Organisational Culture

Q) Strong culture is two edge swords; discuss the impact of strong culture on organizations.

Japan’s industrial success during the 1970s and 1980s let to the assumption that organizational performance depends on employee values being aligned with company’s strategy. Culture can be thought as the personality of an organization. It deals with how things are done in an organization on daily basis. Edgar Schein, a business school professor, was amongst the first to refine the concept of culture, seeking to operationalize if for research purposes.

Every organization has a unique culture – the same way every person has a unique personality. Organizational culture is a system of shared assumptions, values and beliefs that governs how people behave in an organization. If there is a high level of agreement and commitment among the members of an organization on the importance of these values, their organization has a strong culture. An organization in which members do not agree with the core values or are not committed to the core values has a weak culture. Strong culture acts like a strong wind that guides all the members of the organization along a similar path to reach the common goals of the organization. Employees are given a certain amount of freedom over their working lives in exchange for accepting company regulation. Currently Apple, Google, Hewlett Packard, McDonalds and Disney are considered by many commenters to be strong culture companies

Brown (1995) examines implications of strong cultures on firm’s performance through the ‘involvement hypothesis’ and the ‘consistency hypothesis’. The involvement hypothesis states the, the stronger a culture the more everyone shares its values and goals, so higher the involvement, motivation and therefore performance. The consistency hypothesis states that the stronger an organizational culture, the easier it is to communicate the same meaning to everybody without misunderstanding.

Much of the managerial literature has...