Organizations As Cultures

Parts of Organizational Cultures

Although the concept of culture has been studied extensively, the term organizational culture has only been used recently. The definition of organizational culture emphasizes the assumptions and deep patterns of meaning, values, norms and expectations, philosophies, frameworks or observable behavioral regularities as the rites, rituals, and structures (Abrahamson and Fombrun, 1994). Culture is a set of core values, beliefs and understandings that are shared by members of an organization (Smircich, 1983). Pettigrew (1979) describes organizational culture as "... the system of publicly and collectively accepted meanings operating for a given group at a given time."

A working definition of organizational culture is that of Schwartz and Davis (1981) who say it is "a pattern of beliefs and expectations shared by members of the organization. These beliefs and expectations produce norms that powerfully shape the behavior of individuals and groups. When V. Sathe (1983) refers to the organizations said that their culture is the general pattern of behavior, shared beliefs and values that its members have in common. For this author, organizational culture can be inferred from what employees say they do or think.

Another important element in the culture of a social organization is the vision of the leaders or leading them. Based on the ideas that leaders of the organization have on the future of the organization, including some activities exclude others, support some enterprises and personal initiatives and / or group and rejecting others. To understand the views held by the leaders of an organization, we must know the history of it, then we will have parameters that help us to compare the growth, development, progress and setbacks, changes that occurred in the organization from the ideas of its leaders. Drivers are called to sentences conceptualize the vision of the leaders of the organization, and members of t...