Organizational Leadership: Affecting Change through Focus on Organizational CultureBackgroundCompany XYZ is in the process of strategizing a shift in their organizational culture from being product focused to customer focused due to a marked decrease in sales and customer feedback. This change should facilitate seizing a larger market share of their product line in this highly competitive global economy.
Shift in Organizational Culture from the CEO - Change Starts at the TopIn order for any company to implement a change in culture successfully, particularly one as large as a shift from being product focused to customer focused, the change must start at the top of the organization. The CEO of the XYZ Company sets many standards, and the standard of leadership is arguably the most important. The primary job of a leader, as stated by Robert L. Swiggett in our text is to "create a vision" (Bateman & Snell, 2007, pg.
English: Diagram of Schein's Organizational Behavi...
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English: An advertisement for labour from Sabah an...394). This vision must take many aspects into consideration, primarily summed up in the broad context of internal and external factors. Some of these internal factors are those that relate to human capital and the psychological implications of change to that human capital, organizational structure that will support the change, and fiscal obligations required for the restructure. External factors include a significant focus on determining target customers' needs and expectations and the analysis of public opinion in order to establish a fruitful marketing plan. With respect to external factors, if the analysis is anything other than customer centric, it needs to be resisted as not complimentary to the goal of organizational culture change. The CEO sets the tone through vision, but cannot operate in a vacuum. Leadership emanating from all levels of the management team, starting with the CEO, provides a rallying point for all levels of a...