The Importance of Organisational and National Culture to Businesses

To understand the importance of organizational and national culture to a business is to look at the individual in relation to the group individuals’ level in an organization. A habit is to an individual as a culture is to a group of individuals in an organization. On this statement one cannot overemphasize the importance of culture to business. A business organization functions on the contribution of its people to the attainment of its corporate objectives, thus what motivates a certain group of people must be the key in attaining corporate objectives that will allow the organization to fulfil it goals, vision and mission.

To cite a proof, companies are ranked on how best to work with and such has the effect on what keeps the employees loyal to the organization. Begin asserted that prevailing culture of an organization will surely affect business results in addition to shaping the health, morale and productivity of employees. She cited the case of National Instruments (NI) which as named a Fortune’s “100 Best” companies to work with in 2006. The striking part is that NI’s award is the seventh consecutive in a row on the list.

Being ranked as one of the best companies delivers a message that culture is one of best valued variable in business. In business management theory, it is said the one must have machine, material, money and man. One must recall that man among the factors is the most important and yet the least understood because of the complexity of human nature. It is the most important because it is man that could be blamed because it is the only factor that could make a decision. It is not a wonder therefore that awards such as Fortune’ “100 Best” are recognized to identify what is important in business.

In this context it would be proper to know what are the secrets of NI are. To be awarded once is one thing but to be awarded for the seventh consecutive time must be something. Thus when interviewed about the award, NI vice president of human resources Mark Finger, has quoted their company president to have taught the people in the company about the importance of building company culture that the peoples, actions and decisions today reinforce and impact the kind of culture and work environment that they will have for both short term and long term view.

In their building up company culture, every employee is encouraged to make decision that will have a positive contribution to have an outstanding corporate culture in the future. From the experience of NI, one could see the undeniable importance of corporate culture to the organization and there is really an intention to have an outstanding culture. The benefits of culture in organization must follow as result of the value given by employees of NI.

Indeed, benefits are measurable indeed; hence there are also controllable or manageable. Begin cited reduced turnover rate, decreased absenteeism, and a reputation as employer of choice as part of the benefits. If expanded into deeper meanings, reduced turnover rate minimizes cost of hiring and training of employees and promotes greater employee commitment and loyalty. Decrease absenteeism is an evidence of employee discipline and could also be taken as a sign of motivated employees.

Motivated employees could bring the company to greater heights of achievement as there would be fewer complaints and the company could have productive employees that would bring the company more profits and better profits could mean higher stock prices. Higher stock prices could of course mean more satisfied stockholders who would be more than willing to reward productive and loyal employees in return. The effects would be for the benefit of the organization. It could be quite intriguing at this point to go into the meaning of organizational culture after discussing the benefits.

Organizational culture could refer to pattern of shared values and belief as demonstrated by employees in their daily activities and behaviours. It could influence occupational or industry peculiarities in relation to the organization as well as the national culture of the place or nationality where the firm operates. Since it is founded on value, beliefs and norms that are embraced by people in the organization especially be leaders, the same could be managed for the benefit of the organization as what is done by NI.

It is therefore not incompatible to see a corporate culture honouring its people’s basic need for health, security, recognition, belonging and sense of purpose together with a motivated and organizationally synergized people that could bring corporate success. Management of corporate culture is part of managers’ duty especially when the company is engaged in global operations where it has to deal with different cultures which are necessarily varied. This means that a management theory in one culture may not be applicable to another culture.

Harris and Moran noted that managers, educators, and writers usually assume that cultural differences are barriers and impede communication and interaction. They argued that in order to overcome these barriers people should understand the differences between a group of people’s own culture and another. By citing that in the US, promptness is valued where companies generally make use of schedules and evaluate each others behaviour in these terms; they also exposed that in some countries, to arrive late is a norm rather than an exception.

They further explained being late in some countries has different meaning which could depend on how late one is, the circumstances of the meeting and how well one knows the person. To force US management theory about lateness in another culture from the other countries could bring a shocking experience with resulting consequences. Since different people must be handled with ingenuity so with their culture. To conclude, one does not need to read many books about organizational and national culture in order to understand its importance to organization. It could be learned under the simple experience of a family where one belongs.

There are different attitudes and values and habits, in a family, and the father or mother must really be a good manager of culture if he or she could bring the members of family to where it wants to go while being happy and comfortable with their own culture. As the family gets out to the community, the family will realize that there are others practicing a culture different from its own. An adjustment should happen as a result. Imagine the family as a business organization with a corporate culture and the community as bigger world with national culture. The success of these cultures is seen to be related to the success of the organization.

. Works Cited: Begin, D. , Organizational Culture Counts, HRSB Concepts Inc. , Canada, 2007, {www document} URL, http://www. hrsbconcepts. com/articles/KIG-03. 2007%20Organizational%20Culture%20Counts. pdf, Accessed, May 5, 2008 Harris and Moran, Managing Cultural Differences, Gulf Publishing Company, Texas, USA, 1991 National Instruments, National Instruments named Among Fortune’s ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’ for Seventh Year, 2006 , {www document} URL, http://digital. ni. com/worldwide/bwcontent. nsf/web/all/0F7E18A46AED709D862570F100720AEC, Accessed, May 5, 2008