Difference Between Organisational And National Culture

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Part A

Introduction

An organization is a setup where individuals (employees) come together to work for a common goal. It is essential for the employees to work in close coordination, deliver their level bests and achieve the targets within the stipulated time frame for the smooth functioning of the organization.

Every organization has certain values and follows some policies and guidelines which differentiate it from others. The principles and beliefs of any organization form its culture. The organization culture is the collective behaviour of humans who are part of an organization and the meanings that the people attach to their actions. Culture includes the organization values, visions, norms, working language, systems, symbols, beliefs and habits and it affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with clients, and with stakeholders. It is essential for the employees to adjust well in their organization’s culture to enjoy their work.

Several models exist to explain the organization culture, two of them being the Charles Handy model and the Johnson and Scholes Cultural Web model.

1. Implementation of Models of organisation culture to achieve organizational objectives

According to the Charles Handy model, there are four types of culture which the organizations follow:

Let us understand them in detail:

Power

The power remains in the hands of only few people and only they are authorized to take decisions. They enjoy special privileges at the workplace and the major decision makers and delegate responsibilities to the other employees. The employees do not have the liberty to express their views or share their ideas on an open forum and have to follow what their superior says. The managers in such a type of culture sometimes can be partial to someone or the other leading to major unrest among others.

Task Culture

Individuals with common interests and specializations come together to form a team to achieve the targets or solve critical problems. There are generally four to five members in each team and every team member has to contribute equally and accomplish tasks in the most innovative way.

Person Culture

Individuals are more concerned about their own self rather than the organization. The organization in such a culture takes a back seat and eventually suffers. Employees just come to the office for the sake of money and never get attached to it. They are seldom loyal towards the management and never decide in favour of the organization.

Role culture

Role culture is a culture where every employee is delegated roles and responsibilities according to his specialization, educational qualification and interest to extract the best out of him. They decide what best they can do and willingly accept the challenge. Every individual is accountable for something or the other and has to take ownership of the work assigned to him. Power comes with responsibility in such a work culture.

For the purpose of this illustration, the Cultural Web model will be used.

This model describes a corporate culture consisting of six elements:

-Power Structures

-Organisational Structures

-Rituals and Routines

-Symbols

-Control Systems

-Myths and Stories

The six elements together form the base for the paradigm of the organisation.

The model is particularly useful because a plan can be developed to change the constituent parts for each element or combination of elements. The image here shows those elements:

http://www.mindtools.com/media/Diagrams/CulturalWeb.gif

The paradigm in the centre is the set of core beliefs. This will take place from the multiplicity of conversations. It will maintain the unity of the culture. The ‘petals’ are the manifestations of culture which result from the influence of the paradigm. Almost all of the change programmes will concentrate on the petals; trying to effect the change by looking at structures, systems and processes. Initiatives usually have a limited success. A lot of energy and money is put into the change programme, with all the usual communication exercises, consultations, workshops etc.

In the beginning things seem to be changing but gradually the novelty and impetus wears off and the organisation0 settles back into something like its previous configuration. This will happen in the most of the cases because of a very simple reason that unless the paradigm at the heart of the culture is changed there will be no lasting change.

Culture impacts most aspect of the organizational life and so, help to achieve the organizational objectives. Treating all employees equally will create a very healthy environment for work. A healthy environment means harmony and co-ordination in work, good level of communication and consistency in achieving the organisational targets. This is what an organisation would ideally want from the workforce.

At this point, a very important topic is also related to the success of the organisational culture and that is the difference between organisational culture and national culture.

LO1.2 Difference between organisational and national culture

The national culture relates to deeper held values such as good vs. evil, normal vs. abnormal, safe vs. dangerous, and rational vs. irrational. National cultural values are learned early, held deeply and change slowly over the course of generations as witnessed in all ages. The organizational culture is comprised of broad guidelines, rooted in organizational practices learned on the job. Experts agree that changing organizational culture is difficult and takes time.  When two or more companies merge is how the underlying personal values of employees impact how they perceive the corporate culture change efforts. People can learn to adapt to processes and priorities, and a person can be persuaded to follow the exemplar behaviours of leaders in an organization. But if these priorities and leadership traits go against the deeply held national cultural values of employees, corporate values processes and practices will be undermined. What is appropriate in one national setting is wholly offensive in another.  What is rational in one national setting is wholly irrational in another. 

LO1.3 Analyse of the corporate cultural profile in an organisation

British Airways (BA) is operating a highly effective bureaucratic structure and role culture. At British Airways the organisational culture is to constantly work towards creating an inclusive culture that understands and respects the individual differences of each employee.

British Airways seek to deliver a service which reflects and responds to the diverse range of customers’ needs with an aim to drive and integrate diversity into all aspects of the service to remain competitive. As a company which operates globally, BA needs to attract and retain talented individuals to reflect the diversity of customer base. Employing a mix of people from diverse backgrounds leads to potential new ideas and innovation.

BA’s strategy is driven through diversity champions representing departments across the airline and employee groups which meet regularly to discuss issues on religion, disability, flexible working, sexual orientation and ethnicity. Diversity issues are communicated to employees via corporate intranet site, diversity forums, diversity employee networks, company newspaper and in monthly newsletters. The organisational culture describes all the rules, practices, attitudes and beliefs of business and underpins the interactions of staff and customers. Organisational climate describes the morale and perceptions of the organisation and is quite subjective.

At British Airways the current climate is not harmonious between the staff and the management. As a result the organisation is facing a lengthy unrest resulting in to the walkout of the staff which coasted company millions. This dispute will be the biggest obstacle in company progress to achieve the organisational objectives. The main source to achieve any company target is the workforce. If the work force is not satisfied, they present a real threat of obstructing the progress of the company. Organisational climate is based on the perceptions of members towards organisations. Hence it is clearly noticeable that the current management at BA has failed to gain an edge over member’s perceptions. The work force is disputing from a long time and it is clearly obstructing the organisational goals.

BA is committed to achieve highly professional goals through their different future commitments. The Colleagues at BA are engaging themselves to make British Airways a high performance workplace; by focusing to deliver consistent customer service; by developing and maintaining world-class partnerships with all key stakeholders, both internal and external; to create a performance-based culture. BA is also committed to an Operational efficiency by driving continuous improvement, short and long-term.

This work is led by the Leadership team which involves and engages employee right across the organisation, but the current climate will definitely not allow these commitments to become realistic. Although recent improvements between union and management is showing some positive signs which is an indication of good times coming back to BA.

There are many different departments in BA. At some level, the different departments operate with independence structure and person culture. As mentioned earlier, his structure is based on the individuals who are responsible for their work. For instance, the cleaning department, work on terminals. Although this department have a manager and supervisor but most of the staff knows their responsibilities and knows exactly how to perform them. They hardly need the information of everyday work as they are accustomed of it. Between the staff members, the power and influence are shared with strong individual values. This is also a very effective organizational culture.

LO1.4 The impact of an organisation’s corporate culture in achieving its objectives

The organizational culture combines the areas of different potential misunderstanding such as communications, management and negotiations. Moreover buyer behaviour, cultural shock, importance of developing cohesive culture in merged organisations is some of the different factors which clearly impacts on achievement of organizational objectives. Stewart mentioned that "in recent years attention has shifted from the effects of the organisation on work of people’s behaviour to how behaviour is influenced by the organisation culture. What are much more common today are the widespread recognitions that original change is not just, or even necessarily mainly, about changing the structure but often requires changing the culture too. The impacts of organizational culture are many and varied depending on whether the company has a strong culture or a weak culture, but there are some generalities that apply. Most of the time some positive effects will occur no sooner a company makes a concerted effort to establish a strong positive organizational culture at the work place. Many workers are spending more and more time at work entirely depending on the job or company. The old axiom goes that a happy worker is a productive worker, and this is one of the effects of organizational culture. Workers want to enjoy work. They want to be interested in whatever is going on during their work span, or long term goals. Being part of something meaningful will make the worker enjoy which will change whole experience of work better. This will make them more productive. The effects of organisational culture should help providing such kind of settings. A strong organisation must be focusing on the environment it creates for its workers. This is because that will help encourage a more efficient and productive organisation. Focusing on building and sustaining organisational culture shows employees that they are considered an important part of the company. Such type of company generally has among the best response from its employees and thus will also have a much better chance of achieving its goals.

There are five major reasons for wanting to create an appropriate and positive organisational culture for your company: A strong organisational culture will attract high level talent. It will also help to keep the top level talent. It creates energy and momentum. A strong and successful organizational culture should alter the employees’ view of work. It will also help make everyone more efficient and successful. A strong organizational culture can breed success, and its importance should not be discounted.

LO2: Organisational values that will influence corporate climate

LO2.1 Evaluation the existing climate of an organisation

British Airways is a very well-known organisation. It has been renowned for its organisational culture. BA provides the best opportunities to the staff members including many benefits and packages to enjoy. But from last few years it is experiencing workforce unrest. The main reason for that is there is a change within the management psyche at BA, driven by the chief executive. The new management team had taken some tough decisions which were not liked by the staff members. The management took away travel perks and also did not implement any increment for two years. These actions resulted highly unpopular and caused heavy colleague unrest. Thousands of staff took part in 22 days of walkouts last year, which cost BA £150m. But now there are some positive developments. BA cabin crew voted this week to end 18 months of strife, which is sign of good times coming back to BA. The agreement includes a two-year pay deal and the return of travel perks for staff who took part in walkouts last year. British Airways cabin crew voted on a peace deal that could end the airline’s worst industrial dispute. The Unite trade union posted ballot papers to crew. It is with a letter from its general secretary recommending a vote in favour of the agreement 18 months after Unite opened its first strike ballot on the dispute. So far the only indication of support for the deal is approximate, after hundreds of crew attending a meeting at Heathrow airport this month backed a proposal to put the deal to a wider vote. BA is hoping for the best outcome of these positive talks and are keen to end this worst industrial dispute.

LO2.2 Recommendations to improve corporate climate in an organisation

There are many different factor included in organisational climate. Some key factors are flexibility, responsibility, standards, rewards, clarity, team commitment, management practise, efficiency and effectiveness. All these have a clear impact in creating a healthy climate for workforce. Organisational climate might need to change to adapt the current changes in the business. There are many different ways of improving the organisational climate. Sometimes it is important to recognise improve may mean change because a particular climate is no longer appropriate.

It is very important to understand which climate is required, different management styles, effective communications and rational and continual review. Generally a healthy organisational climate will contain the integration of organisational goals and personal goals. The most appropriate organisational structure based on socio-technical system. Such as Mutual trust, consideration and support amount at different level of the organization, an open discussion of conflicts with an attempt of avoiding confrontation. Managerial behaviour and styles of leadership appropriate to the particular work situations, acceptance of the psychological contract between the individuals and the organisation. If any organisation contains all the above mentioned in their culture, the work climate will be at its best.

LO2.3 Framework of organisational values that meet the specific strategic and operational needs of an organisation

It is becoming increasingly important to growing numbers of organisations to let the individuals experience a sense of purpose at work and to work for an organisation that puts organisational values into practice. Personal values, which can be defined as "Underlying and relatively stable dispositions which organisations use to guide their actions and decisions and to help them make judgements about what is right and wrong" can only be the product of upbringing and socialisation, with purely individual differences stemming from personality characteristics also having a bearing. In adult life it is often a worthwhile process of self-development to spend some time clarifying one’s values: reviewing and reflecting on what is really important to you in an enduring way. It is not really a meaningful thing to choose values. The new organisations emphasis on value leadership; i.e. leading through establish leadership. The frame work for developing and supporting strong corporate core value is to integrate values in HRM strategies, recruitment, progression etc.

Solutions about how to deal with a new task, issue or problem based on reality values that work become belief and justify actions and behaviours.