Organizational culture

About: Organizational culture is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 31507 publications have been published within this topic receiving 926787 citations. The topic is also known as: corporate culture & organisational culture.

Building a learning organization.

Abstract: Continuous improvement programs are proliferating as corporations seek to better themselves and gain an edge. Unfortunately, however, failed programs far outnumber successes, and improvement rates remain low. That's because most companies have failed to grasp a basic truth. Before people and companies can improve, they first must learn. And to do this, they need to look beyond rhetoric and high philosophy and focus on the fundamentals. Three critical issues must be addressed before a company can truly become a learning organization, writes HBS Professor David Garvin. First is the question of meaning: a well-grounded, easy-to-apply definition of a learning organization. Second comes management: clearer operational guidelines for practice. Finally, better tools for measurement can assess an organization's rate and level of learning. Using these "three Ms" as a framework, Garvin defines learning organizations as skilled at five main activities: systematic problem solving, experimentation with new approaches, learning from past experience, learning from the best practices of others, and transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the organization. And since you can't manage something if you can't measure it, a complete learning audit is a must. That includes measuring cognitive and behavioral changes as well as tangible improvements in results. No learning organization is built overnight. Success comes from carefully cultivated attitudes, commitments, and management processes that accrue slowly and steadily. The first step is to foster an environment conducive to learning. Analog Devices, Chaparral Steel, Xerox, GE, and other companies provide enlightened examples.

People and organizational culture: a profile comparison approach to assessing person-organization fit

Abstract: This article brings together three current themes in organizational behavior: (1) a renewed interest in assessing person-situation interactional constructs, (2) the quantitative assessment of organizational culture, and (3) the application of “Q-sort,” or template-matching, approaches to assessing person-situation interactions. Using longitudinal data from accountants and M.B.A. students and cross-sectional data from employees of government agencies and public accounting firms, we developed and validated an instrument for assessing person-organization fit, the Organizational Culture Profile (OCP). Results suggest that the dimensionality of individual preferences for organizational cultures and the existence of these cultures are interpretable. Further, person-organization fit predicts job satisfaction and organizational commitment a year after fit was measured and actual turnover after two years. This evidence attests to the importance of understanding the fit between individuals' preferences and organiza...

Corporate culture, customer orientation, and innovativeness in Japanese firms : a quadrad analysis

Abstract: “Quadrads” (double dyads) of interviews, each conducted with a pair of marketing executives at a Japanese vendor firm and a pair of purchasing executives at a Japanese customer firm, provided data

Concepts of Culture and Organizational Analysis

Abstract: Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the International Communication Association/Speech Communication Association Conference on Interpretive Approaches to Organizational Communication, Alta, Utah, July 1981, and the Eastern Academy of Management meetings, Baltimore, Maryland, May 1982. I would like to express special appreciation to Mike Pacanowsky and Linda Putnam for organizing the Interpretive Conference, which provided the impetus as well as encouragement for the development of these ideas. Thanks also to Gareth Morgan, Linda Pike, Lou Pondy, and Karl Weick for their various forms of inspiration. This paper examines the significance of the concept of culture for organizational analysis. The intersection of culturetheory and organization theory is evident in five current research themes: comparative management, corporate culture, organizational cognition, organizational symbolism, and unconscious processes and organization. Researchers pursue these themes for different purposes and their work is based on different assumptions about the nature of culture and organization. The task of evaluating the power and limitations of the concept of culture must be conducted within this assumptive context. This review demonstrates that the concept of culture takes organization analysis in several different and promising directions.

Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier

Abstract: A community of practice is a group of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise People in companies form them for a variety of reasons-to maintain connections with peers when the company reorganizes; to respond to external changes such as the rise of e-commerce; to meet new challenges when the company changes strategy authors have seen communities of practice improve performance at companies as diverse as an international bank, a major car manufacturer, and a US government agency Communities of practice can drive strategy, generate new lines of business, solve problems, promote the spread of best practices, develop people's skills, and help companies recruit and retain talent The paradox of such communities is that although they are self-organizing and thus resistant to supervision and interference, they do require specific managerial efforts to develop them and integrate them into an organization Only then can they be fully leveraged