Improving Organizational Culture

Creativity and innovation are more often focused on as an individual trait. However, creativity and innovation are considered as the backbone of organizations. In current competitive environments, it becomes more than necessary for the organizations to focus on ways to improve creativity and innovation. Improving the organizational culture in order to improve creativity and innovation becomes imperative in this context (Amabile et al, 1996). The essay argues that current organizations have to focus on a workplace culture that would improve both. The types and requirements of organizations culture and structure that would be required are discussed. The contemporary example of Google Inc. and its approach to using organizational culture in order …show more content…
Strategy for the organization to move forward will need the support of organizational culture. The culture of the organization can be defined in terms of the deep seated beliefs of the organization, some assumptions made, meanings, beliefs and stories about the organization. According to the iceberg model that was proposed about organizational culture it could be said that the culture is that part of the organization that actually remains under the waterline. So these elements are hence invisible. The cultural elements can only be understood by phenomenological methods of investigation. This invisible element or the organizational culture plays an important role in improving the creativity and innovation of the …show more content…
This is suggested for organizational climate rather than organizational culture (both are differentiated in literature). There are perspectives presented in literature on why culture and climate might vary. The primary one is that of integration which relies on the assumption that there might not just be one culture in an organization and hence they need to be integrated to form the organizational climate (Denison, 1996). The subcultures can cause fragmentation and the culture can also exist on the individual level. For the purpose of this essay, culture and climate are not differentiated. For the culture to be supportive of creativity and innovation it is necessary for there to be a high level of organizational support. Organization must be willing to directly invest into empowering their employees. They should encourage by means of supervisory support, work group sessions, training, resources facilitation and more (Amabile et al, 1996). At one end the organization will have to facilitate their employee by means of these provisions and at another end the organization will have to ensure that the impediments in culture that would stunt creativity and innovation are removed. Some of these elements include workload pressure which might lead to the employee not thinking outside the box, or impediments in the form of insufficient resources or