What is Organizational Culture?

What does the term organizational culture mean? Edgar Schein (in his book, Organizational Culture and Leadership) provides this summary of the common meanings of the term culture in an organizational context:

·        observed behavioral regularities;

·        workplace norms;

·        organizational dominant values;

·        the philosophy that guides an organization's policy toward employees and/or customers;

·        the rules of the game for getting along; and

·        the feeling or climate of the organization interact with customers and outsiders.

For Schein these common meanings of the term culture are not culture; they merely reflect an organization's culture. Rather, culture is a pattern of basic assumptions - invented, discovered or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration - that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems.

For Clifford Geertz (in his book The Interpretation of Cultures), culture is "an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men [and women] communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge and attitudes toward life." Simply stated, the culture of any group (or organization) is the sum total of the meanings of that group (or organization) to its members. Meaning is so critical to organizational life that some authors such as Howard Schwartz (in his book, Narcissistic Processes and Corporate Decay) point out that "organizations are created and sustained for the purpose of providing meaning for their members. [emphasis added]"

According to Geertz, the primary functions of any culture are:

·        orientation;

·        communication; and

·        self-control.

Culture is best seen not as complexes of concrete behavior patterns - customs, usages, traditions, habit clusters - but as a set of control mechanisms - plans, recipes, rules, instructions - for the governance of behavior. Undirected by cultural patterns -- organized systems of significant symbols/meanings -- men's/women's behavior would be random, shapeless and meaningless. Culture -- the accumulated totality of such patterns is a central ingredient of human existence -- not a product of it. This understanding has been captured in the Center for Productivity & Creativity's: CULTure - A model for organizational culture, where the term “culture” refers to a set of:

·        Commonly held meanings, that are

·        Universal to the group, are both

·        Learned and taught, and

·        Transform and regulate the

·        understandings,

·        relationships and

·        expectations of group members.