Organizational culture and its effects on workplace performance

¶ … PAKISTAN

CULTURE

Organizational culture, or corporate culture, comprises the attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values of an organization. It has been defined as "the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization. In this paper, I will be discussing the culture of an amazing small organization called InfoTech based in Karachi, Pakistan. This organization came into limelight when IBM awarded it Partner of the year award in 2003.

Layers of Organizational Culture

The three fundamental layers of organizational culture are:

Observable Artifacts

At the more visible level, the culture is manifested and represented by the artifacts. These include acronyms, manner of dress, awards, myths, stories, published lists of values, observable rituals, ceremonies decorations etc.

Dress Code at InfoTech

People at InfoTech are dressed formally.

Awards

1)InfoTech Awarded as the Top IBM Business Partner for the year 2003

InfoTech, for the third consecutive year, has been recognized as top IBM Business Partner winning all the three categories of the IBM Business Units. Top contribution awards for the three key area was for IBM Software, Enterprise Servers & Total Storage, and Personal Computing Division

2) People at InfoTech are awarded with extrinsic as well as intrinsic awards. They are awarded with praise, appreciation, recognition in addition to certain percentage of monetary target achieved

Success Stories

1) InfoTech Awarded as the Top IBM Business Partner for the year 2003

2) InfoTech Won Lenovo - Best Performance Award 2006

Published lists of values

InfoTech' values as stated on their website: "our code of business ethics is built around Corporate Governance by "people & principles" through well-defined roles, and empowering people to perform as Responsible Corporate Citizens.

Ceremonies and events

Example of one of events at InfoTech:

The first InfoTech Corporate Golf Outing took place on Saturday, December 16th in Royal Palm Golf Club & country club in Lahore. The event was a great success and thoroughly enjoyed by the participants.

Workplace

The Karachi office is located in phase 1, Defence, considered a posh-area.

The offices of InfoTech at Karachi are located on the ground and first floor with support team on the ground floor and sales team on the first.

Placing support team on the ground floor is one feature that differentiates InfoTech from other it firms, where the support team has offices usually in some isolated, deserted part of the building. Support team offices on the ground floor next to entrance shows how InfoTech cares and attends to all of its employees.

Values

Espoused Values

These are explicitly stated values and norms that are preferred by an organization:

InfoTech espoused values are as follows: "our code of business ethics is built around Corporate Governance by "people & principles" through well-defined roles, and empowering people to perform as Responsible Corporate Citizens

Enacted Values

These represent the values and norms that are actually exhibited or converted into employee behavior. Although one could find consistency and harmony between most of espoused and enacted values, most employees felt the processes and roles, as they claim to well defined, were so properly defined.

Basic Assumptions

These are underlying assumptions that are unobservable and represent the core of firm's culture. These are values so ingrained in the employees to the extent that they are taken for granted. They are highly resistance to change. The basic assumptions at InfoTech are that, they all believe in organization's employees' centered attitude and high performance.

FOUR FUNCTIONS of ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

The four functions of organizational culture are:

Organizational Identity:

At InfoTech, employees and customers were both highly valued. They believe that the satisfaction and loyalty of one leads to that of another. Thus, if employees were satisfied, they could work to satisfy customers, who will in turn respond positively which will further add to the satisfaction and loyalty of employees.

Collective Commitment:

At InfoTech, employees are highly dedicated and committed to providing such a high quality products and customer services that InfoTech services stand out and customers always remember their quality experience with InfoTech. And this high level of commitment is achieved through top management's interaction and frequently feedback requirements from employees at all levels.

Social System Stability:

At InfoTech, the environment was highly positive, active yet not stressful, conducive to personal growth and achievement with an air of professionalism with a touch of informality.

Sense-making device:

At InfoTech, employees understood InfoTech's mission and goal of providing a highly differentiated and customized product well. Each of them had a task to achieve and flat structure of InfoTech meant that employees felt they significantly contributed to the growth of organization

TYPES of ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

The general type of culture at InfoTech was " Constructive" with normative beliefs of "Achievement, Self-actualizing and Affiliative."

In a Constructive culture with main normative belief of Achievement, firms do things well and value members who set and accomplish their own goals. Members are expected to set challenging but realistic goals. Establish plans to achieve these goals and pursue them with enthusiasm.

At InfoTech, this was the one dominant culture. All members were ambitious and allowed to set achieve their targets, as they would think appropriate. These members were also appreciated and rewarded every time they were successful in achieving their goals.

In a Constructive culture with main normative belief of Self- actualizing, firms value creativity, quality over quantity and both task accomplishment and individual growth. Members are encouraged to gain enjoyment from their work, develop themselves and take on new and interesting activities.

At InfoTech, this was another prominent culture. InfoTech was known for its highly differentiated products. They aimed at providing a differentiated product rather than a low cost one. This means that a lot of creativity was required to come up with differentiated products of high quality. The employees were given different training courses to sharpen their skills and develop themselves.

Employees also encouraged and appreciated when they penetrated new markets and gained new clients even if profits margins were thin.

Another very prominent normative belief was that of affiliative. People at all levels interacted actively with each other. There was no formality between people at different levels.

How Cultures are embedded in the Organization?

Formal statements of organizational philosophy, mission, vision, values and material used for recruiting, selection and socialization

InfoTech mission statement states the following:

At InfoTech, customer satisfaction, employees satisfaction, quality, integrity, responsibility, entrepreneurship, creativity etc. were highly valued.

Examples:

Mission Statement

To enable our customers to sustain, grow and become high-performance businesses using our knowledge, skills & experiences.

To help achieve their business goals by leveraging best-in-class "need driven" industry practices. Our AIM is to implement "Performance-Centric" technology solutions using Collaborative Methodologies.

Vision

To remain a Trusted Technology Partner for our customers. We need to grow with our customers, locally as well as international

Slogans, language, acronyms and sayings

The latest slogan at InfoTech was " Reach Frequency Impact," which meant more market penetration (Reach), developing better relations with customers that produced frequent (Frequency), regular and loyal customers, which led to higher sales and profitability for the firm (Impact).

Deliberate role modeling, training programs, teaching and coaching by managers

At InfoTech, employees were given intensive and extensive training programs in customer service.

Explicit rewards, status symbols and promotion criteria

At InfoTech, employees were rewarded every time they achieved their goals in terms of more sales or more clients (wide-space accounts) with commissions and bonuses. Promotion was strictly based on performance.

Stories, legends and myths about key people and events

Success stories have already been mentioned.

Leader reactions to critical incidents and crises

At InfoTech senior managers were very considerate, calm and composed in critical situations. Instead of criticizing or scolding employees if they messed up, they were good listeners. Instead of doubting or suspecting employees of intentionally messing up, they tried to be considerate, understanding providing their best advices to solve problems.