Human Resources and managers responsibility and accountability in establishing and maintaining organisational culture

Organizational or corporate culture is described as pattern of values, norms, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions that may not have been articulated but shape the ways in which people behave and things get done. Also, it can be described as a "code word for the subjective side of organizational life" (Mayerson and Martin, 1987).

Good culture creates positive influence in organizational behavior. It could help to create "high-performance" culture that will produce a high level of business performance. Since every corporate culture is different, it not easy always to determine how the "good" culture should look like. It is dependable on circumstances or period of time in which is evolved. That means that there is no universal prescription for managing culture, certain approaches can be helpful but not determinatory.

Values as the component of culture, can be expressed thought performance, behavior, innovation, quality, competitiveness, teamwork, care and consideration for people.

Society for Human Resource Management

English: Facade of Ives Hall, Cornell University

Human Resources Management Association of Chicago

Norms are unwritten rules of the behavior, they tell people what they are supposed to be doing, saying, believing even wearing. They are never expressed in writing. If they were, they would be policies and procedures. Norms refer to behavior such are: status, ambition, power, politics and loyalty.

First step in change process is analyzing existing culture. It could be done through surveys, questionnaires, workshops. It is often helpful to involve people in analyzing the outcome of the surveys , getting them to produce a diagnosis of the cultural issues facing the organizations and participate in the development and implementation of plans and programmers to deal with any issue. Management role is important in this process because the should be facilitators in discussions on appropriate values, which are more likely to be "owned" by people if they have helped create them, rather than having them imposed from above. Possibility is...