What is organizational culture and why is it essential for a healthy and strong organization that works efficiently? The organizational culture essay below answers these questions. It focuses on the characteristics and benefits of the issue.
Introduction
Organizational culture is an important aspect of achieving organizational success. Every manager should strive to develop an organizational culture that will facilitate easy transformation of the organization through change embracement y employees. However, managers face challenges such as change resistance by employees.
Resistance to change is caused by fear of learning new skills, fear of new and additional responsibilities, fear of power shift, leadership, or management, and fear of stress that results from change (Hirschhorn ,2002). Organizational culture and change is most valuable to an aspiring manager because it they form the basis of organizational success.
They determine employees’ job satisfaction, motivation, and commitment towards achievement of organizational goals and objectives. Developing an appropriate organizational culture that guarantees success is difficult. However, aspiring managers should strive towards developing it because without it, organizational success remains a mirage.
Why Is Organizational Culture Important?
Managers should work towards introducing change in the organization to hasten achievement of organizational goals (Hirschhorn, 2002). Resistance to change by employees is the main challenge encountered by managers during the process of introducing change. However, with an appropriate strategy, managers can introduce change effectively and efficiently without causing chaos.
According to Hirschhorn (2002), change can be successfully introduced using three different campaign strategies. These include political, marketing, and military campaigns. The three campaigns combine different strategies to facilitate introduction of change in an organization.
Political campaign facilitates development of change initiatives through formation of a coalition that supports and guides change initiative (Hirschhorn, 2002).
A marketing campaign focuses on employee’s feelings and attitudes towards change by explicating potential benefits of embracing and executing change. On the other hand, a military campaign facilitates channeling of management’s attention and time to the change initiative (Hirschhorn, 2002).
Organizational culture determines level of employee job satisfaction, which is an ingredient of organizational success. Organizational culture affects employees’ attitudes, behaviors, and performance at the workplace. One of the characteristics of an efficient organizational culture is a satisfying workplace. A satisfying workplace is one of the strategies implemented by managers to improve job satisfaction.
To improve job satisfaction, management reform is necessary (Yang and Kasssekert, 2009). Examples of such reforms include Titl5 Exemption, contracting out, and managing for results. Under Title 5 exemption, managers should strive towards increasing managerial prudence in improving efficiency of human resource management (Yang and Kasssekert, 2009).
They should include performance rewards, introduction of simple hiring procedures, and workforce restructuring. On the other hand, contracting out is important because it reduces costs, improves quality of service delivery, increases efficiency, and increase job satisfaction (Yang and Kasssekert, 2009).
In addition, mangers should create an environment that encourages employees to trust in the leadership of the organization. Performance appraisal should strive towards improving employees’ performance and not victimizing them.
According to Kegan and Lahey (2001), it is important for managers to understand why employees resist change in order to introduce it without causing chaos. They argue that change to resistance is because of a phenomenon referred to as competing commitment. Effective management strives towards assisting employees subdue limitations that prevent them from embracing change.
This includes involving employees in diagnosing causes of immunity to change (Kegan and Lahey, 2001). Competing commitments are both a problem to employees and managers. Eradicating resistance to changes starts with uncovering employees’ competing commitments.
One aspect of competing commitments is assumptions. Employees need to realize that assumptions determine their reality and should strive to question them (Kegan and Lahey, 2001).
Employee empowerment is another factor that contributes to a strong organizational culture. However, without an effective work environment and good leadership, employee empowerment is impossible. Empowered employees are committed to achieving organizational goals by improving performance and embracing innovation (Fernandez and Moldogaziez, 2012).
Benefits of employee empowerment include quick retraction from errors, learning from mistakes, and development of innovative ways of service delivery (Fernandez and Moldogaziez, 2012). Empowered employees work harder and smarter thus improving performance. They thus exhibit flexibility in task execution.
Change is also important in enhancing employee performance because of the uncertainty of the modern business environment. Therefore, change is an important aspect of ensuing organizational adaptability to change. Employees must be able to adapt to change to enhance organizational survival and sustainability (Fernandez and Moldogaziez, 2012).
Change encourages innovation because it introduces new ways and procedures of doing things. It is imperative for managers to introduce change in the organization to encourage innovation and achievement of organizational goals.
Conclusion
Organizational culture and change are important aspects of achieving organizational success. They are valuable to aspiring managers in the public sector because of several reasons. They encourage innovation, improve employee performance, and enhance the efficiency of an organization. A strong organizational culture enhances job satisfaction among employees.
On the other hand, change encourages innovation, which helps an organization survive in the highly uncertain modern business environment. Employee empowerment and job satisfaction are core factors that determine level of organizational success. Any aspiring manager should focus managerial efforts towards creating a strong organizational culture and introducing change in the organization.
References
Fernandez, S., and Moldogaziev, T. (2012). Using Employee Empowerment to Encourage Innovative Behavior in the Public Sector. Journal of Public Administration and Theory, 13, 1-33.
Hirschhorn, L. (2001). Campaigning for Change. Harvard Business Review, 12(4), 98- 104.
Kegan, R., and Lahey, L. (2001). Real Reason People Won’t Change. Harvard Business Review, 4(3), 84-92.
Yang, K., and Kasssekert, A. (2009). Linking Management Reform with Employee Job Satisfaction: Evidence from Federal Agencies. Journal of Public Administration and Research Theory, 20, 413-436.