Week 4 - Organisational Culture

Week 4 – Organisational culture

Organisational culture is something that every business or organisation has, everything they do reflects upon their culture. A good definition of organisational culture is - ‘a body of learned behaviour, a collection of beliefs, habits and traditions, shared by a group of people and learned by people….’ (Hofstede, 1984). There are three sections to organisational culture that can be represented using onions layers. The outer layers are clearly visible making up the visible aspects of the culture, the middle layers represent slightly deeper aspects of culture where as the centre shows the basic beliefs on which the organisation is built upon.

The visible aspects are made up of a range of different things, including –

• ·         Language & jargon
• ·         Mottoes
• ·         Stories about past
• ·         Unwritten rules and expectations
• ·         Rituals and habits
• ·         Role models
• ·         Atmosphere
• ·         Management style
• ·         Communications
• ·         Way people dress
• ·         General pace of work

Innocent are a good organisation to look at regarding the visible aspects of culture as they don’t really fit the mould of your typical organisation.  Innocent take a very laid back approach in their management style, there is no set uniform and the Innocent offices look more like a social club then actual offices. The language they use to portray the business is very normal, using slang words and using jokes in advertisement to really connect to their customers. The way Innocent started is also extremely different to the way in which most businesses are set up. The current owners started the business selling smoothies at a festival, and above their stall was a sign asking whether they should all give up their day jobs in order to continue with the smoothie business. They also make decisions by putting up different proposals on a big roulette style wheel, they then spin the wheel and go with whatever idea the crosshair lands on! Everybody expects innocent to be environmentally friendly and produce, good honest natural products. Which through research and recent advertisement, they do both.

Handy in 1993 came up with a model with four examples of different organisations, these are as follows –

Power Organisations – Handy describes this culture as a spiders web. The business can be either small or large and normally family owned. The closer you are to the centre of the web, the more power, responsibility or influence you have. An advantage to this type or organisation is that they can respond quickly to events, however the businesses success  strongly revolves around the ability of the people in the centre of the web. Typical attributes that this kind of business will attract in a person are power orientated and politically minded, who don’t mind taking risks and do not rate security highly. These types of businesses are judged purely on results and low morale is often a common factor. Lower level employees must accept the fact that they have little say in how the business is run. This type of culture can often have a high staff turnover. However if managers get it right it can also lead to attaining a happy workforce if the aims of the organisation are set out in an appropriate manner. An example of this type of organisation could be John Lewis, its originally a family owned business and the vast amount of important decisions made by the company will come from the head office, as opposed to the shop floor workers at the John Lewis stores.

The role culture –

This culture can be illustrated as a building supported by pillars, each pillar helps hold up the building and the top of the building (where the decisions are made) is dependent on each pillar holding it up. This organisation has different specialised areas which are over looked by a narrow band of senior management at the top of the building. The various specialised areas are controlled by role and procedures defining the job and the authority that goes with it. A person can only be as powerful as their role, many rules and procedures are set out and they are the chief method of influence. In order for this culture to be successful the work and responsibility must be delegated in an appropriate manner. This type of culture is more suited to a market that is in a stable condition, or one that has a long product life cycle. This type of organisation finds it hard to change and adapt quickly. This culture is not well suited for some ambitious people who are power orientated and focus more on results than the method itself, unless they are high up at the top of the house. The employees within this culture can feel secure and have a good chance of improving skills in certain areas. They are rewarded with different salaries, and have a good chance of promotion within their branched out area.

This culture could be applied to the higher levels of Tesco, the top part of the building could be represented by the head office, and the pillars by the different departments under them. For example, a marketing department, finance department, human resources department etc. Each department is crucial to Tesco, and if one of them were to fail it would have a huge effect on the whole of the business.

Task Culture -

Task culture is strongly based on team work. Different departments must pull together and collaborate with one another in order to achieve certain goals. This could be represented as a net, and some strands of the net are thicker than the others, and the place that these strands meet is where the power is located. This could be explained by looking at an example, a phone company will need different departments to work together. The research and development department will work alongside the marketing department to establish new technology that the customer desires. So the marketing department will tell the research and development team what the customers expect from new or existing products. The marketing department will gather the information and the research and development team will then make a product that has these qualities.

Person Culture –

This culture isn’t usually found in business, this is due to the fact that the culture revolves around the needs of the people in the organisation. And the vast majority of businesses have corporate aims that overlook the needs of the people in the organisation and focus more on things like profit. The power is shared and every member has the right to express their opinion, there is not managerial hierarchy or structure.

There are some problems you face when trying to put businesses into these set types of cultures, some businesses will overlap due to varying departments or stores that will have different managers. For example some franchises, although overlooked by the franchisees owner can have varying goals and aims and general ways about doing business. Each department will have someone in charge, and the people in charge of different departments will also have different beliefs and may choose to have varying rules and regulations. It also depends on the departments size, if it is smaller then it may choose to adopt some factors from the person culture, where each employee gets more of a say. Where as in a larger department with different levels of hierarchy (managers, supervisors etc) will struggle to adopt the person culture due to the size of their department.

Conclusion –

From completing this blog I have learnt that different types of culture suit different businesses, and that it is difficult to place businesses into set cultures due to some overlapping and different departments and stores doing things slightly differently. The blog also shows the importance of culture, if the business sets up in the wrong way organisational wise it could fail to succeed. Visual things are also extremely important to businesses, if we like the visual culture of a business we are more likely to use its services or buy its products.