What affect on "Organization Culture"?

Essay by mama_jangUniversity, Bachelor'sB-, February 2009

download word file, 5 pages 3.0

Metaphor is a fundamental force through which humans create meaning by using one element of experience to understand another. Metaphor becomes a tool for creating an understanding about what we now recognize as organization and management. Gareth Morgan suggests a way of thinking and a way of seeing organizations as multiple of metaphors e.g. organizations as a machine (mechanistic approach), organizations as organisms (organic approach), and organizations as cultures etc. In this paper I will discuss an issue raised by Gareth Morgan, 1986 that "One of the major strengths of the culture metaphor rests in the fact that it directs attention to symbolic…significance of even the most rational parts of organizational life" . Moreover I will criticize the effect of organization culture in the design of organization structure base on Gareth Morgan's idea and the effect of national culture on organization culture based on Hofstede's idea . Lastly, I will explain how power can exist in different organization cultures by using theoretical approaches from Gareth Morgan and Mullins Book.

By viewing Organizations as Cultures, we focus them as mini-societies with their own distinctive patterns of culture and subcultures such as unique values, formalities, ideologies and faiths. Cultures create a form of "Blindness" and "Ethnocentrism". If the individual then experiences other organization culture that have different values and normal behaviors, the individual finds that the thought patterns appropriate to their birth organization culture are not appropriate for the new organization cultures. The ethnocentric individual will resist or refuse the new thought patterns unless the new organization culture is superior to the birth culture. Gender also influences culture. The new truly flat network organizations are innovated to deal with the uncertainty and turbulence of modern environments are more female patterns than male. Females build communities base on inclusive relationships, characterized by trust,