Can Organisational Culture Be Managed

With the rise and prosperity of organizational culture, explained as “the interweaving of the individual into a community and the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes members of one known group from another” (Ogbonna, 1992), whether it could be managed or not has drawn considerable attention from researchers. There is a statement that managing organizational culture as a way to improve business performance is beyond the effective capacities of corporate executives. Three arguable points in the statement will be discussed in this essay. First, can organizational culture be managed? Second, is organizational culture capable of improving corporate performance or productivity? The last one is that whether corporate executives can …show more content…
Take Sainsbury’s and Tesco for example, they went to court for their price campaign, but now the new campaign, the customer service comparison, has been sparkled among supermarkets. The cheap prices they offer is not enough for customers, so they could not cut corners on customer service as another way to have bigger market shares and better goodwill. (Ogbonna & Wilkinson, 1990) the other factor is the industry-related environment. Technological factor will be used to illustrate how technological, legal, economic, political, demographic and ecological factors shape industries (thompson & mchugh, 2002). Just like Edgar H. Schein says, the future is unpredictable, we do not know which direction we are moving towards, but the world being more complex and fast fast-paced is for sure (Schein, 1985). In 1920, the single-purpose machine tools and assembly line were created by Henry Ford and implemented by various industries to boot their productivities. These creation changes almost everything, the fixed speed, the predictable productivity and self-generated supervision. When industrial mode of production and productivity move for forward, organizational culture, as a superstructure, have to keep pace with the economic …show more content…
1.3) Managing the external and internal factors of organizational culture
Considering what have been discussed above, it seems that only the world, nation as a whole and technologic breakthrough have the power to change organizational cultures by manipulating the direction of the external factors. On the contrary, it is impossible for any organization or manager to do so, which apparently is beyond their capabilities. Nevertheless, internal factors like how organizations are structured and how employee perceive or interpret the organizational culture, can be managed by advertising the slogans, the goals and the exclusive features in various