Factors of Organizational Culture Change

This article examines various factors that affect organizational culture. It considers the macro-environment, the micro-environment, and leadership as influential factors in organizational culture. A company's founder(s) and its leadership are the biggest influencers on culture in their responses to external events. Furthermore, the organization's development stage also affects the organizational culture's change mechanisms.

Research methodology

To identify the change aspects of the organizational culture, the research of the organizational culture in the furniture manufacturing company was made by means of quantitative and qualitative research methods. The study was implemented in two steps.

The first step took place in December, 2006. In the first step, the existing organizational culture was recorded. The second step was made in April, 2008 16 months later after the first step. In this period the existing organizational culture was record-ed and methods of the organizational culture change were revealed. The research was carried both outside the organization (analysis of the articles about the company) and inside it (interviewing organization members by means of the designed questionnaire and performing in-depth interviews to reveal the characteristics of the organizational culture, changes of it and aspects that had impact on the culture change).

Results of the second research step were compared with the results of the first step to identify the possible changes in the company's organizational culture. Having in mind the identified changes and with the help of in-depth interviews the aspects and methods that were used for management of the organizational culture during the research period were revealed.

During the research the managers and specialists of the highest, middle and lowest levels working in the administration, finance, manufacturing, quality, logistics, sales, personnel, purchase, technical services and technology departments were interviewed. Managers and specialists were selected to participate in the study, because an assumption was made that seeing the internal organizational changes they will be the first to notice how changes influence the organizational culture and to identify these possible changes during research.

The required sample size was determined through the Creative Research Systems developed calculator for determining the sample size.

During the first step of research 91 employees were surveyed (representing 76.4% of employees in the said departments), during the second step of research - 69 employees (representing 72.6% of employees in the said departments) and 8 workers were surveyed (9.6 %) through in-depth interviews.