18-07-2013, 04:49 PM
Project Report On ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
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INTRODUCTION
This chapter introduces the reader to the subject and the problem we have chosen to investigate. The main focus is the concept of culture and its role in organizations. Each organization does not only possess its own unique corporate culture, it also has a connection to the environment and country in which the organization is located. The introduction develops this more deeply and also explains why this thesis has been written and what purpose it fills. The aim is to explain more deeply the starting point and further facilitate the reading experience.
Background
Ever since the eighties when the concept of organizational culture became a popular subject, it has fascinated both researchers and management gurus. When Japan rose as a serious competitor on the world market, a lot of attention was shifted towards studying their recipe for success. Due to globalization, the actions and advances of big companies from foreign countries suddenly became interesting and important to understand in order to stand up to the increasing competition. One of the explanations the researchers used to explain the brilliance of the Japanese companies had to do with shared Japanese values and cultural peculiarities which made team spirit and work morale more interesting and valued as competitive tools. Peters and Waterman, two American consults, further developed this explanation in their world famous book “In search of excellence” where they state that a strong corporate culture is an essential factor in success. The study of organizational culture sprang out of other sciences, such as organizational sociology and organization theory, but today the subject has become a partly institutionalized field of research within the broader area of organizational science. It is seen as rather easy to investigate, transforming dull business meetings into rituals and the dreary corporate histories into sagas filled with heroes. This goes also for the corporations that are being
Discussion of the problem
Our world is changing. Globalization is a hot topic these days, one that has changed markets worldwide and to which has been devoted an endless amount of time and column meters. Corporations have grown bigger, their activity is spread worldwide, and new products are developed at a dizzying pace. As a consequence of this increase in supply, competition has grown fiercer and there is a greater pressure for companies to be profitable and competitive. Customers expect more in terms of service and kind treatment, something that solely the companies’ staff can offer. The staff has therefore become a much more important resource for companies where contact with customers is key. In order to greet the customer in a positive and friendly way, the employees must feel happy with their tasks, colleagues and work-place and at the same time feel motivated to work in line with the company’s goals and values. How might this be accomplished? By having a favourable corporate culture. A corporation’s culture helps the individual to act in situations characterized by insecurity and leads a group of individuals, which may be separated from each other both in terms of values and physical distance, towards a common goal. There are two different perspectives on organizational culture: either that it is something the organization has or that it is something the organization is. The culture exercises a strong influence over the entire organization and has an effect on just about everything, ranging from promotions to dress codes and activities.
Our thesis – a metaphor
We have chosen a somewhat unconventional way to describe the disposition and work process of our thesis: a metaphor. A metaphor is an expression used to describe and illustrate something that is similar to what the expression really stands for.
Imagine that the entire process of writing this thesis is a journey. The purpose signifies the reason we are making this journey. The starting point, the place of departure, is the research question and the destination, the answer to the question, our conclusion, is in the beginning of the journey unknown. Before we leave, we have to decide which mode of conveyance to use in order to reach our final destination. This is the method. Between the place of departure and the destination lies a brushy network of roads, theory. If tricky situations appear, we can contact a special man, our supervisor, who tries to guide us through. During our journey, we spot certain things in the surroundings and we meet and talk with different people. All these observations and conversations are noted: empirical data. When we finally reach the gateway to the destination, we sum up and reflect on our journey: the analysis.
METHOD
To answer our question we must have a well thought-out strategy. It is the researcher’s duty to reflect about and investigate his or her role as a researcher and the different methods for collecting data. This chapter presents the choices in method we have made, that is how we have collected our data. The main base for our empirical data is interviewing but in order to broader the base, we have performed observations. Each method is described and argued for so that the reader understands our choices.
The role of the researcher
Since the data treated in our thesis is qualitative, the researchers’ role is essential. As the people responsible for collecting information, the fact that we as humans make mistakes and are coloured by our values and prejudices has to be kept in mind. This can be a source of unavoidable error, although one thing that can reduce this error is if the person performing the case study possesses the quality of a good communicator. When investigating an abstract phenomenon, the researcher has to be open for ambiguity and differing interpretations. The risk, and also a common problem when studying culture, is that the persons performing the studies often focus on the manifestations that confirm rather than contradict their theoretical presumptions. As researchers, we are very much aware of the fact that we are two individuals with quite similar backgrounds, qualities and values. We share not only national culture, but also similar upbringings. This may be seen as a great disadvantage, something whose significance we have tried to reduce by involving others, such as our supervisor, as much as possible in the process.
Type of the thesis
This is a qualitative study. According to Bang, researchers studying culture agree almost unanimously that qualitative methods should dominate as culture is being mapped out.
This can be explained by the nature of the concept, which is soft and abstract. To take a quantitative approach can be seen as inappropriate; some researchers claim that it produces both superficial and irrelevant results. A problem with a strictly qualitative approach is the lack of synthesis and that the results can be difficult to tie together. This problem is illustrated by Bang in the history about the blind people and the elephant. The story tells of how a group of blind people is introduced to an elephant for the first time.
They each get to touch a different part of the creature and are then asked to describe the elephant’s appearance. Since they have touched different parts, they describe the elephant in completely different ways and therefore fail to recreate it as a whole. This story shows exactly the problem that may arise when performing a qualitative study; one easily ends up focusing on isolated parts of the cultural concept. Since we have used a substantial amount of literature focusing on different aspects of the cultural concept, we have tried to avoid closely describing merely one of the aspects. Our goal is to give more than just one piece of the puzzle.
THEORY
In order to analyze the empirical data we must use theory. This chapter has collected the theories we find interesting and relevant to our material. It is important to point out that this is only a small selection of all the theories concerning organizational culture, and each theory can be argued both for and against. Since the sociologist Geert Hofstede has developed useful theories regarding our research area, his material plays a prominent part in this chapter. Henning Bang has in his book “Organisations culture” summarized many of the existing theories and thoughts regarding the subject and he therefore also plays an important role in this chapter. The chapter can be seen as the glasses we will later put on when performing our analysis of the empirical data collected. It is divided into two sections, the first generally describing the concept of culture, the second one going into particulars about different cultural expressions.
Practices
Practices represent how the factors explained above takes form in reality. As a role model and important person for the company, the manager plays an important role in showing the employees how to behave. A common feature for all types of leadership is the relation between the leader and the employee, a relation that follows the norms and values for the organization in question. The interaction among others cannot be separated from the leader himself. The company management is often designed with the cultural norms as its foundation. Müllern & Elofsson talk about the charismatic leadership and the possibility for leaders to create charismatic relationships with their employees. It is a less authoritarian approach that advocates independence and at the same time sensitiveness towards the employees, democratic as well as charismatic and so on. It is leadership that depends on a leader that is present rather than distant, built on values and identity rather than calculations and numbers, and the leader is intended to motivate the employees by giving them the opportunity for self-fulfilment. The formation of a common vision and the creation of a common identity are meant to raise employee motivation and direct it toward company goals.
How a company works with its branding has an effect on the way things are performed and with which attitudes. Berry presents six dimensions which together constitute the brand.One of them is the so called capital of the brand, the effect of an awareness of the brand’s significance combined with the consumer’s actions and reactions to the marketing of the brand. Further, Melin explains that if a value is created for the customer, an additional value is also created for the owner of the brand. An active effort to build a strong brand creates positive capital of the brand, in comparison to a competitor which has a lower level of marketing work. From a consumer’s perspective, the brand acquires a symbolic meaning. The brand and consumption of a brand signals a lot about the consumer’s personality and can become a form of self-fulfillment. The brand has become a form of identity-bearer and for example consumption of luxury goods becomes loaded with certain values. Certain products are associated with certain risks, whether social, physical or economical. By choosing a strong brand, consumers feel that they reacted to a perceived risk. A strong brand thus acts, from the consumer’s perspective, as a sort of guarantee of quality. Unless the company wants to damage its image, it has to live up to the customer’s expectations of quality demands, a pressure that in the end functions as a warranty for the customer.
[b]Conclusions[/b]
The analysis tells a lot about interesting aspects in the empirical data but in order to tie up the sack conclusions have to be drawn. What is the answer we have found to our opening research question? The most important thing we have found is that it is possible for a subsidiary to more or less be disconnected from the culture of the parent company yet still be successful. The chapter starts with a summary of the perceptions made by the employees of their local organizational culture and how they apprehend its connection to BMW in Germany. Further we sum up what this possibly points to and give future recommendations.