Monday 24 October 2011

Organisation Culture



Introduction: For this blog, I have to provide examples of the ‘visible’ aspects of culture in an organisation of my choice, and then I have to go onto explaining what Handy meant by a power, role, task and person culture with an organisational example for each, then I have to state what problems are of trying to classify culture into one of the four types and then lastly summarise my findings on this topic. 

What is organisational culture?
Organisation culture is simply defined as ‘how things are done around here’, the shared values, beliefs, attitudes and expectations, Mullins, L (2007) states that organational culture is made up of the values and beleifs of an organisation and they tend to build their own culture which sets out their values and beliefs. Organisation culture is also build around the employees who work for the company and are accepting the rules and regulations of what is expected of them from the organisation.

 
Visible aspects of B&Q:
Visible aspects of an organisation such as B&Q, is the uniform the employees wear that differentiates the customers from the employees and also indicates the professionalism of the company, also the building as it is modern and is widely recognised by customers with the two colours that represent it black and orange, the setting is rather  like a warehouse, the layout of the store is easy to adapt to with clear promotional offers as you walk through the doors, making it easier for customers to look at what is on offer and increase sales the logo is eye-catching in a bright colour that most people are familiar with it as they are a well known DIY retail company, the staff are customer orientated, friendly and approachable in addition to providing excellent customer service along with good product knowledge a s they have specialist people in different departments who can help for example, showrooms staff from that department would be familiar with the products and services they have to offer and can help or assist customers  in that area. B&Q primary objective is ‘to provide customers with solutions to enable them to accomplish their home improvement ambitions, in particular by removing the cost barrier to home improvement, and to create and maintain rewarding relationships for both the customers and B&Q’, this objective indicates that B&Q take pride in helping customer find their needs to their solutions. They also have clear signs indicating the different areas within the store such as signs indicating with the product would be found making it easier for customer to find what they are looking for as the store is huge. 

Schein (1992):
Schein (1992) describes organisation culture similar to an ‘onion’ because you can only see the visible layer. Schein divides it into three levels. Artifacts this is the visible layer, and looks at the visible aspects that are easily seen such as the different departments within an organisation, uniform, building etc, the second is the espoused values and this explores into the deeper aspects which are not easily seen for example the company’s goals or strategies. Third level looks at the basic assumptions and values, this is hard to justify as the assumptions are mainly formed around human existence such as human relationships/activity.




Source:


French & Bell (1990) theory:
Organisation Iceberg (French and Bell, 1990) looks at two contrasting aspects to begin with is the top layer which you can only see 10% this looks at the formal aspects within organisation which looks at the structure of the organisation, its goals and strategies and the other 90% is the bottom layer which looks at the informal aspects within the organisation this includes its values, beliefs attitudes these are not seen as easily as the formal aspects as they are hidden underneath.
 Formal organisation:
·         Goals
·         Strategy
·         Structure

              Informal organisation:
·         Values, beliefs and attitudes
·         Power
·         Leadership style

(Handy 1993) Four types of cultures:

1.       A power culture is referred to as ‘the web’ by Handy, and tends to have one or more people working within the organisation, usually have few rules set and all decision making is made by the individual, also the ability to adapt to changes within the environment  would be determined by the person  who has the power.  This culture would suit for example Alan Sugar on his show ‘The Apprentice’, as he is known as a powerful character and has the control to make decisions, Alan Sugar is a good example of an individual who follows this type of culture.

2.       A role culture is referred to as the ‘Greek temple’  and is usually found within larger organisations where individuals have set job roles and work closely with their job description and abide by the company’s rules and policies. This culture relies strongly on a hierarchy for example B&Q follow this type of culture as the employees have set job roles and follow their job descriptions whist following company’s procedures.


3.       A person culture is focused around the individual who has an interest in the chosen occupation, there is no hierarchy and is run simply with individuals that have a specific interest, for example organisations that follow this type of culture are mainly barristers, lawyers or doctors.

4.       A task culture tends to be formed to complete particular tasks together and the team has the control to make any decisions and tend to be creative, an example of an organisation that follows this type of culture is larger organisations such as Apple, as they come up with creative new outcomes such as the iphones, ipads, ipods etc work together in a team to get the job done.

The problems of trying to classify culture into one of the four types is quite difficult to categorize simply because it would not work for example, B&Q in their stores they have role culture as every employee has a different job role, checkout staff, staff from other departments such as showrooms, flooring, building, gardening etc have different roles so they would fit in with role culture along with the management team, the chief executive of the company would fit in with power culture as he would be the one who makes all the decisions within the company, the people working in the head office that would be doing projects or tasks together to promote in-store offers or improving the layout of the stores would ideally fit in with task culture.  In general I would state that organisation culture play an important role in any type of business, and cannot be classified into one as it would not work so companies that have strong organisation culture are more likely to be better than the one that don’t.

Conclusion: overall from this blog, I have learned that organisation culture plays an important role in any organisation, and large companies such as B&Q would need to use most of them in order for them to be successful not only to keep the customers and employees happy but to be a profitable business, therefore without organisation culture an organisation would not be able to develop or grow for long.


References:

[1] B&Q [Online] Available From: www.diy.com/corporate [Accessed 24th October 2012]

[2] Schein Theory [Online] Available From: http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_schein_three_levels_culture.html [Accessed 24th October 2012] 

[3] Mullins, L. (2007) Management & Organisational Behaviour:  8th edition. Harlow: Prentice Hall.

[4] Simpson, M (2012) PowerPoint.