Organisation Culture

“Organisational culture comprises the deep, basic assumptions and beliefs, as well as the shared values that define organisational membership, as well as the members’ habitual ways of making decisions….”
Schein’s Model
Organisational culture is a set of values, beliefs and norms that influence the organisation members’ interaction and glue the organisation together. According to Schein’s (1992) model of culture; there are three levels of culture: artefacts, espoused values and basic underlying assumptions. The basic underlying assumptions are the essence of an organisational culture, which include taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, and ultimate source of values and actions. Once organisations have developed a set of assumptions, members within organisation follow the assumptions unconsciously and are comfortable with others who share the same assumptions. However, when facing different assumptions, or questioning the basic assumptions, members will be uncomfortable and vulnerable. This level of culture remains in deep of organisational culture, which can hardly be visible.
The second level of culture concerns organisational value, which usually comes from the founder of the organisation or the senior managers. These represent how things should be done in here. If the solution works for a specific problem, the value will transform into shared value, and if the solution continues to work, the shared value will further transform into a belief. At this stage, the value and belief are non-discussable but remain conscious, they guide members of the organisation how to deal with certain issue and training new members how to behave. The value of culture virtually distinguish organisation from another. When the solution works repeatedly, it becomes the member’s habitual way of making decision. The value and belief become unconscious and finally transform into the basic assumption.
Organisational culture comprises not only the deep values, beliefs and assumptions, but also the artefacts, the phenomena that one can observe, including physical space and layout, norms, language, symbols, etc. Although this level of culture is easy to observe, it is difficult to interpret. Schein (1992) suggests that it can be dangerous to conclude deeper assumptions from artefacts alone, because one’s explanation will be influenced by his or her feelings.
Changes in Organisational Culture
The culture of organisation requires time to develop and may resist to change, but in order to survive, increase efficiency or to build new success, the organisation needs to adapt to its external and internal environment. The external environment sets limits on what the organisation can do, for example, the economic conditions, the fierce competition in the market, and the government regulations; but within the restrictions, the organisation need to find suitable solutions to react to the changing environment. Thus the organisational culture is actually a mixed result of external pressures, internal potentials, reactions to critical events, and probably to some unknown factors. (Schein, 1992)
National Culture and Organisational Culture
Hofstede (1981) defines culture as “the collective programming mind that distinguishes the members of one human group from those of another”. Nation can be considered as a large human group and national culture influences individual mental programming in an early stage. Thus people with different national identity tend to have different reactions towards activities, for example according to Lewis (2007) cultural categorisation model, the German tend to be task-driven and highly organised; while Hispanic American like to deal with multiple task at the same time and are very emotional. In recent decades, organisations are much more globalised, both geographically and culturally. When an organisation recruit employees with different national culture, the organisational culture may change too. This change can be significant when changing the senior manager, as discussed above, the value of organisational culture is usually determined by the leader or the senior manager. If the new manager has a long culture distance to the previous one, the organisation is likely to experiences a culture shock. In order to overcome the culture barriers and improve efficiency, multinational organisations usually set up universal culture values for all members to follow. For example Toyota, the multinational corporation defines its culture as “The Toyota Way”, which is supported by two main pillars: continues improvement and respect for people. This can be subdivided in to five parts: Challenge, Kaizen, Genchi Genbutsu, Respect and Teamwork. All the employees regard less of their national identity are expected to follow “the Toyota way” when working, but it should be noticed that Toyota culture has a strong Japanese background. In fact, Toyota recruitment employees bases on typical style of Japanese: intelligent, hardworking, team player, carful but conservative. Organisational culture is practically a sub-culture of national culture. Thus, even if the organisation has a strong culture, it will not eliminate members’ national culture background. Adler (2007) argues that individual’s national conscious enhances when encountering with foreign culture. Culture diversification can cause problems, such as render communication and integration. People may fail to understand each other or may not work in the same approach if they come from different culture. Managing culture diversification can be hard. Adler (2007) suggests that “Cultural synergy is a powerful approach to managing the impact of cultural differences that encourages organizations to leverage their diversity, rather than to ignore or minimize it.”
Conclusion
The quote above only describes two levels of organisational culture under Schein’s model, the second level espoused values and the third level basic underlying assumptions. However, the surface level, the artefacts, is also an important element of organisational culture. Although, the culture of an organisation normally remains stable, it will change when the organisation itself requires change to better adapt to the environment. Organisational culture is a subculture of national culture, which may influence organisational culture by senior managers or recruitment of members. Culture diversification within organisations generates problems, one effective way to manage impact of culture diversify is by adopting cultural synergy approach.

Reference
Adler. Nancy J. & Gundersen Allison (2007) International of organizational behavior 5th edition, Mason: Thomson/South-Western
Buchanan, David A. & Huczynski, Andrzej A. (2010) Organizational behavior 10th edition, Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall
Hofstede. Geert International Studies of Management & Organization, Vol. 10, No. 4, Organizations and Societies (Winter, 1980/1981), pp. 15-41
Lewis R.D. (2007) The Cultural Imperative: Global Trends in the 21st century, Nicolas Brealey.
Schein, Edgar H. (1992) Organisational Culture and Leadership, second edition, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass