The organizational culture is closely connected with its values and many areas of its functioning, including employee relationships between themselves and with the employer and working process characteristics. According to Schein and Schein (2016), it can affect corporate morale, employee engagement and satisfaction, organizational effectiveness and performance, and company image. The evaluation of corporate culture reveals its weaknesses and strengths and makes it possible to draw conclusions about possible improvements. This paper provides an organizational cultural assessment summary and suggests specific improvement recommendations in this regard.
Evaluation
The corporate culture is either at an early stage of development, is vaguely articulated, or does not correspond to the goals and values of a significant part of the staff. It should be noted that at least 45% of staff disagree that they are aware of an organizational culture that aligns with their personal values and goals (Schein and Schein 2016, 120). The same percentage of employees expressed a contrary view, which means that there is substantial disagreement among working personnel on this issue. Researchers state that “culture is defined by what a group has learned in solving its problems of external adaptation and internal integration” (Schein and Schein 2016, 120). Thus, the processes of external adaptation to the norms of corporate culture, or internal integration of relevant values and goals have been violated or not completed.
Employees give high ratings to job security, professional development, growth opportunities, appreciation, and communication within the company. These traits are characteristic of the people-oriented clan organizational culture that encourages teamwork, involvement, and participation (OCAI Online 2020). These shared assumptions and values reflect organizational culture’s strengths, including high corporate morale, positive emotional climate, and collaboration, and support Company X’s effectiveness and performance.
Expectations, mission statement, and vision statement are most relevant to corporate culture. The first two receives high ratings, but the vision statement is either poorly understood by staff or not aligned with their personal goals. According to Bauer et al. (2016, 115), “vision statement is a future-oriented declaration of the organization’s purpose and aspirations.” It is critical to the corporate culture, and its ambiguity or disapproval by employees can undermine the company’s effectiveness and performance.
It is worth noting that the work-life balance and employee benefits have received rather low ratings. Furthermore, labor cost per unit and profit per employee are slightly below the target, and earnings per unit are 9% above (OCAI Online 2020). These traits are typical of a results-oriented market organizational culture that focuses on products rather than employees (OCAI Online 2020). However, together with employees’ dissatisfaction with the work-life balance and employee benefits, they can lead to a decrease in their motivation and performance. The high absenteeism rate partly confirms it, and the situation could be aggravated by the overtime working hours.
Aspects that Support Effectiveness
There are several internal factors that can have an impact on a company’s performance. For instance, some internal aspects depend on the activities of the enterprise itself and on the work of involved teams. It is vital whether an organization uses advanced technology and equipment. However, organizational and managerial elements are no less essential, which includes the development of new organizational strategies and tactics that could benefit a company. Improving communication between team members cannot be overestimated as well. In addition, such economic factors as financial planning, analysis and search for internal reserves of profit growth can also seriously influence the performance on the market.
Recommendations
Effective Cultural Assessment
It is worth noting that a complete evaluation of corporate culture requires not only survey techniques, but also qualitative methods and special evaluation instruments. Semi-structured brief interviews would assist in revealing in detail shared assumptions and beliefs of staff related to organizational culture (Schein and Schein 2016). If a company has a large number of employees, this method can be conducted on a representative sample. The interview method provides an opportunity to identify the real reasons for low ratings for some indicators. Special tools, such as the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument, could also help evaluate a specific type of corporate culture (OCAI Online 2020). This method would identify which values and attitudes are most shared by employees, and whether they can be combined into a single corporate culture.
Improvement Strategies
These measurement methods should be used to conduct appropriate analysis and create a sustainable corporate culture consistent with company goals. A more explicit vision statement should be developed and adequately communicated to employees, as future corporate path perspectives can improve their understanding of the company. According to Hogan (2017, 1), “when people join organizations, they bring their own values with them, and the degree to which their values align with the values of the culture powerfully affects their subsequent performance.” It is necessary to find out what exactly led to the disagreement among employees about the awareness of organizational culture and its coherence with their goals.
At present, the corporate culture of Company X has features of both people-oriented and result-oriented. Such a combination is typical for business, but certain shortcomings noted by employees may affect the organization’s efficiency and performance. They are mainly related to the disproportionate work-life balance and the small number of employee benefits and can affect employee involvement. Such indicators could have encountered less resistance if Company X had clearly stated its market organizational culture. However, ambiguity and vagueness in this respect cause confusion among the workers. Therefore, the company should develop a more transparent and understandable culture and select those values that will attract only suitable employees.
Improving Culture in a Company
Toxic corporate culture can destroy a business, causing low employee engagement and a high turnover. Articulating a company’s mission is important to understanding where you see your company in the future and what goals you plan to achieve. Aside from asserting clear organizational goals, it is also vital to secure good relationship between workers. In other words, a strong corporate culture is built around open and honest communication. For this reason, employees and management must be on the same page when it comes to processes, priorities, information and all other aspects of the company. Employees should also feel comfortable while talking to supervisors or their colleagues or expressing any concerns. In order to achieve such a goal, it would be effective to implement an anonymous system that allows workers to provide feedback. Another suggestion is consulting a professional corporate psychologist with a request to create a plan of improving communication. This will not only increase productivity, but it will also improve the overall atmosphere of the company, making it less intimidating.
Conclusion
It may be concluded that the organizational culture of Company X is not sufficiently apparent to employees or does not correspond to their values and goals. Additional in-depth data on this issue should be collected through appropriate research methods. It is necessary to develop a more explicit and detailed vision statement and a less ambiguous corporate culture and communicate it to employees properly to eliminate confusion among them.
References
Bauer, Talya, Berrin Erdogan, Jeremy Short, and Mason A. Carpenter. 2016. Principles of Management. Boston: FlatWorld.
Hogan, Robert. 2017. “The Consequences of Culture: How Values Impact Organizational Effectiveness.” Workforce 96 (5): 1–2.
OCAI Online. 2020. “About the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI).” About OCAI. Web.
Schein, Edgar H., and Peter Schein. 2016. Organizational Culture and Leadership. 5th ed. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.