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Guided Response: Answer any questions your instructor has about your initial post, and respond to at least two of your classmates’ postings by Day 7. Each of your responses to your classmates should be at least 100 words in length. Point out a difference between your conclusions and those of your classmate regarding the impact of culture on individual, team, and organizational performance. Respectfully debate this point with your classmate, offering support for your point of view, and offering a critique of your classmate’s point of view.

DB1

Every company has a culture, which defines employees' work and function, making it an important element of a company’s success. Organizational culture is defined by Kinicki & Williams (2018) by a set of shared assumptions, beliefs that a group holds that create the environment of an organization. The culture is a way company governs many things, for example: how employees interact, how decisions are made as well as how employees show perceive, think, and feel in relation to the company’s events (Hartell et all, 2019). The visible culture components in an internal environment include symbols, practices, and artifacts such as language, art, and architecture, dress code, traditions, food.  For an external environment, the visible components include location, customers.  The invisible culture components in an internal environment include processes, beliefs, history, assumptions – these are the components that even though you cannot see, will manifest in the behaviors.  For an external environment, the invisible components include politics, relationships.  There are the components that will influence the decision-making of executives.  Culture is shaped by visible and invisible forces, some of which leaders can control and others to which leaders must react. To understand a culture, you must study environmental influences, both the invisible and visible, the internal and external. Visible and invisible components of culture influence employees’ behaviors in a diverse way as employees view the culture from where they are coming from.  For example, an employee from India coming to work in the US as an engineer may react differently to his/her manager in a way that might or might not be acceptable in an organization. 

Even though each company had a unique culture, the four categories outlined by Kinicki & Williams (2018) include clan culture (internal focus and values flexibility over stability and control), adhocracy culture external focus and values flexibly), market culture (external focus and values stability and control), and hierarchy culture (internal focus and values stability and control).  Organizational culture has a big influence on individuals, teams, and company performance.  Employees and teams who feel that the company culture suits them will stay with the company, reducing turnover, which is costly.  

Painter (2019) explained that no training program, human resources department, or imitative can fix culture if leaders and managers are not involved, they are the ones that set the stage for behaviors.  Positive organizational culture creates happy and productive employees which turns into a competitive advantage in a marketplace for the company.  In addition to creating happy employees, positive culture drives engagement, attracts talents, lessens attrition.  Positive culture should be a foundation for any company. The primary role of leaders in managers in the promotion and sustaining positive culture is reinforcing the company’s values by helping employees grow and develop through setting goals and opportunities for employees.  Having one on one- or two-way feedback is important since when employees have open dialogue their trust in the leader increase. According to Kowalczyk (2018), leaders must take time and energy to build trust as this will create an engaging and positive work environment where growth occurs since teams will feel connected to the mission of the company.  Other things leaders can do are encourage employees to respect and care for each other, build trust among themselves, eliminate negative behaviors, they need to walk the talk.   Kinicki & Williams (2018) described that it is the way leaders operate, communicate and make decisions that reshape the culture to the desired outcome. If positive culture is not established by leaders, the company could face various employees problems.  Organizational culture has different effects on behaviors in the workplace.  This is concluded by Stefano, Scrima & Parry (2019) as they refer to those behaviors as deviant behaviors which may include: low performance, miss issue of company’s time, aggression, we are surfing during office hours, etc.  

 

Di Stefano, G., Scrima, F., & Parry, E. (2019). The effect of organizational culture on deviant behaviors in the workplace. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 30(17), 2482–2503. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2017.1326393Links to an external site.

Hartnell, C. A., Ou, A. Y., Kinicki, A. J., Choi, D., & Karam, E. P. (2019). A meta-analytic test of organizational culture’s association with elements of an organization’s system and its relative predictive validity on organizational outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(4), 832-850. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000380Links to an external site.

Kinicki, A., & Williams, B. K. (2018). Management: A practical introduction (8th ed.). McGraw Hill.

Kowalczyk, N. (2018). Leading for a healthy culture. Radiologic Technology, 90(1), 78-80. http://www.radiologictechnology.org/Links to an external site.

Painter, M. J. (2019). Leadership culture by design. OD Practitioner, 51(2), 60-62. https://www.odnetwork.org/page/odreview

DB2

The Nature of Organizational Culture

Organizational culture can be described as acceptable norms that are shared and displayed amongst current employees and passed along to new hires by way of socialization and integration. According to Kinicki and Williams (2018), organizational culture is the social glue that holds the organization together, which also plays a huge factor in how the organization is perceived by internal employees and external members as well. Organization cultural can be visible or unseen. An example of visible culture would be how employees of a particular organization dress for work. If all employees are draped in business suits, the perceived organizational culture is that the organization is professional and classy. Whether this is true or not, in the mind of external members, perception is reality. Additionally, it is human nature to act a certain when wearing a certain type/style of clothing. The organizational dress code in this example would influence the way employees are seen, treated, and how they respond to each other and customers. An unseen cultural component that could have an influence on the behavior of employees is a norm that has been developed over time within the organization. In my current job, we have an unseen culture that no matter how bad the product may be, at the end of the day the product will still get approved by our boss. This perception vastly affects our staff, as they feel no matter how much staff work and churn they put into developing a better product, the boss will just accept a lesser version. So the staff begins to question themselves as to why they even try to make things better!

Cultural Influence

Culture can have a lasting influence on individuals, teams, and organizations. According to Painter (2019), organizational culture is reinforcing and very difficult to change; however, an opportunity for change may present itself. An example of cultural influence that comes to mind, is one of my competitor contracting companies. This particular company is known to only hire only level III employees, which is the highest level. This company also pays their employees the highest salaries in my area. Individuals in this organization know that their salary is above par, they know that their teammates are some of the most knowledgeable and experienced in the field and that the organization is stable in terms of winning a recompete contract. The perceived elite culture is reinforced by salary, employee knowledge, and job security. All these factors heavily influence employees, teams, and the organization alike.  

Responsibilities in Promoting and Sustaining a Positive Culture

Key responsibilities of leaders and managers in promoting and sustaining a positive culture are ensuring employees are working hard but also having fun at work as well. Kinicki and Williams (2018) stated that a family-style organizational culture will heighten overall employee commitment; family is always willing to go the extra mile for one another. This is no different for organizations that develop, embrace, and implement a family culture!

References

Kinicki, A., & Williams, B. K. (2018).  Management: A practical introduction  (8th ed.). McGraw Hill.

Painter, M. J. (2019).  Leadership culture by design (Links to an external site.) . OD Practitioner, 51(2), 60-62. https://www.odnetwork.org/page/odreview