Understanding Organization Culture Part 1

Author : Ami Fitri Utami, SE.,MSM

Organizational culture already defined by various researchers through decades. By this, the exact definition of culture in organization are varied depends on the focus of the research but the red lines are mostly detected. Schein in 2004 as one of the most prominent researcher in organizational culture aimed that culture in organization roles as a shared basic assumption among organization’s members. Moreover, in 1996 O’Reilly & Chatman postulated that the culture of organization portrayed as a shared value’s system which depict organization’s norm, and appropriate attitude.

Furthermore, Kreitner; Kinicki (2013) postulate a different perspective which seen organizational culture as organization’s shared assumption on how they react to the environment’s events. These varied definitions are all connected and aimed for one discussion that an organization’s culture should be shared among members whether in a form assumption, expected behavior or norm which identifies them as one entity.

Organizational culture though may simply define as “how we do things around here” will not be simply easy to understand. In this vein, Schein postulated that in understanding the dynamics of organizational culture we need to understand the three layers of organizational culture in the first place which includes artifacts, value, and basic assumption.By this, it is not enough to define one organization’s culture by its organization’s structure and the explicit executive statements about how they conduct the company’s culture. Otherwise, to understand holistically about a company’s culture, ones should be able to analyze it from each level of culture deeply.

References :
Schein, E. (2004). H.(2004). Organizational culture and leadership, 3. Willey
OReilly, C. A., & Chatman, J. A. (1996). Culture as social control: Corporations, cults, and commitment. RESEARCH IN ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, VOL 18, 1996, 18, 157-200.
Kreitner, R., & Kinicki, A. (2013). Organizational Behavior: Key concepts, skills and practices ,Mc Graw Hill, New York.