Organizational culture Essay

Organizational culture is defined as the shared values and beliefs within an organization (Wilkes, 2000). The culture also comprises of the norms and beliefs and is thus an in build system within an organization (Wilkes, 2000). Thus organizational culture is specific to an organization and it defines the relationship and the nature of the interaction between members of an organization and is influential on the nature of the relationship with outsiders (Wilkes, 2000). The culture is also definitive of the goals that are set for each member of the organization and is seen to go in line with thee vision of the organization. From the clear definition, goals, guidelines or expectations are developed; these constitute the norms. The management may try to instill some kind of a culture on its employees, this type of culture is thus described as corporate culture and is more specific (Wilkes, 2000). The classification of culture takes on diverse dimensions and therefore the analysis of the effects must also take on the same trend. The following are some of the factors that are used in classification of organizational culture: ? The expected differences in power levels. ? The extent to which the organizations members are willing to take risks. ? The level of collectivism or individualism in an organization. ? Gender aspects. ? Orientation, which can either be short or long term. Any strategy that an organization comes up with must be within the organizational setting and thus be relevant to the organization culture. A clash between the strategies and the organizational culture will lead to the flop of any program, therefore all organizations must ensure that their development plans are in line with the culture, failure to which the implementation will be a flop. Support for the policies After the analysis of needs, resources and uniqueness, there is an additional factor that must be considered in coming up with a decision; support. The organizational support to the mode chosen is very critical in the determination of the success of the mode of choice in meeting the needs of the organization. This is because it affect how members of the organization receive the decision. Support can be categories into three: ? Upper level support ? Like/ Colleague level ? End user support Management The reasons for support by upper management staff and executives is quite clear. The main reason for their support is the power they posses in the implementation of the plan especially in resource allocation and policy formulation (Woodruff, 2005). Moreover, the obvious nature of the need to influence the top executives often lead to concentration on them and thus ignoring the other members. Organizations must ensure that such occurrence are minimized and if possible eliminated as they can cause failure of well intentioned plans. Colleagues This group is made up of all those that the organization have to interact with in their daily undertaking (Woodruff, 2005). The importance of this group lies in counteracting the power that the organizations executives have on the decision making process. The support of the members of the organizations operational environment plays a very important role in influencing the decision. Therefore, enlightening the colleagues on the importance of Automated office systems support will go in line with drumming up support for the implementation of the approach of choice. In addition, enlightening the colleagues to understand the implementation of the plan, which it is meant for and the effect of its implementation on their jobs will go a long way in influencing their support. End Users Even though they have the power to influence the success of a plan, the end user are often ignored in lobbying for support (Woodruff, 2005). The end users have the power to render the plan a failure by deciding not to use the product, which will have the effect of changing the attitude of the colleagues and the management executives on the effectiveness and efficiency of the adopted Automated office systems support acquirement mechanism. Moreover, the sabotage need not be intentional; the failure of the system may be due to their lack of understanding of why the product is necessary or as a show of their lack of support of the governance model adopted. Furthermore, the products failure in meeting the needs of the end user could lead to failure and thus the importance of the end user in deciding on whether to buy or build Automated office systems support can never be downplayed.