Organisational Culture

12 CHAPTER 2 ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

Chapter 1 explored the background to and the motivation for this study, with specific reference to organisational culture and organisational commitment as the main constructs. In this chapter the concept “organisational culture” is explored in more detail.

This chapter’s main focus areas include the following theoretical aspects of the concept organisational culture: background, definition, model, dimensions, development, change and management of culture.

2.1

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND TO THE CONCEPT ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

Social scientists have explored the notion of organisational culture as a perspective in organisational theory over the past decades. Brown (1998, p 2) states that “current interests in organisational culture stems from at least four different sources: climate research, national cultures, human resource management and from conviction approaches which emphasise the rational and structural nature of the organisation to be unable to offer a full explanation of organisational behaviour”.

Research findings by means of organisational climate surveys that were conducted in the 1970s suggest that organisational culture seems to be a sophisticated approach to understand the beliefs and attitudes of individual members about their respective organisations (Brown, 1998).

The origin of organisational culture from a national culture point of view is based, among others, on the work of Deal and Kennedy (1982). According to this view organisational culture is seen as being central to organisational success rather than factors such as structure, strategy or politics. As a result the attention shifted away from national cultures and focused more on organisational culture.

13 Interests in organisational culture from the human resource management and performance point of views stems from the fact that organisational culture was perceived to be offering a non-mechanistic, flexible and imaginative approach to...