Organisation Cultures

Compare and contrast Handy’s cultures and Deal & Kennedy’s cultures. In your opinion, which is a more realistic representation of organisational culture? Justify and explain your answer. Organisational culture is a shared value belief which binds the people of an organisation together to achieve a particular objective. “In the early 1980s organisational culture became increasingly considered as both an obstacle to change and a vital ingredient of organisational success or failure” (Ian Brooks, 2003). Handy culture has social approach and focuses on the social factors. Whereas, Deal and Kennedy’s culture has management approach and focuses on what the managers want from a business, where managers find problems in cultural field, they may take structural or personnel changes in an attempt to change the organisational culture for the organisational goals to be accomplished. This paper will contrast and compare Deal and Kennedy’s with Handy culture by stating which one is more realistic. According to Mullins (2007), Deal and Kennedy examined hundreds of business organisations and their environments and then identified four generic cultures. Capon (2009) agrees with this and adds that these cultures are identified by two factors in the marketplace and they are the Degree of risk associated with the organisations activities and the speed at which organisations and employees receive feedback on the success of the decisions or strategies and their performance. The suggested four types of generic cultures are described as follows - Tough-guy Macho – Mullins (2007) describes touch guy macho culture as an organisation that frequently takes higher risks and receives quick feedback on the right and wrong of their actions. Furthermore, Capon (2009) also suggests that the consequences of this type of culture are that burn out is common and failure is harshly condemned, often by dismissal. Organisations such as police departments, surgeons,