Organizational Culture.

Essay by djdatnasty June 2003

download word file, 2 pages 5.0

Organizational culture can be defined as a system of shared beliefs and values that develops within an organization and guides the behavior of its members. It includes routine behaviors, norms, dominant values, and a feeling or climate conveyed. The purpose and function of this culture is to help foster internal integration, bring staff members from all levels of the organization much closer together, and enhance their performance. After reading two informative articles pertaining to organizational culture, I learned that it has a huge impact on driving organizations to success.

The first article, "Corporate Culture: Component often overlooked", states that organizations often overlook corporate vision and culture when it is at the low point of its life cycle. These two basic elements are often overlooked as top management commonly focuses on the quality of management, organization restructuring, business process engineering, and the installation of new corporate systems. The article also states that organizational culture is the foundation of an organization on which it stands and from which it grows.

Therefore, every organization of whatever type should have a culture because it allows the organization to function appropriately and accordingly to certain rules or norms. I believe in order to be successful, organizations must have strong culture but at the same time it must be adaptable. A strong culture that is not adaptable may be more of a disadvantage than a weak one.

An example of how an organization achieved a great turnaround from culture-related improvements is Nissan. In March of 2000, Nissan recorded a loss of $5.7 billion, adding to its dept of $5.3 billion. But thanks to its culture-related improvements, Nissan was able to rake in a growing profit of $2.9 billion a year later. Nissan achieved this by building in career profit orientation, increasing focus on...