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Essay on what an organizational culture
What is organizational culture and why should we care
What is meant by Organizational Culture, what are its importance and affects on the organization
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There are several definitions and applications for organizational culture found within Army doctrine. Through synthesis of L100 readings, organizational culture is a set of institutional norms shared by its people who create a distinctive environment to observe, analyze, and act. Like organizational culture, L100 provides much source material, both literally and figuratively. Commander’s actions and examples model organizational climate which influence localized standards of conduct for his or her subordinates which can directly correlate to the health and sustainability of a unit.
The similarities between organizational culture and organizational climate within the Army are convergent since it is a virtue-based institution vis-a-vis Army Values. These values shared throughout culture and climate domains aid young Soldiers in further understanding of Army norms introduced during Basic Training while maintaining the moral compass of more experienced Soldiers performing leadership or management responsibilities. Furthermore, organizational culture and organizational climate share a purpose in developing peer-to-peer and leader-subordinate relationships so that innovative, yet disciplined, behavior leads to career progression and additional leadership opportunities. Lastly, Army leaders communicate their expectations of Army culture and climate through their actions and messages. This strategic communication effort reaches everyone in the institution or organization including families and supporting civilians.
Organizational culture and organizational climate differences are most obvious when viewed in terms of scope. Organizational culture refers to the Army institution and its associated norms expressed throughout ...
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... Like the relationship of situational understanding and situational awareness, operational art is at a higher stratum than operational design. The commander must visualize the operation from start to finish with elements of creativity and innovation. For the operations-level commander, this is the premise for them to reach their determination of intent. Yet at some point, intangibles and the unquantifiable have to enter into a system of process. This is the goal of operational design. In simplest terms, operational art may draw commander’s attention to the forces of PMESH-II to aid in the identification of the operational environment; operational design will draw the commander’s attention to his or her combat capability and time constraints while contextually and adaptively improving MDMP or Joint Operational Planning process efficiencies and effectiveness.
Terriff, Terry. 2006. "Warriors and Innovators: Military Change and Organizational Culture in the US Marine Corps." Defence Studies 6, no. 2: 215. Advanced Placement Source, EBSCOhost (accessed November 28, 2017).
Unified Land Operations defines the army operational design methodology (ADM) as “a methodology for applying critical and creative thinking to understand, visualize, and describe unfamiliar problems and approaches to solving them. The operational design methodology incorporated into army doctrine serves as a method to compliment the military decision making process (MDMP). Although the ADM it is often confused with replacing MDMP, its purpose is to address complex problems from a nonlinear approach. ADM helps the commander to answer questions to problems. However, only a collaborative effort of an operation planning team (OPT) will achieve the approach to answering complex problems. Doctrine alone does not provide the answer to complex problems, but rather offers a guide to solve them. To conceptualize the MDMP, planners must incorporate ADM to provide a better understanding, visualization, and description of the problem. The purpose of this paper is to provide the framework to support why ADM is required in the MDMP.
The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief analysis of the United States Army’s organizational structure and its culture and how these two elements impact its workers, associates and affiliates. This paper will first examine the Army’s history, development and structure to highlight the origins of the Army’s culture. Secondly, a brief history of the Army’s organizational development will be followed by a close examination of its philosophy and supporting beliefs. Lastly, this paper will discuss the role of the Army’s leadership, their response to critical issues and the organizational structure of the Army. An analysis of the army’s top leaders will help the reader to understand the Army culture more thoroughly in the context of the Army’s organizational structure. More specifically this section of the paper will examine the Army leadership’s response to the current geo-political environment and other related issues. In conclusion, this paper hopes to highlight the Army’s overall functioning from an organizational standpoint and emphasize that idea that the Army is like a functional corporation. This will be accomplished by addressing various key questions throughout this text.
ADM offers Commanders and planning staff a tool for the conceptual component of an integrated planning process. The goal is to provide the commander with a cognitive tool that he can use to understand the logic of the system. Design is non-linear in thought and application. Its methodology clari¬fies guidance in the consideration of operational environment, and the current system is understood within existing limitations. The design team pro¬duces an environmental frame, an initial problem statement, and an initial theory of action. As the teams’ understanding increases and the nature of the problem begins to take form, the team explores in greater detail aspects of the environment that appear relevant to the problem. Here choices are made about boundaries and areas for possible inter¬vention. From this deeper understanding, the des...
Kotter lists reasons for why organizations fail to change the organizational culture. One of the reasons is neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture. In the context of the Army as a corporation, the ideals of MC have not taken hold because subordinate leaders are not adhering to the principles of MC at the lowest levels; particularly allowing their subordinate leaders to exercise disciplined initiative and accept prudent risk. The Army has created a leadership culture driven by oversight from the highest levels of leadership to ensure that their directives are executed with little deviation. This type of leadership is very risk averse and stifles the subordinate leaders ' desire to take any initiative to implement an alternate plan of action dictated by the conditions on the
“Functionalism … holds that social phenomena persist if they contribute to social stability.” (Brym and Lie 2012:5). Military culture has a crucial role in promoting social stability and harmony. First of all, the military culture value is one of valuable social assets. In daily life, “loyalty” is not specific to loyal any certain organization. “Loyalty” is a broad concept. It can be generally understood as integrity, because the integrity means to be loyal to the promise. Thus, from this perspective, this value is helpful for improving the social integrity and the sense of social security.
Operational leaders appreciate that SC is a critical element to achieving victory in current and future conflicts, but continue to struggle with how to employ SC given the lack of doctrine. A view across the combatant commands illustrates that “many different approaches to SC are being utilized, with uneven results. Processes are often quite different and integration into the planning process is not consistent.” Operational planners recognize SC is a necessary element of planning but are unsure how to plan for it.
We can identify three major cultural dimensions that help us to understand what leaders must focus on as they guide the transition of the Army. First, professional Identity, which is guided by Soldiers at all levels who are striving for excellence in their functional specialty, i.e., HR Sergeants. Soldiers who have goals and ideals of the Army to ethically put service and duty first. HR Sergeants are trained and well educated in their field. They are taught to put Soldiers first and have great customer support skills. Second, community, the sense in which Soldiers stop thinking about “I” and start thinking “we”. The bond among units who not only believe in cohesion with Soldiers, but their families too. The HR Sergeants are there to take care of Soldiers when financial issues arise with them or their families and don’t back down until the situation is solved. Last, hierarchy, which leads to order and control and provides Soldiers with moral reference and a sense of direction. The HR Sergeant has the mentality of mission first, knowing who to contact at the next level for assistance helps get the mission
Our nation is made of different cultures, but in the Army the culture is what defines us. There are different levels of cultures in the Army. The student handout states that artifacts is what Soldiers see and feel while they serve in the Army. This entails the Army lingo, gear, ceremonies, uniforms, flags and so on. Espoused beliefs and values, describing our doctrines regulations, and policy statements (“An Army White Paper”, 2010, p. 10). Basic underlying assumptions is when the culture of the Army is taken for granted. The culture in the Army and the HR profession is what works in the changing profession.
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.
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.
...roach, anticipation, operational reach, culmination, arranging operations, and forces and functions. Among those elements end state, center of gravity, and line of effort are particularly useful I developing operational approach. The feeders for operational art are commander’s experience, intellect, creativity, intuition, education, and judgment. However, operational design calls for problem identification, achieving common understanding of the situation and continuous and recursive refinement of situational understanding. Although operational design supports operational art with general methodology, by definition, they both differ by the fact that operational art is application that essentially uses cognitive faculties, whereas operational design is a process that integrates cognitive faculties, tools, and system to conceive of and construct viable approach.
Culture varies from one organization to another as it is shaped by the values and beliefs of the people working there. As it progresses over the years, it takes form in such a way that it works or performs in a manner to regulate behavior, action and decision making processes within the organization. It not just includes written rules and regulations, but also the behavioral aspects faced by each one on a day to day basis.
Frost, P. J., Moore, L. F., Louis, M. R., Lundberg, C. C. & Martin, J. (1991). Reframing Organizational Culture. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
It is clear that culture change is very complex. It has extreme causes and effects. In order to understand all of the signs of change, we must take a holistic approach to studying cultures and the environments in which they exist. Only then can you expect to understand the phenomena of culture change. The Army needs to make cultural changes to evolve and be competitive in the 21st century. It must be done quickly, towards any direction able enough to enhance their ability to stimulate and assimilate change.