The importance and elements of the culture of the organisation
Organization culture is a subject that not usually receives the attention it deserves. It is so important that Dr.Peter Drucker used to say that “Culture eats Strategy for breakfast”. He meant that culture is much more important than strategy to explain the success of a company.
Company boards dedicate a significant amount of time discussing strategies without a deep consideration of the cultural requirements to make these strategies work.
Dr Edgar Schein defines culture as “a pattern of shared tacit assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems."
Dr Schein proposed a model that distinguishes three layers of any culture:
Artifacts are the most concrete and visible manifestations of the organizational culture. Examples of artifacts are the ways an organization communicates internally and externally.
Values are the second level of culture. They guide the behavior of members of an organization. Unlike artifacts, values are not directly observed; you can perceive them through interviews or induce them from the observation of artefacts.
Assumptions are deep beliefs that members of an organization are generally unaware of and that are most often taken for granted.
The importance of culture lies in that it is a powerful, tacit, and often unconscious set of forces that determine both our individual and collective behavior, ways of perceiving, thought patterns, and values. “Organizational culture in particular matters because cultural elements determine strategy, goals, and modes of operating” (E.Schein)
