Strong Organizational Culture

Strong organizational culture is a two ledged sword; discuss the impact of strong culture on organization.

The concept of culture has no universal definition in the business world but is referred to as the way we do things. According to Schein (1992) culture is ‘the pattern of basic assumptions that the group has learned as it has solved its problems of external adaptation. Organization on the other hand is seen as a social arrangement for achieving controlled performance in pursuit of collective goals. In this essay we will recognize how a strong culture may have diverse effect on an organization, by identifying the cultures functions and dysfunctions on the organization.

Indeed a strong organizational culture is a two ledged sword. Primarily a strong culture may cause employees to be highly involved in the organization. A strong culture involves values and beliefs being shared by the majority of people in the organization. This leads to the managers and employees working together as a group to create a successful organization. As suggested by Brown (1995) the more the members of the organization share values and beliefs, the higher they get involved, they are motivated and perform better. One example for this is the growth of the post war Japanese economy. After world war two, Japan had been severely weakened economically. It became a miracle therefore when Japanese business emerged on the global stage. This was due to their particular management values and practices and the way the Japanese employees responded to them. For that reason, even with their various disadvantages, they achieved success. Secondly the values and beliefs of the culture are reliable. In accepting the values and beliefs, the organization members permit the culture in forming a rational incorporation. Brown (1995) calls this the consistency hypothesis. This implies that it is easier to communicate the same meaning to everybody without misunderstanding. This reduces conflicts and...