The two sections of interest from the OBS module are observations into the concepts of organisational culture and scientific management of work design. I will look at the challenges posed to the theories of these areas and use my interaction with my employer (Tesco) to provide concise first person examples.
Organisational culture can be seen as a backbone of a company, however as the tangible aspects of it are barely visible it can be hard to derive theories from practice. Looking at the meaning of organisational culture: "The culture of an organisation is made up of traditions, habits, ways of organising and patterns of relationships at work"(C Molander & Winterton 1994), further explained it is the feeling created with an organisation, the 'climate ' and 'energy ' within the people of the workplace and its environment. It shows focus on the values and norms of how things are done and approached in organisations, the patterns of order and task completion. The are three levels of culture according to Shein (1992), cultural artifacts, values and basic assumptions, with cultural artefacts being the only tangible, visible one, embedding such things as traditions, logos and the type of people within it. The values aspect depicts the group thought and their expectation of the future, this being a covert aspect as it can only be unearthed through detailed investigation. Basic assumptions being even more covert as it entails looking into the actual psyche of the individual, what they believe of the world, "(is there such thing as a universal, timeless human truth or reality or do we live in dynamic worlds that are largely of our own making?) (Joana Brewis 2007, p.348).
There are two underlining approaches to organisational culture that researchers in this field categorise, one is that culture is something that an organisation 'has ' and the other is that culture is something that the