SMARTBIZ XWORKING

              By Sedar Senghor NOUWEZEM

        In this essay we will discuss on how managers control and manipulate corporate culture in ways that will improve the organizational performance.

Organizations have their own unique culture or value set, based on the values of the top management or the founders, and formed over years of interaction between the participants in the organization. Although, there is no common definition of organizational culture in management, Dessler (2004) defines culture as “the characteristic set of values and ways of behaving that employees in an organization share”. Also, Johnson and Scholes (1994) defined organizational culture using a cultural web; the cultural web comprises of ‘hard’ structural systems characteristics of organizations together with ‘soft’ symbolic features. It is all about continually agreeing (sometimes explicitly, usually tacitly) about the ‘proper’ way to do things and how to make meanings about the events of the world around them (Seel, R 2000).   It also involves learning and transmitting of knowledge, beliefs and patterns of behaviors over a period of time. However organizational culture is a strong force within a company which appears to play an important role in the organization performance. According to Koontz and Weihrich (1998, p.205) ‘’the effectiveness of an organization is influenced by the organizational culture which affects the way managerial functions of planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling are carried out’’. The extraordinarily success of companies like Southwest Airlines, Wal-Mart, MacDonald’s is gained over other competitors in the market by the proper tune of their organizational culture. Organizational culture has a major impact on mid-term and long-term performance, and the capacity of manager to control and rule it, is the essential way to organization success. (Cameroon and Quinn, 1999).

From a management perspective, organizational culture can be influenced and used and is therefore applicable as a tool to control the workforce (Wilson and Rosenfeld, 1990). In fact, there are a number of significant factors in companies operating culture (the way things are done around) that can significantly influence the effectiveness of an organization. So how do we explain the extraordinarily successful of some companies from others? Why some companies prospered when their competitors failed or have gone out of business rapidly? Is simply because, these successful companies have developed and managed something special that supersedes corporate strategy, market presence or technological advantages: and that success is the organizational culture.

Nowadays, in this global world, it is a challenge for managers, to influence and energize others within the organization to follow a shared corporate culture; to use culture in the way to increase the organizational performance. However, the success of the manager to maintain, change, or repair an organizational culture depends to a large degree on an accurate reading and understanding of the corporate culture and the ability to polish and shape it to fit the shifting needs of the marketplace. (Robbins, S.P and Coulter, M 2002)

In addition to that, Griffin (2005) suggested that, by understanding the current culture, managers can take appropriate decisions. In others words, the ability of the manager is to asses how well the culture is performing and when or how it needs to be changed, it is essential in providing direction, specially when the direction is different from what has come before. Organizational culture, therefore, helps managers to guide and direct the company’s activities taken by a firm. Because manager is a person who develops corporate strategies and is responsible for directing the implementation of these strategies, he/she can influence or manipulate group members into thinking, perceiving and feeling in certain ways and therefore delivered a high quality of services.

Managers have the challenge of making sure they maintain corporate culture observed at all time during working operations, they can achieve this by rewarding and promoting employee whose behavior is consistent with the existing culture and by articulating culture through slogans and ceremonies. For instance, in Kellogg Company they established ‘K Values’ which is ‘shape our culture and guide the way we run our business’. In 2005, the company instituted the W.K. Kellogg Values Award, which is given annually to one individual and one team of employees who best exhibit the K Values in their work. (Kellogg Co, 2007).

It is well-known that, rewards and recognition system send signal about what is right and wrong and influence how the employee behaves. When people are motivated, they are more likely to achieve their objective and do so with great ease. Schachter Debbie (2005) stated that, ‘’by empowering staff to provide suggestions and to help them to implement their new ideas and make more decisions for their own areas of expertise, are important for a company’s success’’. In fact, employees are not motivated only by money; they have many personal needs and goals that they are hoping to be satisfied through their job and the offer of various types of rewards. Also, many companies like, ASDA, McDonald’s, use plaques hanging in prominent places that features the “crew member of the month” for example, they offer them rewards which motivate them.  Nowadays, managers decentralizing decision making by encouraging employees to be more responsible and act and think like owners, they design culture which allows all employees to take part in problem analyzing and solving in the organization by making appropriate decisions. In exchange for more flexible work schedules, employees are expected to always be "on-call" and give their loyalty to the organization.

But also, ‘’managers must walk a fine line between maintaining a culture that still works effectively and changing culture that has been dysfunctional’’ Griffin (2005). In this global world, if the organization is not able to adapt its culture to the changing environment, it will not survive. Growing from that evidence, some successful companies do not remain excellent for long, also suggesting that culture may need to be replaced with the more discerning understanding of the types and roles of culture and the needs to change culture over the life cycle of the organization. Many managers recognize that and try to manipulate corporate culture in a manner that will lead to organizational success. This is the reason why, the culture in many successful organization is characterized by agility, alignment with external environment factors. In this way, Kotter and Heskett (1992) stated that, ‘’in organizational cultures that promotes useful change; managers pay close attention to relevant changes in a firm’s context and then initiate incremental changes in strategies and practices to keep firms and cultures in line with environmental realities’’. By encouraging constantly the employees to look ahead, to anticipate change, so that they can position themselves and the company to slip ahead when there is a curve in the road, when there is a challenge, managers involve people to perpetuate change of culture in the company.

In fact, to change culture, managers must have a clear idea of what they want to create. Modifying organizational culture is the key to the successful implementation of major improvement strategies as well as adaptation to the increasing turbulent environment faced by modern organizations. By changing training programs and new selection criteria, managers can influence the culture and thereby, changing the attitude and behaviors within the organization. A good example is Disney Theme Park Company in France. In 1986 the executives of Disney wanted to create a Disney land in Paris, but this came up to be a catastrophe because the manager did not set up a culture which could go shoulder to shoulder with French, he wanted to put in practice the same American culture which is used by Disney Company in USA. This failure of manipulating culture caused underperformance of the company since majority of its customers were coming from abroad and not the French.

Furthermore, employing people and encourage them to know the corporate culture and embrace it in their day to day activities is through training and recycling, which are the best ways in which employees can contribute to continuous improvement by eliminating errors and waste.  Siemens is an example of company in which development is concerned with encouraging employees to identify ways in which they want to improve their career and other aspects of their working lives, they have a phrase that says A ‘high performance culture’ exists when everyone in the organization shares the same vision and where they trust and value each other's contribution. (The times newspaper, 2008).

What is important for a long-term organization performance is the ability of the manager to effectively manage and change culture over time to adjust, to change in the situation understanding of culture and the role of manager in ensuring that, this culture contributes both to the organization’s current and future success. For instance, Ford Company, when it started in 1911 in the UK the manager could not monitor the problem of cultural diversity since the employees came from different cultural backgrounds, therefore, failure of managers to manipulate the organizational culture by changing it to fit the multi cultural society of employees, the company’s performance fall.

To sum up, it appears that, organizational culture can be manipulated in the way to increase organizational performance and this can be done if the manager understands the organizational culture properly and, by maintaining the culture or by changing it and adapt it to the changing environment. In fact, Assessing and improving organizational culture are necessarily for a long term organization’s success.

REFERENCES:

Charles W.L. (2000). Disney in France. In international business, competing in the global marketplace. United States of America: Irwin McGraw Hill, pp.106-107.
Dessler. G. (2004) Management: Principles and practices for tomorrow’s Leaders, (3^rd edn), New Jersey: Prentice Hall, P 39.
Koontz, H and Weihrich, H (1998) Essentials of Management, (5^th edn), New York: McGraw Hill.
Robbins, S.P and Coulter, M. (2002) Management, 7^th edn, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Chapter 3.
Schein, I. (2003) organizational behavior, London: Prentice Hall.
Seel, R. (2000) Culture and Complexity: New Insights on Organizational Change; in Organizations & People, Vol. 7 No 2; pp 2-9.
Tyne, S.G. (1993) Case Study in Organization Behavior and Human Resources Management, Athenaeum Press.
http://www.new-paradigm.co.uk/culture-complex.htm (Accessed: 10^th June 2008)
http://www.thetimes100.co.uk/case-study--creating-high-performance-culture--89-256-1.php^th June 2008)
http://www.kelloggcompany.com/company.aspx?id=35 (Accessed: 20^th June 2008) (Accessed: 20