The culture within an organisation is important as it plays a large role in how individuals work together and may also significantly impact upon core aspects of employment such as job satisfaction and workplace communication. Organizational culture may be identified by observing how employees interact, quality of end products, time management skills and values, workplace rules and the level of conflict, direction and control within the work environment.
Brindley (2008) identifies four broad models of organisational culture:
- Power culture
- Role culture
- Task culture
- Person Culture
Power Culture in Business Organisations
This is also sometimes known as 'web culture' and is much more commonly recognised within smaller organisations. Power culture may be identified by observing one or more individuals acting dominantly and tending to make all the important decisions within the workplace. This type of organisational culture means a business is able to react fairly quickly to changes within the market, although it does result in people being overly dependent on just one or a few key individuals. Therefore if the main decision makers is ill or on holiday it is quite possible that productivity will be affected.
The reason why power culture is most common in small organisations is because when just a few people have been there from the start they are far more likely to be driven to make key decisions so as to see the business succeed and be heavily involved in the process.
Role Culture and Task Culture in the Workplace
Role culture is all about hierarchy and each individual having his or her place within the business thus making it harder to be creative or innovative. The decision making process will also take time as answers have to be provided by those higher up. Although the role culture model results in organisations struggling to respond quickly this approach may be very effective providing the environment remains stable.
Task culture is more common within matrix organisations with the main goal being to simply get projects or tasks completed. As contribution is both recognised and valued within this culture it is also likely that job satisfaction levels will be high.
Person Culture in Organisations
The final model refers to the person culture and is recognised as varying from the other models because the individual is viewed as being of greater importance than the company. A common example of this type of culture is often seen within private health clinics or in legal practice. Those fitting best into a person culture organisation are able to think for themselves and be confident in their own ability to make decisions on a day to day basis.
As highlighted above the organisational culture has a big impact on work-life and can affect level of job satisfaction and the way employees communicate with one another. It is important that individuals feel comfortable within the culture of a workplace in order to reduce the likelihood of office politics and petty conflicts.
Source:
Brindley, B. (2008) Business Studies Harlow: Pearson Education
Kate Le Page - Kate Henning-Le Page writes about eating disorders, body image and recovery issues. She specializes in anorexia recovery.
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