Corporate CultureEssay Preview: Corporate CultureReport this essayIn this essay I will argue that although managing the culture of an organisation can be highly beneficial to the success of the organisation, the attempt is still one that is very difficult and morally questionable to oversee. In the first section, I will outline the concept of corporate culture (Peters and Waterman 1982) (Parker 2000) as well as the reasons why managers view corporate culture as so beneficial to the success of the organisation (Ackroyd and Crowdy 1990). Secondly, I will argue the extreme difficulty of managing employee values and emotions, as it is so demanding to find willing and compliant labour that will work towards the goals of the organisation. I will be drawing on examples from Jaffee (2001), Mintzberg (1971) and Ackroyd and Crowdy (1990) to show just how profound employees values and emotions can be and for this reason are so difficult to manage. In the third section I will argue the efficacy and ethics of manipulating employees (Brewis 2006) (Willmott 1993) as well as the questionable decisions regarding diversity (Dipboye and Halverson 2004) (Strachan, French and Burgess 2010). Furthermore, I will conclude my essay by re-stating my argument, and summarise on key points.
Corporate culture: The real key to success?Corporate Culture can be defined as the attempt to exploit the individuals anxious striving for selfhood, through the expert psychological dissection and reconstitution of modern subjects, for the organisations purposes (management lecture 3). The way pay systems are set, the attitude of management to customers through a high level of service or even the way employees are asked to dress, are just a few examples of what an organisations culture could be like, specified so that employees are aligned towards the goals of the organisation. As Parker (2000) states Every member of an organisations products and services and the unique patterns with which they carry out their responsibilities (Parker 2000 p.9) he recognises that this unique lifestyles of businesses is what makes organisations have a culture, and is what distinguishes them from the culture of another.
Managing the culture of an organisation successfully, is about managing the employees prosperously (Peters and Waterman 1982). We see that the excellent companies (Peters and Waterman 1982 p. 55) that have a strong culture are those that recognise that the employees are the key to corporate success (Peters and Waterman 1982). These companies give employees control over their destinys, reinforce that people are made to feel like winners and celebrate small wins, providing a sense of self achievement to these employees (Peters and Waterman 1982). It is this type of culture that allows for employees to feel optimistic and to excel in their degree, performing with confidence, and these types of organisations that perform successfully in working towards their goals and objectives as a result of managing employee values and emotions effectively. Parker (2000) uses a quote from Business week to be on the same views as Peters and Waterman (1982) as an employer, control the culture successfully and you will have higher productivity with more employee involvement (Business Week 1980 p.48 – Parker 2000 p.10), similarly recognising that employees are the key to success and that if employees values and emotions can be managed towards the goals of the organisation it will be beneficial towards the success of the organisation.
As explained by Ackroyd and Crowdy (1990), if managers can begin to more adequately understand workplace cultures, they are more likely to oversee and control a beneficial environment. We see that despite the fact that the slaughterman of the Casterton plant, were doing highly routinized and monotonous jobs that involved working in a blood stricken environment, dealing with bodily fluids and animal excreta, these employees still had great self esteem (Ackroyd and Crowdy 1990) due to the culture of the organisation where every man wanted to work harder then the next, When there was work to do the slaughterman at the Casterton plant worked hard and fast (Ackroyd and Crowdy 1990 p. 5). Not all people would enjoy and take pride working in this type of environment, and as such we can conclude that as different cultures react differently to diverse environments, cultures must be understood before they are managed, so that willing and compliant labour can be found. If this has occurred, it will be much easier to manage the values and emotions of employees, who will begin to enjoy working towards the goals of the organisation, and hence a strong culture can be formed, A strong culture will ensure that employees comply because they want to, rather than because they are told to, (Parker 2000 p. 22). We also see that a strong culture like the Casterton slaughterhouse, (Ackroyd and Crowdy 1990) provides a feeling of security and institutional purpose for the employee (Peters and Waterman 1982), encouraging employees to improve productivity and motivation levels, working towards the goals of the organisation, potentially increasing the success of an organisation. As such it is so important for managers to get the culture of an organisation right quickly, however finding willing and compliant labour to work with the culture is more difficult than it sounds.
Why is it so difficult to manage the culture of an organisation?It is in fact a very difficult process of managing the culture of an organisation. A number of contributing factors have added to this difficulty, such as the radical change in technology. This change has resulted in managers wasting valuable time
managing the culture of an organisation, due to needing to read large volumes of information especially on e-mail, (Mintzberg 1971), as a result of its speed and complexity. Another example includes managers knowing little about the value of positive reinforcement, (Peters and Waterman 1982 p. 58) as by not reinforcing that workers are made to feel like winners (Peters and Waterman 1982), can result in negative attitudes such as being lethargic, creating a weak culture as employees values and emotions have not been managed properly. Attitudes like this will increase the difficulty for the organisation to achieve its goals and objectives. Furthermore, often the style a manager may choose to direct the culture of an organisation may increase the difficulty of managing the culture of an organisation (Jaffee 2001). These styles can depend on a number of external forces and contexts and influence management in their deployment of various attempts to secure the subordination of employees
Practical use the methods that I’ve used to make decisions in the above examples can be adapted to manage an organisation with a particular type of work. In our experience the way we used the traditional methods could be: setting a deadline for a project or setting a meeting when a team meeting ends and the management can use these steps to increase capacity. In other words, the management could set an example that employees value and use more when a project or meeting is successful on their part. That way then, employees may go through the process of setting their expectations. For instance, one approach to managing a company which seeks to be a part of the global IT infrastructure (Hoffman 2010). As part of the technology infrastructure, some people consider these technologies to be more difficult, demanding, and require training. They also think the problems in implementing the IT infrastructure is too similar to a problem in other domains of the IT ecosystem. This approach is a more specific approach that can be adapted when a company is developing or is making investments that, as the case may be, need more than the other three components of the infrastructure. This approach also may be employed when the business requires workers to perform an important and meaningful role, like in a medical field (e.g. to test the effectiveness or longevity of a vaccine or to monitor the effectiveness of new medicines) because it may not be possible to meet workers’ and staff’s demands.
Another possible application of an approach to manage an organisation which relies on a common organizational unit called a “managing organization” is the provision of training (Naslach 2003 and the chapter in the Guide to Management and Operations, and the chapter in the Guide to Management and Operations). There is a set of basic principles in which managers should follow, which will be discussed in depth in the Chapter on Management and Operations. A common method is to assign staff in various roles to different regions. Some organizations may have small offices so that a person is appointed at the start of his or her terms to manage a group, where in other contexts of working or in case of employees their manager can decide to assign two or three staff members when they agree upon a working plan. The manager may also set a working group which will be set up using the following three principles:
1. The first stage is the job. It is very common to say that “the job” for managers is to manage their employees the way that any other person or group does, and so there will be a process, often referred to as management of the organisation, which is designed for working with the organisation in a manner that minimises the organisational risk it may impose. Often the person responsible for deciding what is and what is not managerial will have to provide the organization with advice. This advice is often quite informal: for example if an organisation is designing an employee organisation who will be used to work in the workplace, the manager will give instructions as to how to provide them with relevant information that will help them to improve their performance. The manager will also be given information on how best to implement them so that the information will be integrated into that organisation’s plans.
2. The second stage comprises setting up the “system”, or the process to be created. The system of management can involve a number of different processes which may be:
a) management and governance
b) managerial and organisational coordination
c) the decision making process
d) the management process (or “management group” as the case may be)
e) the management meetings
f) the decision making process in detail
Gone are the days where the manager was supposed to do everything from deciding the future of a organisation based on ideas, not from the need to meet specific employees demand levels. The manager is supposed to get things done; the organisation can then be developed and it should be able to meet demands for personnel, tasks and training. Where the organization’s management system is hierarchical