What is Organizational Culture? Explain both how the culture of an organization might evolve and why an understanding of the organizational culture is important

When we hear the word 'culture', what appear on our minds are traditions, which have lived and been practiced through the generations of a certain race, tribe or people, for examples, top-spinning and traditional wedding for the Malays. In the following paragraphs, I will be explaining what organizational culture actually is, as applied to the organizations nowadays.

According to R.W. Griffin, in his book Management, he defines organizational culture as a broad form of culture, which comprises of a set of values, beliefs, behaviours, customs, and attitudes that help the members of the organization understand what it stands for, how it does things, and what it considers important. If we go back to our earlier interpretation of culture, the understanding is very much similar, but now it is applied to an organization instead of to a certain group of race or people. Broadly speaking, the organizational culture provides the basis, which includes how things are generally done, the way the employees socialize with one another, and also the codes of ethics, the do's and don't.

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In many organizations nowadays, especially those in businesses, the organizational culture is usually unique and distinct, which sets the organization apart from others, for examples, not wearing shoes in offices for the Yayasan Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Foundation (YSHHB), and the casual dress but very long hour work in Microsoft. As a result, in many instances, organizational culture is found to portray an identity, which could further enhance the feeling of self-belonging towards the organization.

An organizational culture might have evolved from a number of sources, and one of them is from the organization's founder. All businesses, whether they are big or small, start from a single person or a group of people, who come up with the business idea and implement it. As the...