Organizational Culture in the Changing Environment

Organizational Culture in the Changing Environment essay assignment

Organizational Culture in the Changing Environment essay assignment

In the context of rapid changes taking place in the economic and business environment in the country/ organizations need to transform themselves radically in order to seize new opportunities. Arguing that organizational culture is a crucial organizational variable that can facilitate or impede the change process/ this paper by Deepti Bhatnagar and Leena Bhandari presents results of an empirical study.

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The use of competing values framework showed hierarchy to be dominant and market culture to be weak in our organizations/ although there appeared to be interesting differences between the private sector/ the public sector/ and a government department. Implications of these findings are presented. Deepti Bhatnagar is a Professor and Leena Bhandari is an Academic Associate in the Organizational Behavior Area of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

In the wake of increasing liberalization of the economy, Indian organizations are facing unprecedented challenges. The familiar world of continuity is fast giving way to changes in task technology and the nature of doing business. The dismantling of trade and geographic barriers, wide ranging economic reforms combined with revolution in communication and information technology is bringing about a distinct shift in the nature of competition, customer profiles and preferences. The heightened impact of global trends and events on organizational performance is offering a plethora of opportunities as well as risks. For responding effectively to these multiple discontinuities in the environment, organizations cannot depend on the competencies and energy of the CEO or members of the top management team alone. As the challenges are broad- based, so should the organizational readiness be. Since the wisdom and resources of a handful of members, no matter how committed, is simply not adequate to deal with the enormity of change, the involvement of a large number of members has to be ensured. Organizational culture can be a powerful vehicle for enlisting suitable member response.

An important question in today’s fast-changing environment is what kinds of signals do managers in contemporary Indian organizations receive about relative organizational priorities, shared beliefs and perceptions, valued goals, and organizationally-preferred methods of achieving them. In other words, a key issue is: what are the perceptions of managers today about salient dimensions of organizational culture in which they operate ? An equally important question is whether organizations need to review the suitability of their culture to emerging organizational challenges, and if need be, to work towards affecting changes in the culture, so as to ensure congruence between organizational culture and changing organizational tasks. Since culture and related corporate realities interact to influence performance (Sathe, 1985), organizations need to be aware of these shared perceptions, and examine if these perceptions are consistent with the objectives, strategies, and tasks they have outlined for themselves. The present study is addressed to the first of these issues, namely, the diagnosis of organizational culture.