cultures in larger human society, there seem to be cultures within organizations. These cultures are similar to societal cultures. They are shared, communicated through symbols, and passed down from generation to generation of employees. Many definitions of organizational culture have been proposed. Most of them agree that there are several levels of culture and that these levels differ in terms of their visibility and their ability to be changed.
The longevity of the culture as well as managements views was discussed which can make it difficult for the culture to change. Several agreed many company cultures are hard to change, however can be accomplished with everyone on board including the management. Furthermore, many agreed changes can be positive and help provide a better environment for IT security policies. Dawan Ferguson gave an example of how her employer changed the culture by beginning the management and streamlining it down the chain. This not only proved to be effective but also unified everyone within the company with the new changes and many agreed with her on this
To HR professionals, organization culture is the glue which connects a company’s vision with its value, its mission, strategy and philosophy with its operating model, systems and processes to deliver performance metrics and is fundamental for an organization to achieve its strategic goals and objectives and therefore given its impact on business performance, it must be developed, managed, led and reviewed. The organization’s culture or “way things are done” must be congruent with the organization strategic direction. Ensuring that key processes that drive the desired behaviors and influence decision-making are deeply understood and implemented in accordance with their intent and original design is of great importance for HR professionals. (Ulrich et al,
Organizational culture is a reflective view of the inner workings of an organization. This culture reflects hierarchical arrangements as it pertains to the lines of authority, rights and obligations, duties, and communication processes. Organizational structure establishes the manner in which power and roles are coordinated and controlled amongst the varying levels of management. The structure of an organization is dependent upon their goals, objectives, and strategy. Determining organizational structure best suited for an organization is generally found within the six key elements of organizational structure and choosing those to implement those best suited for the organization. The six key elements include:
Culture change can be managed as a continuous process rather than through big shifts. (Watkins 2013)
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Chapter sixteen in our textbook highlights the benefits of organizational culture and what it can do for any company with a strong culture perspective. In fact chapter sixteen-three(a) speaks widely on how a strong culture perspective shapes any organization up well enough to perform better than any of its competitors who do not balance any organizational culture. If not mistaken after viewing SAS institute case they are well on track with facilitating a high performance organization culture. First, SAS institute motivate all employees to become goal alignment in their field of work. This is where they all share the common goal to get their work done. In one of the excerpts taken away from this case, an employee- friendly benefits summary expresses the statement “If you treat employees as if they make a difference to the company, they will make a difference to the company.” “SAS Institute’s founders set out to create the kind of workplace where employees would enjoy spending time. And even though the workforce continues to grow year after year, it’s still the kind of place where people enjoy working.” Clearly highlighted from this statement that SAS Institute is mainly ran off of a fit perspective. Which argues that a culture is only as good as it fits the industry. Allowing a good blueprint or set up will
Culture can be defined as “A pattern of basic assumptions invented, discovered or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore to be taught to the new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems”. Schein (1988). Organizational culture can be defined as a system of shared beliefs and values that develops within an organization and guides the behavior of its members. It includes routine behaviors, norms, dominant values, and feelings or climates. The purpose and function of this culture is to help foster internal integration, bring staff members from all levels of the organization closer together, and enhance their performance.
Organizational Culture: Organizational culture consists of parameters that members share and hold in common and implies structural stability and is embedded throughout the organization’s language, customs, traditions, ritual and policies. One can tell an organization’s culture by looking at what people wear, what time they come to work, what they brag about, even by how office space is distributed. The study of culture may focus on decoding artifacts such as organizational taboos, jargon, metaphors, humor, gossip, and any concepts that underlie the informal relationships between operators, managers, executives and their clients
The concept of organizational cultures was first raised in 1970s, and soon became a fashionable topic. Organizational culture is the shared beliefs, values and behaviours of the group. Theorists of organizations believe that organizational culture represents the pattern of behaviours, values, and beliefs of an organization. Hence, studies around organizational culture have been seen as great helpful and essential for understanding organizations and their behaviours. Additionally, organizational culture has been considered to be an important determinant of organizational success. Therefore, leaders and managers pay more than more attentions on this topic, focusing on constructing and managing organizational cultures.
Organizational structure within an organization is a critical component of the day to day operations of a business. An organization benefits from organizational structure as a result of all it encompasses. It is used to define how tasks are divided, grouped and coordinated. Six elements should be addressed during the design of the organization’s structure: work specialization, departmentalization, chain of command, spans of control, centralization and decentralization. These components are a direct reflection of the organization’s culture, power and politics.
Understanding the structure of an organization plays a vital role in laying the blueprint for how a company will be managed and organized. It provides a well-defined framework that outlines the roles and responsibilities of each employee in a particular company. It shows how each employee interacts and works one another in achieving the goals of a company. In other words, organizational structure is a reflection of the working relationships that govern the workflow of the company. It has a profound effect on a company’s structural dimensions, which includes formalization, specialization, hierarchy and centralization.
Organizational structure indicates to how the work of employees and teams within an organization is coordinated. In order to obtain organizational goals, individual work needs to be coordinated and managed. Structure is an important instrument in obtaining coordination, as it appoints reporting relations (who reports to whom), designs formal communication channels, and portray how different actions of individuals are linked together.
We live and work in a condition with challenging opportunities and dramatic uncertain economic environment, especially for managers, must have enough skills and knowledge to manage the changeable business environment. This essay will discuss whether the managers nowadays have the tendency to focus on economic results at the expense of more important things or not, and yes, the managers have the tendency to focus on the expense of more important things, the discussion will be demonstrated from the following concepts: contemporary management challenges—downsizing, workplace diversity, restructuring, globalisation and quality; organisational culture in Australia, managers’ role in managing organisational culture. Managers today must be able to solve problems based on the skills and knowledge that they have, and help the organisation be more successful.