Understanding Organizational Culture and Environment

1. Chapter (3) organization culture and environment

2. Chapter outcomes: • - contrast the actions of managers according to the omnipotent and symbolic views. • - discuss the characteristics and importance of organizational culture. • - describe current issues in organizational culture. • - identify the features of the specific and general environments.

3. The manager • The manager: omnipotent or symbolic: • Omnipotent view: the dominant view in general is that managers are directly responsible for an organization's success or failure.

4. The manager: continued • Symbolic view of management: much of an organization's success or failure is due to external forces outside managers' control. Its called symbolic because it's based on the belief that managers symbolize control and influence, but the part that the managers actually play in organizational success or failure is limited.

5. The manager: continued • Reality suggest a synthesis: • The managerial discretion (manager decisions and actions) are constrained because they coming between organizational culture and organizational environment, as shown in exhibit 3-1 page 61

6. Exhibit 3-1Constraints on Managerial Discretion

7. Organizational Culture: The shared values, principles, traditions, and the ways of doing things that influence the way organizational members act. • These shared values and practices have evolved over time and determines how things are done in the organization.

8. Organizational Culture: continued The definition implies three things: • - culture is perception: it's not something that can be physically touched or seen. • - culture is descriptive: it's concerned with how members perceive the culture, not with whether they like it • - culture is shared: individuals tend to describe the organization's culture in similar terms, even they may have different backgrounds or work at different organizational levels

9. Organizational Culture: continued • Researchers suggests that there are seven dimensions that describe an organization's culture ranging from low to high: exhibit 3-2 page 63 showing that: • All organizations have cultures, but not all cultures equally influence employees' behaviors and actions.

10. Exhibit 3-2Dimensions of Organizational Culture

11. Organizational Culture: continued • Strong and Weak cultures: • Strong culture: organizational cultures in which the key values are intensely (deeply) held and widely shared. Have greater influence on employees than do weaker cultures. • Exhibit 3-4 page 64 showing comparison between strong and weak cultures. • As more employees accept the organization's values, the greater their commitment to those values.

12. Exhibit 3-4Strong Versus Weak Cultures

13. Organizational Culture: continued • The strong culture is important because in organization with strong cultures, employees are more loyal than employees with weak culture, and the strong cultures are associated with high organizational performance, and the employees can act quickly to take care of problems if values are clear and widely accepted by them. • But strong culture might prevent employees from trying new approaches.

14. Organizational Culture: continued • Where culture come from and how it continues: original source of the culture: Exhibit 3-5 page 64 showing that:

15. Exhibit 2-8Establishing and Maintaining Culture

16. Organizational Culture: continued • 1- philosophy of organization’s founders: Its usually reflects the vision of the founders. • 2- Selection criteria: certain organizational practice help maintain the culture, ex: during the employees selection process, managers judge job candidates not only on job requirement but also on how well they might fit into the organization.

17. Organizational Culture: continued • 3- the action of top managers also have a major impact on the organization’s culture. Top managers establish norms that can have positive effect on employees behavior, the actions of top managers can also lead to undesirable outcomes. • 4- socialization: the process that helps employees adapt to organization’s culture, helping them to learn the way of doing things, understand the culture and become enthusiastic and knowledgeable with customers, and minimize the chance that new employees who are unfamiliar with organization’s culture might disrupt current beliefs and customs.

18. Organizational Culture: continued • How employees learn culture: through the following ways: • 1- Stories: by narrative of significant events or people, like organization’s founders. Story tellers could be executives who explain the company’s heritage and tell stories that celebrate people getting things done. • 2- Rituals: by repetitive sequences of activities that express and reinforce the important values and goals of the organization.

19. Organizational Culture: continued • 3- Material Symbols: ex: how employees dress, the type of automobiles provided to top managers, the elegance of furnishings, employees fitness center, health club memberships. Its convey to employees who is important and the kinds of behavior. • 4- Language: many organizations use language as a way to identify and unite members of culture. Some organizations have its unique vocabularies, ex: Work judo (deflecting a work assignment to someone else without making it appear that you are avoiding it), death march (countdown to shipping a new product).

20. Organizational Culture: continued • How Culture Affect Managers: • Because an org. culture constrains what they can and cannot do, such constrains are rarely explicit, they are not written down, managers should quickly learn what to do and not to do in their org. some values are not written down, but come from a real org. as: - look busy even if you are not. - what made us successful in the past will make us successful in the future. - if you want to get to the top, your have to be a team player.

21. Organizational Culture: continued • Exhibit 3-6 page 68 showing how the managerial decisions affected by culture.

22. Exhibit 3-6Managerial Decisions Affected by Culture

23. Organizational Culture: continued Current Organizational Culture Issues: 1- creating an ethical culture: the content and strength of an organization’s culture influences its ethical climate and the ethical behavior of its members, • If the culture is strong and supports high ethical standards, it should have a very powerful and positive influence on employee behavior, and vice versa. • Exhibit 3-7 page 69 showing how to creating an ethical culture.

24. Organizational Culture: continued 2- Creating An innovative Culture: any successful org. needs a culture that supports innovation. • What does an innovative culture characterized: - Challenge and involvement: - Freedom: can employees take initiative in their activities. - Trust and Openness: are employees supportive and respectful to each other. - Idea Time: do employees have time to elaborate on new ideas before taking action. - Playfulness/Humor: is the work place spontaneous and fun. - conflict resolution: do employees make decisions and resolve issues. - Debates: are employees allow to express opinions and put ideas - Risk taking: do managers tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity.

25. Organizational Culture: continued 3- Creating A customer Responsive Culture: exhibit 3-8 page 71 showing the characteristics of customer responsive culture, and the suggestions for managers.

26. Exhibit 3-8Creating a Customer-Responsive Culture • How Do You Create a Customer Responsive Culture? • Hire the right type of employees (those with a strong interest in serving customers) • Have few rigid rules, procedures, and regulations • Use widespread empowerment of employees • Have good listening skills in relating to customers’ messages

27. Organizational Culture: continued 4- Creating a culture that support diversity: • Workforce diversity: a workforce that’s heterogeneous in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, age, and other characteristics that reflect differences. • Diversity contributes to more creative solutions and enhances employees morale, the managing workforce diversity box discusses what managers can do. (homework)?

28. Organizational Culture: continued 5- Spirituality and organizational culture: it’s a feature of a culture where organizational values promote a sense of purpose through meaningful work that takes place in the context of community. • Organizations with spiritual culture recognize that people have a mind and a sprit, seek to find meaning and purpose in their work, and desire to connect with other human beings and to be part of community.

29. Organizational Culture: continued • Workplace spirituality seems to be important now for a number of reasons: • - employees are looking for ways to cope with the stresses and pressures of a turbulent pace of life. Like: single parent families, geographic mobility, temporary jobs.

30. Organizational Culture: continued Research shows that spiritual organizations tend to have five cultural characteristics: a- strong sense of purpose: that’s create a more productive, efficient, loyal, and committed employee base. b- focus on individuals development: that’s create cultures in which employees can continually grow and learn.

31. Organizational Culture: continued c- trust and oppeness: managers aren’t afraid to admit mistakes, and they tend to upfront with employees, customers, and suppliers. d- employee empowerment: managers trust employees to make thoughtful and conscientious decisions, even if it means going against company policies. e- toleration of employee expression: they allow people to be themselves, to express their moods and feelings without guilt and profits compatible.

32. The Environment: • An organization interacts with its environment as it takes in inputs and distributes outputs. • Environmental forces play a major role in shaping managers’ actions, even external or internal environment.

33. The environment: Continued: • External environment: refers to factors and forces outside the organization that affect the organization’s performance. • Organization environment includes two components: specific and general environment. As shown in exhibit 3-9 page 73.

34. Exhibit 3-9Components of External Environment

35. The environment: Continued: a- specific environment: external forces that directly or indirectly impact managers’ decisions and actions and are directly relevant to the achievement of the organization’s goals. And include:

36. The environment: Continued: 1- Customers: an organization exist to meet the needs of customers who use its output, customers taste can change or they can become dissatisfied with the organization’s product. 2- Suppliers: managers seek to ensure a steady flow of needed inputs, at the lowest price possible, org. suppliers might be delay or limited in delivery and that can constrain managers to meat the right demand levels for customers.

37. The environment: Continued: 3- Competitors: managers can’t afford to ignore the competitors. 4- Pressure groups: special interest groups that attempt to influence the actions of organizations in order to get managers to change some decisions or actions, like: human rights, boycotting, consumer’s protection societies.

38. The environment: Continued: b- The general environment: broad external conditions that may affect an organization. And include: 1- Economic conditions: As: interest rates, inflation, changes in disposable income, stock market fluctuations, and the stage of general business cycle. 2- Political/Legal conditions: As: national and local laws, regulations in other countries where a business operate. Exhibit 3-10 page 75 showing the important U.S legislation (self study).

39. The environment: Continued: 3- Sociocultural conditions: managers must adapt their practices to the changing in customer attitudes, values, customs, tastes, and must respond to customers changing. Like flexible, work hours, child care facilities, leave policies. 4- Demographic conditions: refer to population characteristics such as gender, age, level of education, geographic location, income, and family composition.

40. The environment: Continued: 5- Technological conditions: the rapid changes that occurred in technology. 6- Global conditions: is one of the major factors affecting managers and organizations. As the markets and competitors. WTO.

41. The environment: Continued: • How the Environment Affects Managers: by two ways: a- the degree of environmental uncertainty (changes and complexity): the degree of changes and complexity in an organization’s environment.

42. The environment: Continued: • the degree of environmental complexity: the number of components in an organization’s environment and the extent of the organization’s knowledge about these components. Exhibit 3-11 page 77 showing the environmental uncertainty matrix:

43. Exhibit 3-11Environmental Uncertainty Matrix

44. The environment: Continued: b- managing the various stakeholder relationships that exist between the organization and its external constituencies. • Stakeholders: any constituencies in an organization’s environment that are affected by the organization’s decisions and actions. Exhibit 3-12 page 78 showing the organizational stakeholders.

45. Exhibit 3-12 Organizational Stakeholders

46. The environment: Continued: • Reasons for keeping good relationships with stakeholders: 1- to reduce the impact of change. 2- the organizations depend on these forces as a sources of inputs.

47. The environment: Continued: • How managers manage stakeholders relationships: • 1- need to identify the organization’s stakeholders. • 2- need to determine what particular interests or concerns the stakeholders might have. • 3- need to decide how critical each stakeholders is to the organization’s decisions and actions. • 4- need to determine how to manage external stakeholders relationships.