Organizational Culture and Leadership

Leaders of large, global organizations today need to create and sustain strong organizational cultures if their organizations are going to compete and survive in the 21st century. Organizational ‘culture’ and ‘leadership’ are the two interrelated terms without which an organization cannot sustain for a long term. Although these two terms are very different from each other in their definition or meaning yet they are very much interconnected. An organization without a leader is just like a ship without a captain and without a strong culture, the organization is like a ship without radar. A captain needs the radar to set the direction for destination. Similarly, a leader needs to build a strong organizational culture to guide his followers appropriately to achieve the organizational goals. Over the decades, authors had been very much interested into understanding the concept of organizational culture and ways it is shaped by leaders’ leadership qualities. The roles played by the leaders are crucial for understanding how a certain culture is created, evolved, and changed over time. Therefore, one of the toughest challenges of leaders is to build strong organizational cultures that are exciting, sustainable, accepted by all and finally that can play a dominant role for competition and survival in today’s contemporary era. Throughout the essay, in the literature part the concept of organizational culture and leadership and how scholarly authors have looked into these areas from different perspectives such as relating organizational culture with various aspects of organization’s success will be presented. Then in the discussion part the interconnectivity of culture and leadership in achieving organizational goals to sustain and compete in the long run will be discussed on the basis of literature. Finally in the conclusion, based on the literature and discussion, the main statement will be reiterated.

Literature Review Scholars have defined organizational