Culture Flashcards
What is culture?
“The way we do things around here”.
What is organisational culture?
Organisational culture refers to the ethos, values and beliefs of a business and its employees.
What does the strength of a culture determine?
How difficult or easy it is to know how to behave in the business.
What are 3 characteristics of a strong culture?
- Staff understand and respond to culture.
- Sense of shared responsibility towards vision, mission and objectives.
- Motivated and loyal workforce.
What are 3 characteristics of a weak culture?
- Little alignment with organisational values.
- Employees have to be forced to perform duties.
- Requires greater management and supervision.
What is Johnson and Scholes’s Cultural Web?
Johnson and Scholes identified 6 elements that act together to form and organisation’s culture.
These can be used by a manager to assess the culture in a business and identify any good/ bad practices or beliefs.
How they interact is called the ‘Paradigm”.
What are the 6 elements of the cultural web?
Power Structures - Pockets of real power and influence over decisions, operations and direction.
Controls - Internal control systems (eg - finance, rewards, etc.).
Stories - What past events do people talk about inside and outside an organisation (successes/ failures)?
Symbols - Organisational “semiotics” - including logos, offices, and formal/ informal dress code.
Rituals and Routines - Behaviours and rules that signal importance - What is supposed to happen in given situations?
Organisational Structure - Formal organisational structure and relationships that dictate who’s contributions are most valuable.
