Understanding Culture in Organizations - Case Study Example

Table of Contents Particulars Page No 1.0 Introduction 2 2.0 Understanding Culture in Organizations 3 3.0 Culture in Tesco Plc 4 4.0 Tesco’s Culture Increases Organizational Effectiveness 5 5.0 Negative Effect of Culture on Tesco Plc 7 6.0 Conclusion 8 7.0 References 9 1.0 Introduction This report has been drafted in a comprehensive manner to focus on the importance of culture in an organizational context. The organization selected here for easy and complete understanding of the entire topic is Tesco Plc. Every workplace has its own unique style of organizational culture and research in the past makes a clear identification of an organizational success being dependent how organizational culture is actually expressed in a specific organization. Culture in context to any organization generally decides the manner in which employees communicate and interact within the organization and the same unites the employees to bring them to a common platform. It has been largely researched that a positive organizational culture improves and enhances an organizational process, employees productivity and overall performance of the organization whereas a dysfunctional culture might destroy values, waste useful resources and create resentment among the employees proving detrimental to the growth and development of an organizational effectiveness. The report critically highlights and looks to discuss how culture is expressed in Tesco Plc and how this expression helps or hinders the effectiveness of Tesco Plc. The report initially explains the meaning of culture in an organizational framework and how the same is expressed on a continuous basis in Tesco Plc and the impact of culture on the organization’s performance. A clear discussion has been made to highlight how culture helps Tesco Plc to improve upon its effectiveness along with a discussion of how negative effect of culture sometimes hinders the effectiveness of the organization. A discussion has been made on the various cultural factors which influences the individual behaviour along with leadership style to ensure a better understanding of the influence of culture on the effectiveness of an organizational performance. Finally a conclusion is provided to further ensure that the readers are equipped with both theoretical and practical understanding of the entire topic under study. 2.0 Understanding Culture in Organization Culture in an organizational framework has been defined in numerous ways of which there is no single definite definition of an organizational culture. Culture in an organization can be understood as a collective programming of the mind which helps in making a distinction of members of one organization from others. Culture is generally expressed in an organization by way of its own unique visions, values, norms, working system, working system and beliefs. In a nutshell, organizational culture is “normative glue” which holds the entire organization together (Ralston, Hallinger, Egri & Naothinsuhk, 2005). Culture here acts as an adhesive which glues every member of the organization together. As a result of the same, a good or bad culture has a direct influence on the organizations well-being and success. Organization culture thus refers to a system of shared meaning which held all members of the organization and helps in distinguishing and differentiating one organization from other to gain the advantage of sustainable competitive development. The main essence of any organizational culture exhibits seven primary characteristics which are risk taking and innovation, team orientation, outcome orientation, people orientation, attention to details, stability and aggressiveness. Let us now have a look at how culture is expressed in Tesco Plc. To better understand the topic of how culture might hinder or help an overall organization’s effectiveness. 3.0 Culture in Tesco Plc. Tesco Plc is an international retailer and is regarded as one of the biggest and largest grocery chain in United Kingdom with over 5,10,000 employees and 4337 stores on a global basis. It has its presence in over fourteen global markets supplying a large amount of food, non-food and retail services. The real success of Tesco is incumbent upon the commitment of work force for achieving the desired aims and objectives. Culture in Tesco Plc is more reflected and inclined towards role culture. Role culture focuses more on rules and procedures which have to be followed within an organization. The job description of each employee is clearly laid down and each employee needs to follow upon the same as a part of its cultural values and norms. Employees in Tesco are well equipped and known about their job roles and their contribution towards the organization (Alexander, Page & Wentling, 2003). They also look to follow Tesco’s rules and regulations as it is fundamentally required by all employees in order to be working there. The core aim which is reflected in Tesco’s culture is to create value for all its customers and attract a larger pool of loyal customers towards the organization. Ethical trading is another significant part of the culture of Tesco’s working environment as the company largely beliefs in fair and transparent dealings in all its regular activities carried on a daily basis. Organizational structure is an important element for establishing a successful organizational culture. Tesco Plc follows a hierarchical organizational structure to imbibe the characteristics of role culture in its organizational performance as it has a lot of layers and many employees reporting to more than one person before the information is communicated to the ultimate boss (Dorfman, 2006). This type of structure helps Tesco employees to know exactly what they have to do creating a corporate culture within itself. Tesco has a very friendly environment in all its working procedures along with a routine way in which the employees in Tesco behave with one another and those outside the organization so at to build a larger pool of loyal customers (House & Aditya, 2007). The entire control system along with measurements techniques are constantly under the review of top management to ensure the efficiency of the staff and managerial decisions. Furthermore the on-going meetings and communication of useful information at every level of the company’s hierarchy system reflects a strong internal cultural environment so as to ensure all activities of the organization are streamlined and controlled in a proper manner. There are employees from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds who work together for the achievement of common organizational objective and any cultural differences is immediately reported to the top management so as to ensure a speedy process to take corrective measures against the same (Leung & Bond, 2009). In a nutshell, culture in Tesco has its own significant importance as the management strongly believes a good culture working environment is a prerequisite criteria for a better organizational growth and development. 4.0 Tesco’s Culture Increases Organizational Effectiveness The aforesaid discussion clearly highlights how culture is expressed in Tesco Plc along with its importance in the organizational development and productivity which is strongly linked with the organizational effectiveness. Let us now have a look at how culture in Tesco Plc helps in increasing the effectiveness of both organization and its individual employees. Tesco as already has been discussed follows a role culture environment which helps in increasing the organizational effectiveness through outcome orientation and people orientation as Tesco operates on a global basis and through their role culture environment looks to collaborate and integrate culture that they face similar in terms of outcome orientation. Management pays more attention towards the end results as Tesco follows the concept of best products at the end. High level of outcome orientation further drives higher productivity and helps in increasing the ultimate effectiveness and efficiency of both its employees and organization towards the achievement of both organizational and individual goals and objectives (Hickson, Hinings, McMillan & Schwitter, 2004). Furthermore as a result of outcome orientation which may produce best results, people orientation might be compensated for the same. Tesco as a result of the same follows a dual culture in cases where no desired outcome or results are obtained, still the people are praised and promoted for their hard work and looks to derive new innovative ideas from the same so as to ensure an increase in future effectiveness. Another cultural factor which helps Tesco Plc to enhance its effectiveness is the concept of team orientation and leaders to follower communication. Tesco ensures that every team has a team leader who motivates, guides and provide clear communication to all its team members which also follows a part of its role culture being followed in the organization. This concept further helps in eliminating individual conflicts and creating a sense of team culture in the working environment where the efforts of each individual staff is collectively directed towards the achievement of long and short term organizational goals along with the achievement of individual goals and thus ensuring a collective team effort for higher productivity and better effectiveness of work culture within the organizational system (Gagliardi, 2006). Culture in Tesco Plc requires its members or employees to ensure high attention to details. Culture in Tesco enables the sales team to portray professionalism and pay higher attention to the ultimate needs and satisfaction of its customers so as to draw a larger pool of loyal customers and increase the effectiveness and productivity of the organization. This further helps in retaining the existing customers and gain more new clients to the company thereby increasing its market share and growth rate along with higher profitability and effectiveness. Sales team in Tesco Plc follows a Mechanistic Model which involves high level of specialization of the various sales engineer’s area and achieve the benefits of specialisation in their own individual field of customers (Burns & Stalker, 2009). Its organizational structure follows the culture of more customer orientation with personal contact with customers and clear communication of all required resources thereby increasing customer satisfaction. This further brings out departmentalization of the Mechanistic Model to work more effectively for Tesco’s organizational structure and culture. 5.0 Negative Effects of Culture in Tesco Plc We already have discussed how culture in Tesco Plc helps in increasing the effectiveness of the organization however, the dominance of role culture in Tesco Plc may sometimes hinder the organizational effectiveness which has been briefly discussed as under. It is to be further noted that this hindrance are more of short term thereby it is un-correct to demonstrate that culture hinders Tesco’s organizational effectiveness. Tesco operates at a global level which different employees from different culture and background this sometimes creates cultural differences with the team members working in a common team for a common objective. However, such cultural differences are effectively met by the process of role culture where the management takes immediate steps to ensure that any variation in the individual goals and objectives are actually aligned with the organizational goals and objectives (Bass, 2007). Furthermore Tesco follows a hierarchical organizational structure and the management culture works on a very conservative mode which limits the concepts of new ideas and innovation in the organization thereby clearly making a deeper impact on the effectiveness of the organization as innovation encourages improvement and sense of belongingness for all members and employees on the board. To add to the list fewer innovation leads to slower growth and development of the company. Stereotypes members in the team also discourages effectives in Tesco Plc as stereotypes people in the team leads to prejudice which ultimately leads to discrimination and decreases the organizational effectiveness. However the same is to be noted that such stereotypes not necessarily have negative implications on the culture of Tesco Plc as such stereotypes are basically generalization that are made about groups and such generalization is necessary to ensure for effective interaction between ideas and what people like to be in the organization to further highlight and identify which behaviour in the work place shall be acceptable for ensuring an increase in the organizational effectiveness. 6.0 Conclusion Tesco Plc has its own set of culture in the organization which is expressed more through the process of role culture. The hierarchical structure and role culture helps to increase the effectiveness of Tesco through the process of outcome orientation and people orientation along with focus on details of customer attention. Positive cultural changes help Tesco to enhance employee’s productivity and organizational performance with an increase in the organizational effectiveness. However the top management has be very careful in implementing and ensuring a continuous move in its role culture as if it is not managed properly the same might lead to high turnover rates and unhappy employees with negative impact on the organizational effectiveness. In a nutshell, the report makes a clear highlight of how culture is expressed in Tesco Plc along with how the same helps in increasing the organizational effectiveness along with a discussion on the negative impact of culture role in Tesco which is more of short term in nature and can be eliminated through a process of cultural change. 7.0 References Alexander, A., Page, V. & Wentling, T. (2003). Motivation & barriers to participation in virtual knowledge sharing. 7 (1), 45-58 Bass, B. M. (2007). Does the transactional-transformational leadership paradigm transcend organizational and national boundaries? American Psychologist, 52(2), 130-139 Burns, T., & Stalker, G. M. (2009). The management of innovation. London: Tavistock Publications, Tavistock Centre Dorfman, P. W. (2006). International and cross-cultural leadership research. In B. J. Punnett & O. Shenkar (Eds.), Handbook for international management research (pp. 267-349). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Gagliardi, P. (2006). The creation and change of organizational cultures: A conceptual framework. Organization Studies, 7(2), 117-134 Hickson, D. J., Hinings, C. R., McMillan, J., & Schwitter. (2004). The culture-free context of organization structure: A tri-national comparison. Sociology 8, 59-80. House, R. J., & Aditya, R. N. (2007). The social scientific study of leadership: Quo vadis? Journal of Management, 23(3), 409-473 Leung, K., & Bond, M. H. (2009). On the empirical identification of dimensions for cross-cultural comparisons. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 20, 133-151. Ralston, D., Hallinger, P., Egri, C. & Naothinsuhk, S. (2005). The effects of culture on work place strategy of upward influence. University of Bangkok, Elsevier Inc Read More