Organizational Culture

Executive Summary

Organizational culture always related to the overall performance of an organization. Therefore, it is no surprise that people may think a company with strong culture will have a better performance. Generally, it is true that the employees from a strong culture will have a greater consistency on one's behaviors and these behaviors will always stick with the organizational goals and missions. The employees have such behaviors is due to their perception of the strong culture which brings them a clear message of what and how they are expected by the company. As their behaviors are consistent, the performance of the firm will also be consistent.

However, a consistent performance does not mean that the overall performance of the firm is good. A satisfactory overall performance cannot only rely on consistency but also need to pay attention to the adaptability to the change of environment. In view of this, apart from the strength of culture, which type of culture a company will emphasize on is also a dominant factor in order to obtain an overall good performance within a organization.

Introduction

Every firm in the world has its own organizational culture which may affect its members' ways of doing things or ways to react to a thing. Culture is different between varies firms. However, as Gordon (1991) stated that companies in the same industry may share some cultural characteristics. Besides, Some firms may have a strong culture and some may have a weak one. The strength of the culture will eventually influence the behaviors and values of the employees as well as the performance of the organization. Therefore, in this paper, I will discuss about whether a strong culture increase the overall performance in a firm by first defining the organizational culture. Then, I will analyze the differences between strong and weak cultures and the respective effects which may poses in an organization. Lastly, I will discuss the other factors that affecting the culture of organization which may in turns influenced the performance of a firm.

Organization Culture

According to Robbins and Coulter (2012, p.52), organizational culture is the common shared values, traditions as well as principles that affect the way of the members act. The culture that Robbins and Coulter defined has implied three things. First, culture is intangible that employees can only experience it when they actually working in the organization. Second, it is descriptive that depends on how workers perceive the culture, instead of whether they accept it or not. The last but not least, culture can be share among all members, even with non-identical background, who are able to describe it in about the same terms.

In order to help the employees to familiarize with the organizational culture, some stories, rituals, material symbols and special language may be distributed by the managers and even the founders of the firm. As these tools are able to demonstrate the spirits of the organization and reinforce the values of the employees, the organizational goals will more likely to be followed by them.

Strong & Weak Cultures

To find out the answer of the topic - "Dose a strong organizational culture increase the overall performance of a firm?", we need to determine what are the strong and weak cultures.

A strong culture has been always described as the important values that rooted into every organizational member and are thoroughly shared among the organization. As culture is deeply rooted among the organization, employees will response to a problem quicker since they are well-known about the culture of the firm and they will eventually perform as what the firm expected.

On the other hands, a weak culture will leads to a totally diverse result. As the members have limited sense towards the organizational culture, they are unclear about the values of their job. As a consequence, the connection between shared values and their behaviors will be loosened. The employees may have slower response to a problem and behaved in a way that different with the organizational goal. Thus, the overall performance of the firm will be affected in a negative way.

Strong Culture leads to higher performance

Up to this point, it seems that a strong organizational culture will lead to an increase on overall performance of a firm. This point of view is supported by Sorensen (2002) who thinks that a strong culture firm will have a more reliable performance. As he thinks that the performance is depends on the consistency towards the organizational goals and behavior where the

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