Understanding Organization Culture Part 2

Author : Ami Fitri Utami, SE., MSM

Organizational culture has become the darling subject in organizational research field due to its complexity and importance. Various scholars attempted to define the real definition of organization culture, by this it can be comprehend that organizational culture pictured as sets of shared assumptions among members which guide their behavior and their understanding about what things are right or wrong in organization. Moreover, understanding ones’ organizational culture would not be enough by reading the definitions. By this, Schein (2004) aimed that organization culture, is more complex than we presume due to its visibilities and paradox. Schein (2004) then postulate the 3 (three) layers of organizational culture includes artifact, values and underlying assumption. Thus, if we want to understand ones’ organization culture thoroughly we should be able to analyze it from those multilevel concepts. Moreover, despite of the multilevel layer of organizational culture components describe by Schein (2004), other previous scholars also simplifies culture in organization in a form of typology. Namely there are CVF, Four Classification of Culture and The Culture Model being discussed in this article. These typologies and classifications were done based on the degree of social interaction inside the organization.

Why should we understand organizational culture?

As previously discussed, organizational culture may give hints to organization members about the rationalization regarding to what happened around it. By this, understanding organization’s culture may help members to decipher the why and how does thing goes and handled inside the organization. Moreover, while leader acted as the architect of organization, understanding culture may help them to define what kind of culture should be formed in order to achieve organization goals.