Week 4: Culture

Organisation culture:

Visual aspects

Visual aspects of a organisation culture will be aspects that appear on the surface of the company. These aspects will often involve the company goals, strategies, systems , structure and day to day running of company. Organisations with a strong culture and employees who follow the culture and share the same views and the company culture follow a trend of being more successful than those who do not have a strong culture.

In  my time in work i worked for BOC (British Oxygen Company) I worked in the HOC (helium operative centre). The visual aspects of this company was all about safety. BOC culture was safety was the key throughout the whole business. BOC There were other visual aspects as well such as:- 

Team work: The set us was shift work and each shift had a set team. Over time you begin to build friendships with people on your shift and the HOC centre would always be pushing team work and the idea of working together is easier safer and more efficient.

Work Ethics: the work ethics in the HOC Centre was that you make sure you are working safely first and then you can think about getting a high level of production done. 

Achievements: As well as team achievements BOC would also recognise individual achievements. The team achievements were rewarded through regular bonuses (each year Quarter) the bonuses were judged on weather there were no accidents which resulted in people have time off work, no. Of complaints with products e.g. empty cylinders sent out, and amount of production last. Individual rewards “Merkat Rewards” were often small shop vouchers and were issued to individuals who put a little extra into their work such as stayed to help other shift, produced a lot of work, but were mainly given out for people highlighting potential health and safety issues and coming up with a solution. 

Handy (1993)

Handy culture theory is that there are 4 different cultures. These cultures are :

Power:  the power culture is a culture where one person comes up with the rules and the company culture is similar to this personality.  This is often found in small companies with a head at the top and a small team beneath them and a very flat structure. This type of culture leads very little rules and decisions being made quickly by as the power is coming from one person

Role: This culture is very bureaucratic. The organisations have very clear structure and rules to follow. The power in this culture tends to follow a hierarchy so the higher your role or position the more power and influence you have. This is very common in the public services. The organisation is controlled by the roles they need and people work to fit a role and follow a job description.

Task: Tasks cultures are work/ organisations which revolve around the task at hand rather than people involved such as projects and project based companies. These cultures and organisations often involve a lot of team work which is made up of a range of personalities to get the most efficient team and cover all the tasks at hand.

Person: This culture exists within companies with a flat structure and where roles are created to fit the individuals working their. Theses can often be small family business of business with a specific profession such as Barristers, solicitors.

The issue with this theory is that is categorises companies into one culture. In cases of large companies such as BOC each site/ centre will have a different site manager, require different operations and staff. This means that not only will the company as a whole have a culture but each site/ centre will also have a culture depending on the style of work and employees. This example shows than a organisation can have two different cultures.

Also when to companies merge such the two cultures will come together. The culture will not match straight away and the newly merged organisation will take time for the cultures to merge and form a new culture. Organisations can change their culture over time. This can be done through changing the core beliefs of the company and ethics, this can be branched out to all staff with new systems structures and rules. A organisations may want to change its culture due to new technology, new legal/ political reasons or change of management/ owners.

Evaluation & Conclusion

An organisations culture is the core beliefs and the foundations of the companies rules and every day running of the company. A the strong culture can lead to employees having a basic understanding of the company as a whole and the why rules and systems are in place. The visual culture aspects that people see are small formal aspects that are their also to help with publicity and to give customers employees and the public a view of what the company beliefs are. The core culture is made up of the original beliefs of the people who built the company and they are passed down to who takes over from the core roles. Over time the culture can change as the core mangers, staff, customers, stakeholders change.