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Organizational Culture

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Organizational Culture
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Organizational culture
Organizational culture is the behavior of humans who are part of an organization and the meanings that the people attach to their actions. Culture includes the organization values, visions, norms, working language, systems, symbols, beliefs and habits. It is also the pattern of such collective behaviors and assumptions that are taught to new organizational members as a way of perceiving, and even thinking and feeling. Organizational culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with clients, and with stakeholders.
Ravasi and Schultz (2006) state that organizational culture is a set of shared mental assumptions that guide interpretation and action in organizations by defining appropriate behavior for various situations. At the same time although a company may have "own unique culture", in larger organizations, there is a diverse and sometimes conflicting cultures that co-exist due to different characteristics of the management team. The organizational culture may also have negative and positive aspects.
Schein (2009), Deal & Kennedy (2000), Kotter (1992) and many others state that organizations often have very differing cultures as well as subcultures.
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Usage
Organizational culture refers to culture in any type of organization be it school, university, not-for-profit groups, government agencies or business entities. In business, terms such as corporate culture and company culture are sometimes used to refer to a similar concept.
Although the idea that the term became known in businesses in the late 80s and early 90s is widespread, in fact corporate culture was already used by managers and addressed in sociology, cultural studies and organizational theory in the beginning of the 80s.
The idea about the culture and overall environment and characteristics of organization, in fact, was first and similarly approached



References: 1. ^ ""Culture is everything," said Lou Gerstner, the CEO who pulled IBM from near ruin in the 1990s.",Culture Clash: When Corporate Culture Fights Strategy, It Can Cost You, knowmgmt,Arizona State University, March 30, 2011 2 5. ^ Halpin, A. W., & Croft, D. B. (1963).The organizational climate of schools. Chicago: Midwest Administration Center of the University of Chicago. 6. ^ Fred C. Lunenburg, Allan C. Ornstein,Educational Administration: Concepts and Practices, Cengage Learning, 2011, pp. 67 7 8. ^ a b Hofstede, Geert H. 2001. Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations. Sage Publications. 13. ^ Islam, Gazi and Zyphur, Michael. (2009). Rituals in organizatinios: A review and expansion of current theory. Group Organization Management. (34), 1140139. 14. ^ Enrique Ruiz,Discriminate Or Diversify, PositivePsyche.Biz Corp, 2009 15 16. ^ Kotter, J. P. (1992). Corporate Culture and Performance. New York: The Free Press. 26. ^ Li Dong, Keith Glaister, National and corporate culture differences in international strategic alliances: Perceptions of Chinese partners (RePEc), Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 24 (June 2007), pp. 191-205 27 28. ^ Montana, P., and Charnov, B. (2008) Management (4th ed.), Barrons Educational Series, Hauppauge:NY 29

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