Positive organizational cultures establishes the foundation for a positive work culture that requires cultural foundations of performance and wellbeing based on the principle of trust, engagement and commitment (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008). Organization managers effectively display integration of positive organizational culture and their positive behaviors. Organizational managers significantly influence employee’s psychological well-being thus influencing their performance and productivity. Integration of positive organizational culture has become a major trend in the corporate world and many organizations do all they can to also integrate.
Performance, productivity, and retention
Organizations with positive cultures notably have higher employee performance. They perform better in both local and international business environments. They have a purpose driven workforce characterized with enhanced purpose-driven mentality among its employees (Sarros, Cooper, & Santora, 2008, P. 150). Positive employee cultures ensure that employees have a strong feeling of ownership and result-focused workplace habits. Employee productivity increases when they are engaged and satisfied.
Better talent management
Positive organization cultures significantly facilitate talent management. Other aspects of an organization human resource such as recruitment, selection, training and retention are positively impacted by positive organizational cultures (Sarros et al., 2008).
Change and Initiative
Positive organization cultures facilitate organizational change and initiatives. Although some scholars have argued that strong organizational cultures are resistant to change, “positive corporate cultures are receptive to organizational change, and it facilitates fast adoption to meeting new emerging challenges” (Bakker et al., 2008).
Manipulative nature of positive organizational cultures
Positive organization cultures can be altered and controlled by the organization management to serve interest best known by them without the employee involvement. Organization cultures interweave employees into workplace community through collective mind programming thus manipulative in the following ways.
Unavoidability
It is evident that as organizations grow and expand the positive organizational cultures also grow and new challenges of establishing a standard framework on how organizations carry out its operations emerge. Managers can easily use positive organizational cultures to manipulate its employees to adopt certain workplace cultures hence the desired consensus is entrenched (Gregory, Harris, Armenakis, & Shook, 2009, p. 675).
Acceptability
In most organizations, employees are not fully contented with their organizational cultures. Organizations build positive organizational cultures to influence and coerced employees to accept certain values, norms, and beliefs. Therefore, these perceived positive cultures are manipulative since they influence employee relationships forming the organization’s structure.
Organizational behavior driver
Positive organizational cultures tend to create “herd mentality” that influences employees to follow collectively certain behaviors at work (Naranjo, JimĂ©nez, & Sanz, 2011, p. 58). Also implementation of some positive organization cultures limits employees’ innovative thinking. As the top management implements positive workplace cultures, senior managers create a “dominant coalition” hence employees are easily manipulated. Manipulation is evident where employees are given particular sense of identity, belonging and roles to execute; this manipulates employees to perceive that the sense of identity and belonging is the only basis of their relationship with employers (Naranjo et al., 2011).
Misalignment
Misalignment is where positive organization cultures are used by the management to inappropriately align employee’s behaviors and actions with their mission and vision statement. Although misalignment is common in most organizations, some organizations build positive cultures to influence communication mechanism and interrelationships to achieve certain outcomes (Gregory et al., 2009).
Management role in building organization cultures
It is evident that the organization management functions play significant roles in building organizational culture. Organizational senior top managers focus and emphasize on the core managerial traits of trustworthiness, mentorship, empowerment and consistency (Rai, 2011).
Planning
The management establishes organizational culture strategic direction through positive attitude levels analysis in the recruitment, selection, hiring and training of employees. Positive workplace environment with positive attitudes effectively builds positive organizational culture. Managers play an important role in the analysis of positive employee attitudes and formally communicating the introduced culture incorporating it the organization strategic direction (Taylor, Levy, Boyacigiller, & Beechler, 2008, p. 505).
Organizing
The objective of organizing management function is the adoption of positive organization cultures, and other management best practices This involves putting emphasis and focus on employee behavior, recognition, rewards, and flexible employees working schedules and offering relevant learning experiences to employees at all levels to achieve success in their roles. Managers through empowerment facilitate the sharing of a common vision with employees and making key decisions. This function also entails establishing employee feedback mechanism and establishes consistent proper channels of communication (Rai, 2011).
Leading
The organization’s senior management plays a significant role as leaders in building positive organizational cultures. Leading from the top to lower levels of an organization is essential in building and implementing positive cultures. Organizational Managers’ leading in the department ensures there is an effective flow of communication and clear explanation of building organizational culture. Managers as leaders have the role of ensuring there are increased management-employee interactions, promoting open-door policy and ascertaining the sufficiency of resources or funding needed for building organizational cultures (Taylor et al., 2008)
Controlling
Organization managers control the overall exercise of building organizational culture. Managers notably execute this function by making relevant decisions mainly on equitability and fairness among the employees and consistent upholding of set organizational ethical standards.
Managers operating in both local and global business environments have the obligation and responsibility to build acceptable and consistent organization cultures in various specific international markets (Rai, 2011). Organizational cultures established in various organizations globally to a greater depend on socio-economic, political, environmental and other relevant legislations in the specific country of opera
References
Bakker, A. B., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2008). Positive organizational behavior: Engaged employees in flourishing organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29(2): 147-154.
Gregory, B. T., Harris, S. G., Armenakis, A. A., & Shook, C. L. (2009). Organizational culture and effectiveness: A study of values, attitudes, and organizational outcomes. Journal of Business Research, 62(7): 673-679.
Naranjo-Valencia, J. C., Jiménez-Jiménez, D., & Sanz-Valle, R. (2011). Innovation or imitation? The role of organizational culture. Management Decision, 49(1): 55-72.
Rai, R. K. (2011). Knowledge management and organizational culture: a theoretical integrative framework. Journal of Knowledge Management, 15(5): 779-801.
Sarros, J. C., Cooper, B. K., & Santora, J. C. (2008). Building a climate for innovation through transformational leadership and organizational culture. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 15(2): 145-158.
Taylor, S., Levy, O., Boyacigiller, N. A., & Beechler, S. (2008). Employee commitment in MNCs: Impacts of organizational culture, HRM and top management orientations. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 19(4): 501-527.