THE NEED FOR ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Basically, organizational culture is the personality of the organization. Culture comprises the assumption, values, norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of organization members and their behaviours (Cater Manamara, 200: 143). Organization members soon come to sense the particular culture of an organization. Though culture is difficult to express distinctly, but everyone knows it when they sense it. 

For example, the culture of a large profit-making corporation is quite different from that of a hospital, which is also different from that of a polytechnic. You can tell culture of an organization by looking at the arrangement of furniture, what they brag about, what member wear etc. Corporate culture can be looked at as a system. Inputs include feed-back for example from the society, professions, laws, stories, heroes on the competition or services etc. The process is based on our assumptions, values and norms, example our values on money, time, facilities, space and people. Output or efforts of our culture are for example organizational behaviours, technologies, strategies, images, products, services, appearances etc (Cater Manamara, 200: 144).

 Culture is particular importance when attempting to manage organizational wide change. Practitioners are coming to realize that despite the best-laid plan, organizational change must include not only changing structures and processes but also changing the organizational culture as well. Since organizational member, have no instinct to direct their actions, their behaviour must be based on guide-lines that are learned. In other for organization to operate effectively, these guide-lines must be shared by its members. Without a shared culture, members of the organization would be unable to communicate and cooperate, which invariably will result to confusion and disorderliness among members martin Holborn et al, 2006: 416). This implies culture has two essential qualities,

Viz:

. It is learned and

. It is shared.

Without it, there would be no human society let alone organization.