Discussion On Culture Blog 1 Culture:

Culture is the science that how employees behave in a particular organization, a particular setting or environment. Although term “Organizational Culture” is widely used but there is little agreement on functionality of this term and how it influences individual and organizational behaviors. Another important aspect that needs to be highlighted here is whether organizational culture can be changed or “transformed by leaders (Schein, 2010). Organizational culture is considered to be, behaviors shown repeatedly by a group of people in an organization, are cultural values that are widely accepted by all in that particular environment. Thus categorizing culture as one cohesive widely shared belief that prevail in an organization and is beneficial for internal harmony and stability of organization.

Other definitions, described organization culture as an enabler or a force that governs or shapes behavior of individuals at work place. This means culture can be modified or mold by management as per their liking with use of incentive program. As rightly described “culture is a product of compensation” which means behaviors appreciated by management will be mostly shown off by the employees to get incentives (O’Reilly et al., 2014). Culture is also regarded as immune system of the organization, just like human immune system that resist attack of bacteria and virus to take hold of the body. The, organization culture as immune system might block change agents of a needed change. This also suggests that culture is not a static entity rather it is dynamic, continuously evolving itself to adapt to the environmental changes.

Almost all the definitions highlighted one or the other important aspects of the organizational culture. The definition which best articulates the definition of organizational culture is by Alvesson and Sveningsson (2015), it stated that Culture is a process of sense-making in organizations. Sense-making has been defined as a collaborative process of creating shared awareness and understanding out of different individuals’ perspectives and interests”.

The Zappos is engaged in maintaining a compatibility between the values of people and the values of organization with an aim of engaging their employees. They have deeply empowered their employees and allowed them to share ideas openly. They have open culture which is making them admirable company and they are successful in enhancing the experience of customers. They have no time limit for their employees and main aim is just to get engage to make customers happy. It can be seen by the example of Zappos, in which a customer has returned the shoes after exceeding limit of 15 days and after knowing the reason that her mother was hospitalized, the Zappos has just not accepted the return by going beyond their return policy but they had also sent follower to the customers. It has provided that Zappos has exceptionally good PR and their employees are free to perform in the direction which is favorable for their customer’s service. The Zappos has strong culture which has been owned by its employees and is shared among its employees. Every employees in Zappos has an understanding of customer oriented culture and the culture books of company are being written by its employees.

References:

Alvesson, M. and Sveningsson, S., 2015. Changing organizational culture: Cultural change work in progress. Routledge.

O’Reilly, C.A., Caldwell, D.F., Chatman, J.A. and Doerr, B., 2014. The Promise and Problems of Organizational Culture CEO Personality, Culture, and Firm Performance. Group & Organization Management,39(6), pp.595-625.

Schein, E.H., 2010. Organizational culture and leadership (Vol. 2). John Wiley & Sons.