Organization Culture

Unmasking the myths

Unmasking the Myths

Organization Culture

Organization culture fosters an organization to achieve its business goals and objectives. The organizational culture can foster ethics as well unethical issues. Like Enron’s leadership and organizational culture was unethical whereas 3M and apple fosters innovative organizational culture so as to improve its efficiency. Organizational culture of an organization helps in fostering the behavior of the employees and the future of the organization. Organizational culture helps in team building within the organization. As through the organizational culture helps in fostering creativity, innovation, sharing of values. Organizational culture has become highly focused to innovation, through technological development and advancement the organizational culture helps in fostering change in the organization which helps in adopting total quality management.

Organizational culture is one of the most important aspect of the organization which helps in fostering development and change in the organization. It is the base of the organization which highly affects the behavior of the employees in the organization. The organizational culture can build positive behavior in an employee as well as negative behavior. It can be said that the growth of the organization highly depends on the organizational culture.

Creating a friendly and fun environment helps the employee to innovate. Companies like Apple and Google focuses on building a strong organizational culture which helps in increasing the efficiency of the employees. With the fun environment and culture the organizations are able to increase the efficiency of the employees.

UN Global Compact Principles

Ten Universal Principle:

Human rights

Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and

Principle 2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses. 

Labor standards

Principle 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;

Principle 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;

Principle 5: the effective abolition of child labour; and

Principle 6: the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

Environment

Principle 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges;

Principle 8: undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and

Principle 9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.   

Anti-curruption

Principle 10: Businesses should work against all forms of corruption, including extortion and bribery. (Foundation for UN Global Compact)

Myths

There are different myths in respect to the organization culture which are faced by the organization, these myths include the eclipse of Etiquette over ethics, Tolerance can, and business exists to maximize profits.

Eclipse of Etiquette over ethics

Considering different aspects and organizational tools we can say that ethics plays a major role in the organizational culture. Today, the businesses need to be ethical in their working. Ethics is the study of right and wrong, the duty and different obligations that the firm needs to follow, different moral norms and the responsibility that an individual carries. Business Ethics is the ethics that needs to be followed in the context of the business. It is the application of principles, discipline and theories of ethics to the organizational context. (Helms, 2006). The business needs to work ethically and morally in their business. The company has to meet the standards of conduct focusing on welfare of humans and their right to make their own choices. A company which is working unethically is not able to survive and meet the competition, the consumers today prefers the company who is ethical and work as per the ethics, thus eclipse of etiquette over ethics does not hold true in today’s competition.

Tolerance can

With the increasing competition in the market, it is important for the company to have a strong organizational culture which fosters growth and creativity in the organization and which can eradicate the competition and meet up with the tolerance. To resist the tolerance it is important for the company to change its strategies and system. Organizational change and a systematic approach to it-organization are to change at every step in the dynamic changing world. The factors can be internal or external like the carbon credit an external factor while growth target changed an internal factor. The change can affect the organization as well as the employee at large so; a good decision needs to be taken taking care of all the aspects of the organization. Organization change should foster the change that is targeted on the improving the performance of the working staff as well as the organization as a whole. The foundation of an systematic approach is that when a resource whether that is a person, function, or a product or service that is a part of the organization as an whole. A change in one thing will bolster the need to change something/s related to the former thing. System thinking helps the managers to seek the need of doing a research analysis to monitor the effect that a change will have on the board perspective on the company. Taking a broad view of the things that needs to be changing this will help them to identify the concern areas and issues this whole will help to quickly resolve the issue at hand. Systematic approach does not guarantee that the change will be without the ill effects this guarantee that this will help the organization to integrate the aims of the changes within the organization.

The internal factors are the changes which are based on the necessary changes that the organization faces, these changes are based on the change in the managerial, personnel deficiency which is there in the organization practices. These factors includes changes in the top management, change in the size of the organization, the gap in the performance of the organization and its performance, the gap in the employees needs and wants, deficiency in the existing organization in terms of the culture and values whereas the external forces are based on the different external factors. These include the factors which are not in the control of the organization and include the changes in the social, political, ethical, economic and technological changes. It includes all the factors pertaining to the external environment according to which the company needs to change its policies and management which will help the organization to attain competitive edge in the market of the operations.

Business exists to maximize profits

The Corporate were initially perceived just as a profit making unit and were only confined to generate profits, generate employment and pay taxes. The corporate were considered as a social responsible organization if it was able to generate huge amount of profits and employment for the workforce. (Friedman, M. 1970)

Though the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, was introduced long back, but it was adopted by the corporate long after its introduction. The need and demand of Corporate Social Responsibility was triggered by the increasing changes in the global market i.e. Globalization and social awareness. The need of Corporate Social Responsibility was also recognized with the rising regulatory standards and consumer demands. In today’s world companies are expected to work ethically and act with several responsibility and accountability towards the community, society, marketplace, and environment.( Friedman, M. 1970) The corporate in today’s time are accountable to the society as society expects them to be responsible for the several acts done by these corporate.

Corporate Social Responsibility has helped several companies to develop and work upon several new core competencies, which enables the corporate to build a special relation with its customers, society, its shareholders and government by the sustainability acts done by them. The corporate social responsibility activities help in building a positive image of the company, it also helps in building goodwill which in long run helps in generating profits. The CSR activities of the firm encourages its employees to participate in several social responsibilities it helps in building up loyalty. It also helps in building up a dedicated workforce and the employees become committed towards to organization. (Carroll, A.B. 1979)

With the increasing need and demand of the society, customers. The corporate works on a momentum “triple bottom line” or “sustainable” approach. These are social, environmental, and financial data which is used for evaluating the performance of the company. The companies are expected to perform well not only in terms of finance but also in the terms of areas which are not included in the part of the financial aspect i.e. ethics, human rights, environmental policies, corporate governance, environmental concerns, development of communities, issues in respect to its workplace, corporate governance, and business ethics. The performance of the companies is evaluated in respect of financials, social and environmental. (Carroll, A.B. 1979)

Transparency

With the increasing information driven economy, the businesses have become transparent. The Companies needs to be transparent in disclosing all its activities, policies and practices as these activities in a way affect the society, investors, environment, employees, economy of the country. So, disclosing these activities has become essential for these organizations.

Knowledge

With the increasing information-driven economy, the investors, consumers, stakeholders urge for more information about the corporate. The consumers do consider the sustainability and environmental record of the company, investors and stakeholders choose the stocks of the company according to their social moves.

Sustainability

With the increasing problem of globalization and diminishing resources, it is very important for an organization to make a move in helping the environment and run their business as per the interest of the environment without hampering the natural resources.

Globalization

As the world is going global, the company has opened its door for broader public interests. Global organization such as UN, WWF, environmentalists are concerned about the working of an organization towards the environment, community and society. (Melanie Merrifield, 2009)

Conclusion:

Organizational culture is one of the most important aspect of the organization which helps in fostering development and change in the organization. It is the base of the organization which highly affects the behavior of the employees in the organization. The organizational culture can build positive behavior in an employee as well as negative behavior. It can be said that the growth of the organization highly depends on the organizational culture.

Creating a friendly and fun environment helps the employee to innovate. Companies like Apple and Google focuses on building a strong organizational culture which helps in increasing the efficiency of the employees. With the fun environment and culture the organizations are able to increase the efficiency of the employees.

References:

Tamara J Erikson and Lynda Graton, Harvard Business Review, What It means to work hereCarroll, A.B. 1979. A three-dimensional model of corporate social performance, Academy of Management Review, 4, 497–505.Carroll, A.B. 1991. The pyramid of corporate social responsibility: toward the moral management of organizational stakeholders, Business Horizons, Jul–Aug, 39–48.

Carroll, A.B. and A.K. Buchholtz. 2002. Business and Society: Ethics and Stakeholder Management, 5th ed. Cincinnati: South-Western College Publishing/Thomson Learning.

Freeman, R.E. 1984. Strategic Management. A Stakeholder Approach. Boston: Pitman.

Friedman, M. 1970. The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits, The New York Times Magazine, 13 September, 1970.