NATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Some of the most important definitions that we saw in this class were culture, nation and National culture: which is “Comprises shared values, understandings, assumptions and goals that are learned from earlier generations, imposed by present members of a society and passed on to succeeding generations”.(1)

We also understoood that an organization is a social arrangement that pursues collective goals and that it is very important to take in account each members culture to avoid misunderstandings and be able to make profit of each ones strenghts, and that sometimes in the long term, the organzations cultures becomes the peoples culture, they live it. Some of the Functions of culture within an organization are:

*Culture is a sense-making device for organization members.
*Culture serves as a control mechanism for shaping behavior.

At the end they concluded that even though it is not the end of corporate culture each day its less important because people are giving more importance to the norms, values and cultures that they create in their own working team. The people we work with in some projects and their values are more important because for us, its better and more important to adjust to them and share because they are the ones that are always with us and available. Thats why this good environment of colleegues is more important for people and they just adjust the necesary to the corporate culture.

With corporate cultural problems what does work and what doesn’t?

“Con Edison set out not to change the culture, but to get people to do certain things and not others. Changing behavior depended on the company using its cultural strength.”
What doesn’t work is to make people do everything in your own way.
People have learned their culture by the time they are ten years old, this is why when they join an organization they can adjust to it, but the organization cant expect to CHANGE their culture just because it doest totally fit the corporate one.
If people adjust themselves to the company`s culture, forgeting their own culture and backgrounds, they will work and they will continue doing their job, but it will be something learned that they will do every day repetitively, but the organization maybe will be losing the different points of view of these people that have different cultures and ideas, and in the long term this is what could give the companies the advantages.
“Schein suggests that people may get their workplace norms and values not from a corporate culture, but from their profession. He has been researching three professional "subcultures" that most organizations have: the financial culture of CEOs, CFOs and others who answer to the market; the engineering culture of designers and developers; and the operating culture of manufacturers and others who run business processes.” (2)

References:

(1) DERESKY, Helen. International Management. Ed. Prentice Hall. New Jersey, 2006. “Understanding the role of culture” p.79 – 115

(2) Millman, Gregory J. . 2007. "Corporate Culture: more myth than reality? ." The Free Library 23:44-47. Millman, Gregory J. (2007, July 1).