Organizational Culture and Its Strategic Values

Strategic nature of organizational culture

Organizational culture in a company is comprised of beliefs and espoused values that drive the employed toward assuming a specific behavior. Organizational culture can be effectively used as a strategic tool to influence higher levels of business performance for a business.

Since organizational cultures are designed to influence the behaviors of the human assets affiliated with an organization, it is important to align the organizational culture with the objectives of the human resource and the management function. Organizational culture can effectively provide motivation to the employees and push them toward attaining the mutual organizational goals in harmony (Johnson et al. 2014).

When Steve Jobs fired one of his employees in the elevator, he claimed that the employee could not account for anything that he had done for the company recently. This case highlighted the nature of the organizational culture at Apple Inc. It is apparent that Apple Inc. is one of the most successful companies in the technology development industry, and its success is a function of its organizational culture.

The culture dictates that the employees must always assume an innovative outlook in their regular projects, and everything they do should have a positive outcome for the company. The company uses its organizational culture as a strategic tool to motivate the employees to assume their highest performance levels (Love 2013).

Value of utilizing analyzing tools

Utilizing analyzing tools like the cultural web enables the management of an organization to understand the bigger picture of its organizational culture. An organizational culture is derived from the interplay of different organizational elements, and it is important to understand how the respective elements affect the culture (Bate 2010).

This enables the management to discover which elements are working, which are not working, and those that need to be changed. Analyzing tools like the cultural web should be utilized regularly to ensure that the organization develops a strategic organizational culture. These tools facilitate the development of a paradigm that aligns with the organizational goals (Smith, 2015).

How the strengths and weaknesses of an organization’s culture affect its strategic value

The strengths and weaknesses of an organization’s culture have a direct effect on the company’s strategic value. The efficiency of the cultural paradigm of an organization affects the performance of the human assets in the company. If some of the elements of the cultural paradigm propagate organizational weaknesses, the entire organization is negatively affected.

The employees have lower motivation and commitment to the organization when the organizational culture is weak (Schein 2010). Conversely, the strengths of an organization’s culture have a positive effect on the strategic value of the company. The strengths influence the development of a motivated human asset base that is compelled to portray the highest level of competence in handling different tasks in the workflow.

Employing culture as a strategic resource

Organizations can use culture as a resource to drive competitive advantage by ensuring that the cultural values dictated by the espoused values align with the requirements of the organizational society. Cultural diversity is one of the issues that bring challenges in the development of a strategic culture (Cameron & Quinn 2011).

Organizations that can effectively develop values that encapsulate the beliefs of the entire membership of the organization are likely to experience the strategic power of culture. As revealed by Apple, culture can foster tremendous organizational success.

List of References

Bate, S. P. 2010, Strategies for cultural change, Routledge, London.

Cameron, K. S. & Quinn, R. E. 2011, Diagnosing and changing organizational culture: Based on the competing values framework, John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey.

Johnson, G., Whittington, R., Scholes, K., Angwin, D. & Regner, P. 2014, Exploring strategy text & cases, 10^th edn, Pearson, Harlow.

Love, D. 2013, FORMER EMPLOYEE: ‘At Apple, They Really Are After You’. Web.

Schein, E. H. 2010, Organizational culture and leadership (Vol. 2), John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey.

Smith, C. 2015, The Cultural Web. Web.