Organizational Culture Challenge on Organizations
Identify a major challenge (i.e. technology, economics, personnel, global influence, politics, etc.) facing leaders in the field of study for your graduate program. Make five recommendations on how this challenge might be addressed to ensure organizational success and support your answers with research from scholarly sources. The focus of your paper should not be about a challenge in a single organization, but a broad focus on a challenge in your chosen field (Marketing, Public Relations, Non-profit Management, Homeland Security, Human Resources, Acquisition and Supply Chain, etc.).
The advancement in technology changes in policies regarding environmental, and needs to satisfy customer satisfaction may be some of the reasons forcing organizations to change some programs. The change of a program or programs within the organization may affect the organizational culture thus leading to the necessity for the change of the culture. Changing an organizational culture is one of the toughest leadership challenges the leaders face. It is hard because the culture entails the interlocking set of goals, values, attitudes and assumptions, processes, roles, and communication practices. However, at times some of these values and the rest may need to be altered for the better operation of the feature of the business. For example, the World Bank is experiencing the problem of culture change.
A lot has changed since the World Bank inception. For instance, fifty years ago China, Korea, and India were viewed as basket cases that needed the Western charity, but today, they are well established and independent concerning the economic muscles (Denning, 2011). This has resulted from the World Bank coaching to these countries for many years. Therefore, the World Bank may be direct its attention to more pressing issues such environmental present challenges rather than continuing with past roles. Nonetheless, it has been noted that successive presidents have tried changing the culture, but little success has been realized. The little success in changing the culture of the World Bank is presented here to elaborate the fact that changing organizational culture due to an introduction of a new program or arise in a situation may be difficult despite the size of an organization (Denning, 2011). The paper, however, presents some of the recommendations that organizations may consider when introducing programs that call for the change of the organizational culture.
Define clearly the change goal rather than culture change
Some leaders express the change in terms of culture change rather than the goal to be achieved. What leaders should be concerned about is addressing the problem at hand. From that point, the problem is diagnosed to find the solutions are what may lead to the culture change. In that case, the staff may give a listening ear with ease. Consider the case of Alpha Power Company (Schein, 2010). The court declared that the company had to be more environmentally responsible. The change goal, in this case, includes getting the staff members on the awareness of the environmental hazards, learning how to clean up the hazardous conditions, and taking precaution in the prevention of the spills and other forms of hazards from taking place. Hence in such launching of the required goals, the culture change was not mentioned.
However, from the specific goal enumerated, an employee could easily detect and engage whether the cultural elements would hinder or enhance the change. For this case scenario, some aspects of culture were used positively in the realization of the goals and some had to be changed to meet the specifications of the goals. For instance, the workers came to realize that containing the oils spills from their vehicles was as essential as fixing the generator at the hospital (Schein, 2010). It is clear thus that whenever the goal or reason for the change is understood, the staff members would have a sense of the change.
Training
Most kinds of changes that leaders do bring on board for the organization require some learning or else they would be rejected. After all, it is known that the leaders want the best for the organization thus the new behaviors that bring are meant to make the work easier to undertake. For example, a new software program may be introduced for the realization of the efficiency of the computers. Nevertheless, the employees who have been with the firm for long and have established the routines of doing things in the old way will feel uncomfortable with the new program thus finding it easy to oppose the move (McIntyre, 2014). The opposition will arise because such kind employees may not see much sense of changing to another program if the old program will get the job done.
They may even feel that the new software program will show that they are incompetent. Therefore, once the goal is well stated any form of training to gain the required skills in the new way of doing things should be embraced. It is evident that culture change is dependable on the behavior change ((Carpenter, Bauer & Erdogan, 2013). So once the members of the organization have understood the expectation required of them, they have to know how to perform the new behaviors that the organization had defined. The only way to realize that is through training. It is through training that these new behaviors will be learned. Therefore, organizations should consider training the organizational members the new skills that contribute to the culture change.
Adopting open system organization
In an open system, an organization interacts with its environment and drawings certain inputs from its surrounding and converts them to the useful outputs that are provided to the environment. The realization of the preferred state depends on the efficiency with which an organization conducts this kind of production process (Scott & Davis, 2015). Therefore, an open system calls establishing the relationship between the organization and the environment. The organization environment consists of four primary subsystems: economic, socio-cultural, politico-legal, and technological systems (Scott & Davis, 2015). Understanding of these subsystems will compel the organizational members to change if need be as opposed to the closed system that has no concern for the environment.
Understanding organizational culture
Understanding the organizational culture is very crucial. Every member of the organization should precisely have a good knowledge of the organizational culture. The process begins by observing its artifacts which entail the employees’ interaction, reward system, physical environment, and organizational policies among other observable ones (Carpenter, Bauer & Erdogan, 2013). Nonetheless, it is essential to go beyond the tangible aspects of the organization when understanding organizational culture. This is because the crucial chunk of the culture exists beneath the degree of what is observable. The interaction of the employees and the choices they will make will unveil their culture which regards the values, beliefs, perceptions, and deeper assumptions that play a role in shaping the organization. The organizational culture may contribute as its strongest assets or attribute to its biggest liability (Carpenter, Bauer & Erdogan, 2013). Thus it is from the understanding that an immediate effect may be taken if it is unveiled that certain culture of the organization is contributing to its downfall.
The issue of liability or asset of the culture makes the organization shapes its culture whenever it is facing internal or external challenges and adopts the best means of dealing with it (Carpenter, Bauer & Erdogan, 2013). On the other hand, the values and other forms of the organizational culture which contribute to the success of the organization will be retained. For instance, the previous past, the TV channels would pop advertisement to cover the whole screen in the course of a football match or any other games. However, through research, they understood that the customer (particular the football fans) were not satisfied with that kind of advertisement. For the satisfaction of the customer needs, they the channels shifted to displaying the advertisement on a small portion of the screen. This was a culture, but it did not satisfy the customers thus they modified it. So it is evident that the ease of change of culture begins by leaders and other organizational member understanding into details the organizational culture. Therefore, in the case of need for change, a positive response would be attained.
Applying TQL rather than TQM
Total Quantity Management (TQM) is an elaborate management approach purposed for achieving and improving customer satisfaction. The approach stresses on the use of organizational culture to design, produce, and improve products and services that bring satisfaction to the customers (Jabnoun, Khalifah & Yusuf, 2003). On the other hand, Total Quality Learning (TQL) is concerned about dimensions of customer satisfaction and improvement just as TQM, but it gives it a learning approach rather than control approach. The approach is flexible enough to allow the organization to explore new solutions even if they are not well known (Jabnoun, Khalifah & Yusuf, 2003). Therefore, from a company that utilizes the TQL will find easy to adapt to explore a new culture if it may bring satisfaction to the customers as opposed to those companies using TQM.
Conclusion
The preceding discussion is precise and definite enough to offer the solutions to the organizational challenge regarding culture change whenever the need arise. The leaders should begin by defining the goals of the program being introduced and offer training to the organizational so that they are not rendered incompetency, for example, if it is matters regarding advancement. The organization should also consider the use of TQL and open system instead of the closed system. Understanding organizational culture plays a vital role because from the organization would reap assets or suffer liabilities.
References
Carpenter, M. A., Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2013). Principles of management. Irvington, N.Y.: Flatworld Knowledge.
Denning, S. (2011). How do you change an organizational culture. Forbes Magazine, 23.
Jabnoun, N., Khalifah, A., & Yusuf, A. (2003). Environmental uncertainty, strategic orientation, and quality management: a contingency model. The quality management journal, 10(4), 17.
McIntyre, S. (Ed.). (2014). Utilizing Evidence-Based Lessons Learned for Enhanced Organizational Innovation and Change. IGI Global.
Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership (Vol. 2). John Wiley & Sons.
Scott, W. R., & Davis, G. F. (2015). Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural and open systems perspectives. Routledge.
