Introduction
Strategy is a long-term plan whose aim is to ensure that the organization achieves its objectives. The major objectives of a business are to offer high-quality services and goods to the customers, make profit and grow. (Peter and meshalam 2006)
Strategic plan tries to relate the business with environmental factors that affect business growth.
There are several strategies that when well implemented ensure a positive growth of the business. These are strategy that ensures that the business becomes highly profitable, becomes highly efficient which involve well utilization of resources, becomes highly competitive compared to other organization as this ensures its survival , to gain a larger market share compared to other businesses and to expand internationally as the world has become more of a global village. (Peter and meshalam 2006)
These strategies formulation and implementation are highly influenced by the corporate culture and the organization’s identity. (Peter and meshalam 2006)
Body
- Influence of culture and organization identity in formulation and implementation of organization strategy
- Influence of culture in formulation and implementation of organizational strategies
Organizational culture refers to the norms and values which people within the organization share and influence the way in which people interact with each other within the organization and those outside the organization. Organization value involves beliefs and specific ideas in relation to the behavior of the members of the organization toward achieving of the organizational goals. Top organization leadership plays a major role in ensuring that a certain corporate culture is adopted. The leadership imposes values and standard behavioral aspects within the organization which mirrors the objectives within the business. (Abbas Alkhafahi 2002)
Behavior of the workforce within the organization may influence in the way strategies within the organization are achieved.For example constant blame games by the employees in case of any mistake may not solve any problem and due to this, objectives of organization promoting teamwork may not be achieved.
Organizational culture can be imported by employees from certain organizations. For example, an organization may poach a certain manager from another organization with a strong organizational culture to ensure that they bring in fresh culture such as creativity.
Culture can be strong or weak. (Abbas Alkhafahi 2002)
Strong culture is whereby the staff within the organization responds to the stimuli because they are easily likely and willing to align themselves to organizational values. People do things they feel is best in achieving the organizational goal.
Weak culture involves little alignment with the organizational values and involves extensive procedures and bureaucracy to achieve control and implement of organizational strategies. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
Groupthink also plays an important role in influencing the organization culture. Here it involves people with different ideas but the do not offer any challenge to the organizational system of thinking and this discourages innovative ideas which could be suicidal to the organization implementing its strategy or could be helpful in the organization achieving its goals. For example in a case of a charismatic leader within the organization who influence the behavior of others. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
For an organization which needs to achieve fully its strategy needs people who are ready to offer a great challenge to the status quo in order to implement new ideas efficiently.
There are different ways which classify culture in relation to formulation and implementation of organizational strategies. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
National and regional cultural grouping is one of the ways in which organizational cultures can be described. This is according to Greet Hofstede who in his study of national influences came up with five dimensions of culture. These include uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and individualism against collectiveness, masculinity against feminity and short term against long term course. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
Uncertainty avoidance shows the extent in which the society and organization accept a certain risk.For any business to achieve its strategy, it must accept some elements of risk. The organization which avoids risk becomes difficult in implementing its strategy.
Power distance refers to the way the society both outside and within the organization there to be a difference in the level of power. For any organization to achieve its objective there must be a hierarchy in which power is distributed from the top management and to the bottom level. There are those who formulate the strategies and those who implement the strategies. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
Individualism versus collectiveness refers to which people are able and ready to stand by their individual roles or by collective responsibility. This aspect though unrelated but can be integrated whereby one is given a chance to contribute in his/ her group and to work as an individual to achieve self-sufficiency and to achieve personal freedom.
Masculinity versus feminity refers to the values and roles played by the different gender toward achieving the organizational goals. Males are believed to be ambitious, tough, and competitive while female values are caring, tenderness and soft. But the current trends show that the both the male and the females can achieve equally in corporate circles.
Long versus short term course. It describes the society’s view concerning future, present and the past. In long-term corse, perseverance and thrift are highly regarded compared to short-term courses where there is respect for tradition and favors are valued more.
Leadership affects organizational culture even more than what the management can. Cultural change in an organization puts into consideration the long-term goals of the organization. Actually changing the corporate culture is a very difficult task and needs more time to enable the employees get used to new ways of organizing and implementing new strategies. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
There are several ways in which the leadership in the organization can influence culture in order for the organization to implement its strategies.
The leadership should make sure that they formulate a clear strategic vision.Cultural change within the organization if a clear vision of the organization strategies is upheld, if there is shared value and behavioral aspect between different stakeholders within the organization and out of the organization.For culture to effectively influence the implementation of new strategies, cultural change must be managed from the top as they are the ones who can influence the rest of the team.The top management should show that they favor the cultural change for the members of the company to adopt these changes. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
Cultural change is important in ensuring that new strategies are formed and implemented within the organization and so people should be made aware that the cultural change is important when new strategies are to be used in achieving organizational goals. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
Organizational identity in influence of organization formulation and implementation of strategies
Corporate identity is the ways in which the organization ,businesses and manufacturers are recognized and distinguished from each other through visual means.It shows the ways in which the organizational activities are carried out and the values attached to the activities. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
Some of the aspects linked with the organizational identity are its publicity, physical structure like architecture, furnishing and codes of conduct exhibited by the company.
Corporate identity schemes may be used by the organization to appear less dominant by creating positive individual identity for their subsidiary company.
When in marketing strategy, corporate identity can be shown in the way the organization brands its products and in the type of trademark that the company uses to differentiate it with other organizations. (Abbas Alkhafahi 2002)
Corporate identity is vividly exhibited when there is a common possession of an organizational philosophy which is manifest in a discrete corporate culture referred to as corporate personality. Due to this, organizations come up with signs and supporting strategies within set standards of guidelines. These guiding principles preside over how identity is applied, any method of sustaining visual continuity and brand identification across all physical manifestation of the brand.These identity are aimed at helping the customer identify the company in which they would prefer. (Abbas Alkhafahi 2002)
Corporate identity includes corporate design such as logos, corporate communication such as commercials and corporate behavior such as norms.
Social identity plays an important role global promotion of organizations and improving of the corporate culture. (Abbas Alkhafahi 2002)
Corporate identity plays a great role in sociological sphere. When there are minorities in a given society, they tend to form a social bond which cushions them against other members of the society. This really affect the strategy of the organization especially without the presence of the minority group. The organization should play a great role in ensuring that they absorb the members of minority groups in order to ensure that the organization access the market of the minority group. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
Corporate visual identity
Visual social identity has a big role that it plays in an organization in the way it presents itself to internal and external stakeholders. It presents the values and how ambitious the organization is, its business and its characteristics. The visual identity of the organization has much importance which plays a major role in ensuring that the organization achieves its goals. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
Corporate identity provides an organization with ways in which it can be recognized and ways in which it can become visible. For all organizations, it is of utmost importance that people recognize its existence, know its name and the type of business it gets involved in at the right time. This will promote its awareness to the current customers and potential customers in the right time. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
Visual identity symbolizes an organization for external stakeholders and this is good at enhancing the image of the organization. This helps the organization in the strategy of becoming global because the good image it has will be important for it to be accepted in a global environment. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
Corporate visual identity is also important as it provides the organization with a chance in involving in mergers and acquisitions and this is good in expansion of the business, expansion of the market base and penetration of new markets. (Richard 2005)
Visual identity assists the employees to know the department they are working in and the whole organization in relation to the strategy the organization has. (Richard 2005)
The company’s corporate identity demands proper leadership analysis as it starts from the management down the hierarchy to the employees. It needs to be managed in a structural foundation, to be understood and implemented by the employees and to make sure that it’s in harmony with future development within the organization. Managers should be responsible for the way they convey the identity of the organization and how it is going to affect the employee’s attitude in relation to achieving of the organizational structure. Employees also need to have a clear knowledge of the organizational identity and the reasons on why they should be implemented. (Richard 2005)
Coca-cola Company
Coca-cola is one of the largest soft drink companies that provide carbonated drinks. Coca-cola has a global perspective due to its core assets which are based around its people and its brand. These factors help the company to keep the world refreshed in mind ,body, spirit and to create value and difference in its products and the customers. (Peter and meshalam 2006)
To achieve its objective in being a business leader in the global market, it ensures that it embraces and works in multicultural world in both the work place and the market to ensure that it sustains its business. (Peter and meshalam 2006)
Organizational culture of Coca Cola Company
The coca cola company has an inclusive culture which is definite by its seven core values which include “leadership, passion, integrity, collaboration, innovation, quality and accountability with an aim to ensure that it achieves its strategy in attracting, retaining and developing talent that is diversified, provision of support system for groups that is diversified and to offer training to all associates to master skills that enable the company to achieve growth. (Peter and meshalam 2006)
Organizational identity of Coca Cola Company
Coca Cola Company has identity that differentiates it from other company especially its rival Pepsi.
The products of the company are of high quality and are readily available and this gives the customer a chance to access the products without much struggle. This enables the company to further expand in the global market as it has a trust from the customers.
Most of the shops around the world have huge adverts fronting the coca cola adverts which are identical thought the world. (Peter and meshalam 2006)
The company uses its name in one of its brands, logo and the tagline enjoy coca cola and the visual appearance which is white and red.
Due to good utilization of corporate culture and its identity, the company has managed to become one of global leading companies in provision of good services to its customers, ensuring that its quality is of high class and that it treats its employees to satisfactory level so that they can be motivated to work hard. The leadership of the company has ensured that its strategies are maintained to a high standard. (Peter and meshalam 2006)
Conclusion
Every business has a big role in ensuring that all its strategies are formulated and implemented to ensure that they are sustained in the market, achieve growth and make profit.Due to this, a well-organized organizational culture should be observed and a clear corporate identity set up. The management which plays a big role in implementing the organizational strategy, it should play a leading role in ensuring that organizational strategy is adopted by all the members of the organization. (Arthur, Strickland and Gamble 2005)
References
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Peter Alan Bamberger and Ilan Meshoulam.Human resource strategy: Formulation, implementation and impact.Chicago: Chicago University press, 2006.
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