Organizational Culture

Culture is an ever changing part of any organization, and because culture is always changing it must be managed in its own way.  Chapter 14 discusses how to manage organizational culture by explaining it and explaining the different ways to effectively manage it.  In our text Slack and Parent gives many definitions of what others believe organizational culture is; the definition that I most relate with organizational culture is Sathe's definition which is, "the set of important understandings (often unstated) that members of a community share in common" (275).  The characteristics that are listed in our text to explain organizational culture are "stories, myths, symbols, and rituals" (275), these are attributes that differ across different cultures and change from person to person, organization, to organization. Stories and myths are described by Slack and Parent as "Stories are narratives recounted among employees and told to new employees.  Myths are stories, often about origins and transformations of a company, that are not supported by fact" (276).  I think that anyone that has worked any where can say that they have heard either stories or myths about the organization that they work for.  I think that stories are a more common part of organizational culture and that the stories of the organization can either change a lot of a little depending on the turnover rate of the employees.  An example of an organizational story from my own life would come from when I worked in a retail store in the Mall of America.  The store had a very high turnover rate and there were not that many employees that stayed there over a year, unless you were a manager.  One of the things that the older employees would tell the new employees was that they worked there so long that they remembered when the men's side of the store was the women's and vice versa.  By the time I quit that job there was only one more employee that had experienced the swap besides me, and I'm sure that the story died after that person left; but for a long time that was a large part of our organizational culture, even though it was a seemingly insignificant event.  Symbols is described by Slack and Parent as, "Symbols are used to convey meaning about a sport organization to its members and the public at large" (277).  Basically symbols are the objects, emblems, etc that can be directly related back to the organization.  Slogans also are a part of organizational symbols because some slogans can be directly related back to a specific organization.  Organizational language is the direct language or jargon that is used within the organization; this can be anything from football terms if you are a football team, to personal jargon that is only found within your specific organization.  I think that the characteristic that is the most influential to an organization's culture is the stories and myths within the organization, because most of the time these are things that cannot be picked up outside of the organization like symbols and language can be.  Stories and myths can only be obtained once you are on the inside of the organization and interacting with the other employees.