Organizational Behavior in Globalized Context
1. What is the relationship between an institutional system and an organizational culture? The process when an “organization takes on a life of its own, apart from its founders or members, and acquires immortality” is called institutionalization by Robbins and Judge. That means that the organization in itself does not change even if the founder dies or important managers leave the company, it will remain basically the same in the future as it has been in the past. Furthermore, these institutions influence the behavior and make some actions more understood than they perhaps should be. For example a very authoritarian management behavior that obstructs innovations and harms the external view on the company, but is tolerated by the entrepreneur as he acts in the same way. Even though a company may have achieved its original goals, it will continue its business with new goals if it is institutionalized. Organizational culture can be defined as “a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations”. This shows that every organization is different because of its values that origin from the organization’s founders and from the employees who are specifically selected in consideration of these values. Robbins and Judge identify seven primary characteristics to describe a culture: innovation and risk taking, attention to detail, outcome orientation, people orientation, team orientation, aggressiveness and stability. It is vital for a company to have a matching culture to the means of an organization: for instance should a high-technology firm not be afraid of risk-taking and ought to give high attention to detail and team orientation; a retailer in a very competitive market should rather be outcome oriented and does not necessarily have to be very innovative. All of these seven attitudes could also be used for human beings which points up that an