AUTHOR’S DETAIL
TITLE “Organization Culture and Its Impact on organization effectiveness
with special emphasis on QWL and ways of building innovative work
culture”
NAME
BHUMIJA CHOUHAN
DESIGNATION
ORGANIZATION
Assistant Professor
International School of Informatics and Management,
Jaipur
ADDRESS
106/39, CHATRAPATI MARG, VIJAY PATH,
MANASAROVAR, JAIPUR -302020 (Rajasthan)
CONTACT NUMBERS 91-9783307353, 91-9461815666, 0141-2785040
Email ID chouhanbhumija@rediffmail.com
BHUMIJA
CHOUHAN
91-9783307353, 91-9460815666
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“Organisation Culture and Its Impact on organization effectiveness with
special emphasis on, QWL and ways of building innovative work culture”
BHUMIJA CHOUHAN
Assistant .Professor, IIIM, Jaipur
ABSTRACT
Organization culture is the set of important understandings, such as norms,
values, attitudes and beliefs shared by organizational members. Culture
therefore, is how an organization learned to deal with its environment. It is a
complex mixture of assumptions, behaviors, stories, myths, metaphor and
other ideas that fit together to define what it mean to work in a particular
organization. When we say that there is a culture of safety DuPoint, a culture
of service at Dell and a culture of innovation at 3M. We are saying that
people at these organizations has learned a particular way to deal with lot of
complex issues. Organization culture provides the members with a sense of
organizational identity and generates a commitment to beliefs and values that
are larger then themselves.
This paper throws light on organisation culture and its impact on employees
affectivity and efficiency. This paper analyzes the importance of healthy
work culture, improvement of employees and organizational efficiency .The
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paper proposes various ways of building an innovative work culture and
importance of QWL (Quality of work life).
Keywords: Organization culture, QWL (Quality of work life), Confrontation
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INTRODUCTION
The word work culture is made up of two words "Work + Culture". Work is
defined as the tasks that need to be done by use of physical strength or
mental power in order to do. Culture is defined as a cumulative crystallized
and quasistable shared life style of people as reflected in the preference of
some states of life over others (values) in the response predisposition
towards several significant issues and phenomena (attitudes) in the certain
affairs (rituals) and in the ways of promoting desired, preventing
indescribable behavior (sanctions) According to Hofstede Culture is to a
human collectivity what personality is to an individual. Culture could be
defined as the interactive aggregate of common characteristics that influence
a human group response to its environment. Culture determines the identity
of an individual. More over, the two interact; "Culture and personality" is a
classic name for psychological anthropology. Cultural traits some times can
be measured by personality tests.
Culture is the complex mixture of assumption, behaviors, myths, metaphors
and other ideas that fit together to define what it mean to be a member a
particular society. Organization may develop their own unique culture that
differentiates them from other organization within the industry or society.
CULTURE IS LEARNT
Individual beliefs, attitudes and values are gained from the individual's
environment. The culture of the organization is therefore gained from the
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environment common to its members. Both the internal and the external
environment of the organization influence culture.
Organization culture is the set of important understandings, such as norms,
values, attitudes and beliefs shared by organizational members. Culture
therefore, is how an organization learned to deal with its environment. It is a
complex mixture of assumptions, behaviors, stories, myths, metaphor and
other ideas that fit together to define what it mean to work in a particular
organization. When we say that there is a culture of safety DuPoint, a culture
of service at Dell and a culture of innovation at 3M. We are saying that
people at these organizations has learned a particular way to deal with lot of
complex issues. Organization culture provides the members with a sense of
organizational identity and generates a commitment to beliefs and values
that are larger then themselves. Though ideas that become the part of culture
can come from any where with in the organization, an organizations culture
generally begins with a founder or early reader who articulates
and implement ideas and values as a vision, philosophy, business strategy. In
Schein's theory, culture exists on three levels:
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Figure 1: Schein's three levels of organization culture
The most important aspect of organization or work culture is the values it
practices. There are 8 values which can be examined to develop the profile
of an organization or work culture.
Openness
Confrontation
Trust
Authenticity
Pro activity
Autonomy
Collaboration
Experimenting
The more important factor that acts as a prerequisite for the high
performance workplace is a "High Performance Culture". Some important
aspects of organization culture in high performance are:
1.
Leadership that empowers others.
2.
Borderless sharing of power.
3.
A relentless focus on strategy and results.
4.
Values of accountability, transparency and belongingness.
5.
Personal responsibility.
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6.
High employee and employer involvement and commitment.
7.
High level of trust.
8.
Open sharing of relevant information.
9.
Partnering.
The key aspect in a high performing organization culture, employees have a
sense of personal responsibility for understanding and staying current with
external trends in the environment. Being personally responsible makes
individuals adhere to their commitment. They are aware of the relevant
strengths and weakness within their organization and they have ability to
assess whether external events will potentially translate into opportunities
threads or constraints for their organizations. Trust is another major
component of high performance work culture which occurs through
openness, acceptance of one another, belonging ness, reliability on one
another and informal work setting. High performing organization culture
allows immense coordination and involvement amongst all levels of
employees and management and unions stock. Such a culture would demand
innovation and creativity from the employee's behalf. For building
innovative work cultures following points are considered.
Promote Individual Growth
Create a Sense Belonging
Build Confidence
Optimize the Work Environment
Best Practices for building innovative work Culture:

Invest in employees growth

Make training mandatory
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
Acknowledge innovative contribution

Instill ownership and accountability

Create a sense of belonging

Build Confidence through encouragement

Leverage the strengths of individuals

Support amnesty

Improve the physical work environment

Capture innovative ideas through multiple mediums

Promote a culture of continuous improvement
Leaders in a variety of industries have identified multiple mediums where
innovative thinking can be captured. Pfizer has successfully implemented a
suggestion box program that offers cash bonuses for employee ideas that are
put into action. GE frequently holds cross-functional rapid design sessions
known as "Work-O Outs" to generate innovative ideas and solve business
problems. IDEO encourages collaboration through the visual presentation of
project related knowledge (brainstorming, post-it notes, pictures, etc.) on
movable office walls that surround the area where project work is
conducted.
To have a good performing work culture in organization following things we
kept in practice.
1.
Stringent staffing procedure, selecting only who hold values of
commitment, accountability and personal responsibility in them.
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2.
Instill and maintain shared pattern of norms, values informal rules
within organization which in turn should be communicated
vigorously and effectively to every employee in the firm.
3.
Job design and appropriate competency mapping.
4.
Instill high performance teem based system which in turn carry a
deeper sense of purpose with more ambitious performance goals.
5.
Employee participation and empowerment in major and minor key
decision areas.
6.
Competency mapping.
7.
Instill high performance Job design and appropriate teem based
system which in turn carry a deeper sense of purpose with more
ambitious performance goals.
8.
Employee participation and empowerment in major and minor key
decision areas.
9.
Self leading practices complemented with job enrichment or
enlargement increased accountability should be put in operation.
10.
Continuous leading environment.
11.
Performance contingent incentives, compensation.
12.
Faster and fair career development.
STUDY
The relevance and need of the present study arose from an epoch making and
enriched conceptual premise of the study entitled as -"Cultural Dimensions
of Work Related Values-In the East." Developed by the two investigators
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of the project, in study has formed a part of the proceedings of 'Australian
Psychological Society', Published in 1994.The priorities or determinates of
work culture in the East, i.e. in the developing have been for affiliation and
the cultural value of collectivism.
Subsequently, Misumi in 1995, opened up avenues for gathering empirical
data as well as for testing the predictions regarding determinates the of work
culture. New methodological vitas have been to assess the impact of the
personalized relationship, growth, and development of work culture among
management teachers. The study emerged on the basis of following equation
for investigation was derived as follows:
WC
=
a2
WC
=
work culture
Al
=
Accountability
A2
=
Accreditability
Or
WC
=
e2
Here,
E1
=
Endogenous
E2
=
Exogenous
Here,
The relevance of this equation lies in explaining the diminished and poor job
performance, resulting in low accredits ability.
One would consider quality of work life, as an important moderator
variable, which is by and large positively correlated to work-culture.
Saharan (1989) in his well-known book on Organizational Behavior
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published at New Delhi by JMG, has operationally defined it as the sum
total of healthy experiences that individuals have in various facts of their
life. Most commonly measured indices of employees in any organization
include a trilogy of three indices.
1. The extent of job-involvement
2. The same of competence
3. Job-satisfaction.
Considering holistically more so in recent years measures of mental health
i.e. positive sense of well-being is being regarded as the ultimate indices of
the quality of work life experienced by the academic community.
An individual's general attitude towards his job itself can cause some
personal and societal consequences, including feelings of powerlessness,
and professional neglect may lead to poor mental health, due to a persistent
and pressing source of dissatisfaction. There has been ample evidence,
shown among industrial workers by Kornhauser as early as in 1965, who
had observed a consistent relationship between dissection and measures of
mental health, which include feelings of inadequacy, anxiety, tension,
hostility, low self-esteem etc. Some of measures of lack of well-being or
mental health include, insecurity, irritation, lack of or low-self-esteem which
are regarded as consequences "STRESS STATE", OR:" EXPERECENCED
AND FELT STRESS". Mental health or wellness indicator of job
dissatisfaction as well. Therefore, if an employee institute remains
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constantly and continuously dissatisfied for whatever reasons m he or she is
likely to experience strain.
So it often been predicted that those who are more satisfied with their jobs
might experience less strain, or job stress than those who are satisfied
similar prediction can be about work commitment, which is the core
component of work culture, i.e. persons manifesting or possessing more
work-commitment would eventually live and work in a better work culture.
So, if in all probability, there are likely to be positive indicators of workculture viz. job commitment, and negative indication viz. absenteeism.
Quality of work-life (QWL) refers to overall climate of work, and its impact
on people. It, essentially stems from an interaction of personal and
organizational factor. The organization roots of work culture are located in
"working condition", various job characteristics and job demand and more
essentially the organization mission (zeal - sprit) and administrative
openness etc.
The personal indicators of quality of working life (QWL) are found in
values, aspiration, attitude towards work and life and dimension of values
and aspirations.
1. Growth and innovation
2. Helping behavior
3. Personalizing relationship
4. Individual dignity
5. Shared out look
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According to Biswas, U. Nand Mathew, R (2001) changing concepts
regarding work-environment and work-culture have come into light with the
advent of total quality management (TQM). In the notion of total quality
management lot of stress has been put on the process of empowering. An
operational framework has been developed by Biswas for measuring people's
empowerment at work in academic settings. The findings of this study
suggested that the perceived empowerment does not effect perception of
work-climate, learning environment, decision involvement and goal clarity
emerged as salient empowerment par aments, that effects and leads to a
favorable work-culture. Few other indicators have also found that were
related to task assignment and communication as well as colleague
management. Initially Conger J.A & Kanungo, R.N (1988) has formulated
five stages of empowerment process which has been diagrammatically
shown below.
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The eight dimensions of empowerment scale developed by Biswas based on
Decision Involvement
Learning Environment
Fairness
System Resistance
Organizational Pride
Support Climate
Goal Clarity
Teamwork
The main finding of this test suggested that organizational effectiveness is
dependent upon perception of organizational climate. However, the main
findings of Biswas & Mathew's study highlights, the significant and unique
contribution of decision involvement and support climate to the
predictability of work-culture . It was found to be quite crucial.
The Human Resource management group at INDIAN INSTITUTE OF
MANAGEMENT Lucknow explodes the role and relevance of the aspects
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such as self-esteem, internal work-motivation, and increased awareness of
self-monitoring as being influenced by moderator variable known as workculture (study by Sunita Rai & Arvind Sinha (2001). Finally, the authors
go on to say that the study provides an indication that the concepts of selfmonitoring have same relevance across cultures (eg.: Indian setting as in
present case).
IMPORTANCE OF THE RESEARCH WORK
Work Culture plays an important role to identify and examine the internal
environment of any organization .Work Culture tells information of the
employees working. Work culture is today's hot issue to be discussed by
various famous companies to increase the productivity of employees because
work culture is the major player which puts impact on the working style and
art of employees. Work Culture in some of the organization plays the role of
mentor or creator but in some organization it plays the role of destroyer.
Work culture has significant influence on the attitudes and behaviors
complied with values on the organization members.
Once a culture is in place are forces within the organization that act to
maintain it by giving employees a set of similar experiences. The three
forces that play the most important part of sustaining culture are the
organization selection process, the action of top management, and the
organization socialization method.
Work culture performs a number of functions in an organization.
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1. It has a boundary defining role i.e. it creates of distinctions between
one organization and others.
2. It conveys a sense of identity for organization member.
3. It facilitates the generation of commitment to something larger then
ones individual self interest.
4. It enhances the stability of the social system.
5. It lays the stability impact on attitude and behavior.
CONCLUSION
This study can help organization to pay more attention and be more focused
to maintain a good organizational culture .As organizational culture is the
mirror of organizations functioning which can make or break the image and
goodwill. The QWL is also useful for controlling attrition rate in
organization. In present scenario every organization is getting involved to
provide best of the best work culture to enhance the work life as well as the
quality life of employees in organization.
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