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.

Creating and Maintaining Organizational Culture

Industry Demands

While founders undoubtedly exert a powerful influence over corporate cultures, the industry characteristics also play a role. Industry characteristics and demands act as a force to create similarities among organizational cultures. For example, despite some differences, many companies in the insurance and banking industries are stable and rule oriented, many companies in the high-tech industry have innovative cultures, and companies in the nonprofit industry tend to be people oriented. If the industry is one with a large number of regulatory requirements - for example, banking, health care, and nuclear power plant industries - then we might expect the presence of a large number of rules and regulations, a bureaucratic company structure, and a stable culture. Similarly, the high-tech industry requires agility, taking quick action, and low concern for rules and authority, which may create a relatively more innovative culture. The industry influence over culture is also important to know, because this shows that it may not be possible to imitate the culture of a company in a different industry, even though it may seem admirable to outsiders.