The success of an organization is based on the relationship between individuals and the culture of the company. Organizational cultures are principles that determine the behavior of employees within the company. Individual’s behavior that can be pragmatic includes beliefs, values, and assumptions.
It is the liability of the managerial team to understand organizational cultures because they are responsible in directing production activities in a positive manner and avoiding the destructive influence of employees who are not devoted to the increasing the company’s output and achieving of the set goals within the organization.
According to the evaluation of the U.S. Army, it is true that the cultural context in the organization has a powerful influence on the behavior of most employees (Treviño and Nelson, 2011). The cultural context plays a key role in explaining the policies, rules, and regulations of the company making managerial work to be easy, thus facilitating achievement of the organizational goals.
Organizational cultures are described by the general rules that the corporate operates using. The regulations are formulated by shared behaviors, beliefs, and values. These cultures create the basis of individual behavior in an organizational context. The individual employee’s and the group behavior define what is expected of the organization. It also gives the sanction of abnormal cultures.
The management should think of organizational cultural practices that motivate the employees yielding to higher productivity since people enjoy doing what is rewarding even if the rewards are not explicit (Treviño and Nelson, 2011). The management should set goals that are challenging but achievable. On achievement of these goals, the employees are highly motivated and aim at getting to a higher level.
The main cultural backgrounds that are observable in an organization include the degree of procedures in, which the employees conduct themselves. The employees develop some cultural practices that help in representing their organization to external bodies (Treviño and Nelson, 2011). These issues include dressing code, the technology adopted by the organization, and the general conduct of workers when dealing with the outsiders.
An organization also holds some unobservable cultural behaviors such as values that inspire behavior. These values cannot be observed directly, but they are the ones that determine the character of the employee, for example, discipline during the operations that relate to the company. These behaviors help in giving a positive representation of the organization.
The employees should be aware of organizational cultural practices since they are the ones that define the behaviors deemed appropriate or inappropriate in a company. Different organization varies in their cultural practices with some stressing on creativity while others consider the status quo.
There are organizations that are more social oriented; others are task-oriented, while others assume teamwork to be the most important cultural practice. Some organizations value individual achievement rewarding employees as per their contribution to the organizational output (Treviño and Nelson, 2011). The management should focus on the dominant motivational culture to increase the general production of the company.
In conclusion, employees must understand and follow organizational cultures. The management has the responsibility to inform the employees of these cultures and how the organization expectation from individual worker to safeguard these practices to achieve the organizational goals. It is true to say that the cultural practices in the U.S.
Army have enabled the employees in this organization to maintain discipline and achieve the role expected of them. This applies not only in this organization because cultural contexts in any organization have a powerful influence on the behavior of the employees. Some cultural practices may be rigid, posing a negative influence through most of the cultural practices have a positive impact.
References
Treviño, L. K., & Nelson, K. A. (2011). Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right. New York: John Wiley.
