Organizational+Culture+Theory

=**Summary**=

Organizational culture is the essence of organizational life. The members of an organization create and maintain a shared sense of reality. This reality shapes the values they share and understand. Different organizations have different organizational realities. Because of this, the actions performed by members of an organization are interpreted differently depending on the organization. Different organizations use different symbols. Common symbols in the workplace are: Physical Symbols: Material objects including logos, design, decor, and even buildings. Behavioral Symbols: Rewards and punishments, rituals, traditions, ceremonies, and customs. Verbal Symbols: Jargon, names and nicknames, jokes, stories, history, and metaphors.

Ethnography is the study in detail of human culture. It studies performances and interprets them. One category is ritual performances. Ritual performances include //__personal rituals__//, which are things you routinely do at the workplace, //__task rituals__//, which are routines associated with a particular job, //__social rituals__//, which are routines involving relations with others in the workplace, and //__organizational rituals__//, which are routines that pertain to the overall organization. Another category of performance is passion performance. Passion performances are stories about the organization that employees share with each other. A third category is social performances, which are behaviors in an organization that are intended to demonstrate cooperation and politeness with others. Another category is political performances, which are behaviors in the workplace that demonstrate power or control. The last category is enculturation performances, which are organizational behaviors that help employees discover what it means to be a member of an organization.

=**Key Terms**=

Organizational Culture: The essence of organizational life. Performance: Metaphor suggesting that organizational life is like a theatre presentation. Ritual Performances: Regular and recurring presentations in the workplace. Passion Performances: Organizational stories that employees share with one another. Social Performances: Organizational behaviors intended to demonstrate cooperation and politeness with others. Political Performances: Organizational behaviors that demonstrate power or control. Enculturation Performances: Organizational behaviors that assist employees in discovering what it means to be a member of an organization.

=** Outside Research **=

In this article, the authors Martina Linnenluecke and Andrew Griffiths discuss the concept of Corporate Sustainability and the relationship between its principles and cultural organization. The main point is in order to achieve the goal of corporate sustainability, the organization has to establish a sustainability-oriented organizational culture. As important as corporate sustainability is, there is no easy and understandable way to use it in an organization. There is no simple and clear definition of corporate sustainability but to sum it up it is a concept that has many features with the need of organizational alterations and modifications on contrasting levels.

There are three levels of espousing corporate sustainability principles: Surface level, which is the context of the adoption, the Value level, when the adoption occurs because of the values and beliefs that an employee has becomes more ethical and responsible, and the Underlying level in which the core assumptions of the dependence between humans and ecological systems need to change. These levels correspond with the levels in the organizational culture theory, which is a general classification of culture that goes through, and in corporates many ideas and cultural levels (observable culture, exposed values and underlying assumptions). The purpose of organizational culture is to impede but also encourage changes in management in organizations or even changes in technology resources.

Another term used in this article is the competing value framework (CVF), which is all about the relationship between corporate sustainability and organizational culture. Below is the framework associated with CVF. There are to dimensions: internal-external and flexibility-control, and from these two dimensions, four different culture types are revealed (the quadrant titles). These quadrants explain the different aspects of an organization: people (human relations model), adaptation (open systems model), stability (internal process model) and task accomplishment (rational goal model)



__ Citation: __ Linnenluecke, Martina K., and Andrew Griffiths. "Corporate Sustainability and Organizational Culture." //Journal of World Business// 45.4 (2010): 357-66.//ScienceDirect//. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.

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=Revision=

The essence of organizational life is found in its culture. To Pacanowsky and O'Donnell-Trujillo, culture is defined as a way of living in an organization. Organizational culture includes the emotional and psychological climate or atmosphere which may involve employee morale, attitudes, and levels of productivity. Organizational culture also includes all the symbols (actions, routines, conversations) and the meanings that people attach to them.

Values are the standards and principles within a culture that have intrinsic worth to a culture. They inform members of an organization on what is important to that specific organization. Pacanowsky notes that values derive from "moral knowledge" and that people display their moral knowledge through narratives, or stories.

Being a member in an organization requires active participation in that organization. Pacanowsky and O'Donnell-Trujillo believe that employees contribute to the shaping of organizational culture and their their behaviors are a major factor in creating and maintaining organizational reality. Symbols determine the reality and culture of an organization. Organizational members create, use and interpret symbols everyday and these symbols are vital to a company's culture. These symbols, in turn, communicate an organizations values through different ways.

- Ariana Durollari

=Additional Information=

"The Office," NBC's hit TV show that ended in 2013 (moment of silence), is a great way to observe many aspects of Organizational Culture Theory. One example is all of the pranks Jim pulls on Dwight. With these pranks, Jim is acting out a ritual performance. The pranks are recurring performances that take place within their organization. Here is a clip of some of the pranks Jim pulls on Dwight:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amyc7EJpMf4

-Caroline Grondahl