Significance of Organisational Culture on Production in Manufacturing Companies

Significance of Organisational Culture on Production in Manufacturing Companies

By

Cornelius Femi Popoola

Department of Business Administration

Faculty of Management Sciences

Joseph Ayo Babalola University

Abstract

The importance of managing and manipulating culture in production cannot be underestimated in terms of its impact on the production process. This paper presents the significance and effective managing culture on production in Manufacturing Companies. The paper revealed employee commitment, performance, productivity level and quality as important tool to address culture issues in production. The implications of the six key issues identified in this essay are wide-ranging, fundamentally the key to effective culture management is leadership. The study recommend that leadership must be committed to managing culture in terms of developing and sustaining production quality and performance, while managers throughout the organisation are responsible for its effective production development.

Keywords: Manufacturing companies, Organizational culture, and Production,

1.0        INTRODUCTION

Traditionally, every organisation (either production or service) builds up their own culture so as to give their organisation a sense of identity, that is, to show ‘who they are’, what they stand for’ and ‘what they do’. Culture is a means through which organisation expresses itself to its employees. Generally, culture is formed to shape the human thought and their behaviour in the system (Lather, Puskas, Kumar and Gupta 2010). Similarly, culture is formed through the values which are not visible but are shared by people even when membership in group changes (Sharma and Sharma 2010). Shared values and norms focus employees’ attention on organisational priorities, guide their behaviour and decision making. In every organisation particularly in the production firms, employees are constantly surrounded by culture (often invisible) and this forms the background of their work lives.

In recent times, as production firms continue to grow nationally and internationally, effective organisation culture has becomes an important ingredient in enhancing production planning, management, control, performance and quality in manufacturing sector. In Nigeria just like other countries in the world, companies within manufacturing industry have been vigorously pursuing suitable culture system because of the view that it brings about production excellence (Schein 1990), performance (Yusuff, Busu, Rashid and Zulkifl, 2008) and quality (Lather, et al 2010).

In a globally competitive economy, quality of production is paramount. This is because product quality not only impacts customer satisfaction, but also impacts profitability, repeat business, reputation, and ultimately the long-term viability of the business (Mobley, Wang and Fang 2005). At the production floor, culture is linked to measurable outcomes. Many erudite scholars in Nigeria (e.g. Bolaji and Adejuyigbe 2012, Olanipekun, Aje and Abiola-Falemu 2013, Adegoke 2013, Agwu 2014) and abroad (e.g. Lather et al 2010, Hofstede 2005, Sharma and Sharam, 2010) have independently looked at the importance of organisation culture on production aspects like planning, innovation, performance, quality, level of productivity and employee commitment respectively. Nevertheless, this course work goes further to presents a comprehensive essay on the concept of organisation culture and the extent to which it significant to production in manufacturing companies.

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