Organizational Culture

A culture can be strong (think of Disney) or weak. A strong culture is not necessarily an asset to the organization. An organization's culture will start with the founder's values and preferences and respond to industry demands. However, the culture is shaped over time as it deals with external and internal challenges. Additionally, the culture is shared with new employees. Companies can use a formal orientation program and mentoring to instill the organizational culture during the onboarding process. We can learn about an organization's culture by looking at its mission statement, rituals, rules and policies, physical layout, and stories. Read this text to consider organizational culture in more depth and provides some different perspectives to help us understand corporate culture, including how it forms.

Characteristics of Organizational Culture

Learning Objectives

  1. Understand different dimensions of organizational culture.
  2. Understand the role of culture strength.
  3. Explore subcultures within organizations.


Dimensions of Culture

Which values characterize an organization's culture? Even though culture may not be immediately observable, identifying a set of values that might be used to describe an organization's culture helps us identify, measure, and manage culture more effectively. For this purpose, several researchers have proposed various culture typologies. One typology that has received a lot of research attention is the organizational culture profile (OCP), in which culture is represented by seven distinct values. We will describe the OCP as well as two additional dimensions of organizational culture that are not represented in that framework but are important dimensions to consider: service culture and safety culture.

Dimensions of Organizational Culture Profile

Figure 15.4 Dimensions of Organizational Culture Profile (OCP)