Viewed as the most leadership challenge, organizational culture poses great dilemmas due to presently less agreement on its concept, meaning, observation, and measurement techniques. Issues on its relationship with theories from traditional, industrial, and organizational psychology sectors are also not clear (Schein 110). Most of the researches conducted on culture implicit paradigms that do not only bias the meanings of key concepts, but also the entire approach to the study.
According to Denning (par. 5), the elements of organization culture when fixed make it exceptionally difficult to address leadership changes. Most surveys view culture as a property of groups measured by use of questionnaires, hence a Likert-type organizational profile. Unfortunately, this has made it exceptionally difficult to define organizational culture due to ambiguity.
Changing a culture is a difficult undertaking; hence, all the tools for changing minds must be put in place while considering the order of deployment since it has a serious impact on the probability of success (Denning par. 3). It is important to begin with the leadership tools, then to the management tools, and finally the power tools. It is vital to understand all diverse observed artifacts like the ability of the organization to endure very high degrees of conflict without destroying or demotivating its employees since the organization structure might not be the cause of poor performance.
Every organization manifests its cultural levels in various ways associated with observable artifacts, values, and the underlying assumptions. The artifact is simply the physical layout of the organization such as the dressing code and manner of communication among the workers. Defining and implementing a specific organizational culture in an institution comes with numerous challenges.
A case example of the World Bank as outlined in the Forbes even though has achieved a lot of success, but it has failed especially in addressing issues affecting African countries. In contrary to this, some nations such as India and China are now economically independent in their own rights due to the implementation of economic policies that the World Bank has been educating them for several years (Denning par. 8).
Internalization of values and assumptions help the management to familiarize itself with other stakeholders in a firm. However, this has led to the creation of shared assumptions because of joint learning. Organizational culture might not affect the success of any organization. Historically, Robert McNamara, who was the President of the World Bank between 1968 and 1981, is considered the most successful leader during his tenure at the institution when he started hierarchical bureaucracy.
When he took over, he found a way of making the organization prosper without reshuffling and firing the employees who were already at the firm, but using them for the success of the Bank while maintaining the culture that has been in practice (Schein 117). Markedly, most people who came after him failed because they were trying to change the plan, but maintaining the same culture.
In conclusion, the success of the organization does not totally rely on the organizational culture. In this regard, it is important to understand the team members of the organization without trying to come up with new managers as solution to the problem in question. In addition, it is vital to learn from the problem that emerged in the previous managerial positions and emulate the leadership style of those who have succeeded in their positions like Robert McNamara.
Works Cited
Denning, Steve. How Do You Change An Organizational Culture? 2011. Web.
Schein, Edgar. “Organizational Culture.” American Psychologist 45 (1990): 109-119. Web.