Org Culture

Organizational Culture

Organizational Culture

As the end of the year approaches I am faced with the daunting task of writing and conducting year-end job performance evaluations. I find myself thinking about my company’s values and the organizational culture at my facility, a great majority of my time. Almost every management meeting I have attended this month has involved a discussion of the company new values guide or how we change the culture in our plant to align with these values. There seems to be nothing more important now, as we come to the end of this year and prepare for next year. The meetings are long and repetitive, “we need to change the culture in the organization” is the overall consensus, but does anyone truthfully know what organizational culture genuinely means? Before we can make plans to improve or align our culture as an organization we need to know what it means.

The Organization

The organizational part of organizational culture refers to the group, but who makes up that group is extremely important. If not properly defined, the organization being considered may be a smaller subset and would not be an accurate composition of the entire organization. Instead of referring to organizational culture, you could be referencing a smaller part of the organization if not properly defined. In essence, it would be like trying to develop a plan to stop global warming, and the organization was the United States. In order to make the changes needed to stop global warming you would need to align the values of the entire organization, the world. Even if the United Status’s values and beliefs could be aligned on global warming, the result of ending the problem would not be achieved because the global values and beliefs may not be aligned because the true organization is much larger, the world. The same can be said for a business. Individual departments, facilities, etc. could have aligned values, but unless the true organization is...