Organisational Culture

Organisational culture can be defined as pervasive underlying set of beliefs, assumptions, values, shared feelings and perceptions, which influence the actions and decisions taken by the organisastions.The same distinguishes one organisaton from another.Organisational culture is marked by a number of charecteristics as given below: (1)Observed Behavioural Regularities: When people in the organisations interact with one another, they generally use common language, terminology, and other rituals that relates to deference demeanor. (2)Norms: Standards of behaviour are set to guide the organisational members how much work to do. This, in many organisations, is expressed as Do not do too much, do not do too litle. (3)Dominant Values: Organisations advocate some major values and expect the same to be imbibed by its organisational participants. A few examples of such values are high product quality, regularity and efficiency. (4)Philosphy: Organisations set forth certain beliefs about how employees and \or customers are to be treated. (5)Rules: There are guidelines prescribed how the new participants of the organisations have to adopt so as to be accepted the full-fledged members of their group in the organisation. (6)Organisational Climate: This is an overall feeling that is conveyed by the physical layout, the way organisational participants interact with one another, and

the mode organisational members conduct themselves with outside persons. In the Reliance Group, one of the much talked about and practised principles is the value of time. There are also countless stories of how people (ranging from departmental managers to (Late) Dhirubhai Ambani himself) took quick decisions to meet a crisis, how people show their concern about doing things, and doing them in shortest possible time. Not surprisingly, the Reliance Group completed their Patalganga project in a record time of 15 months.

Functions of Culture:
(a)Culture provides shared patterns of cognitive perceptions or understanding about the values or beliefs held by organisation. This enables the organisational members how to think and behave as expected of them (b)It also provides shared patterns of feelings to the organisational members to make them know what they are expected to value and feel. (c)It provides a boundary that creates distinctions between one organisation and other. Such boundary-defining helps identify members and non-members of the organisation. (d)Culture facilitates the generation of commitment to do something larger than ones individual self-interest. (e)It enhances social stability by holding the organisational members together by providing them appropriate standards for which the member should stand for. (f)It serves as a control mechanism that guides and shapes the attitudes and behaviour of organisational members. It

helps organisational members stick to the confirmity to the prescribed and expected mode of behaviour. (g)Culture finally, ensures that everyone is pointed in the same direction.