Corporate Culture, Structure And Design

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie
Published: 21st April 2017

PART A

Culture and management

Organizational culture is a reflection of how things are done within a corporate sphere. It involves what the company considers’ right or wrong. There are different types of organizational culture but they can be categorized into: 1) team first culture – this kind of company hire those that are fit for their team culture first, before considering those with necessary skills and competence: 2) elite culture – these companies are usually out to change the world with untested ideas; 3) horizontal culture – everybody is equal here and title doesn’t mean much; 4) conventional culture – based on bureaucracy and hierarchy; and 5) progressive culture – it features a lot of uncertainties in the company as employees don’t really know what to expect (Deal and Kennedy, 2011).

Overall, the culture adopted by a company does reflect on its management approaches. Past studies have indicated that this is necessary in order to ensure that the company is able to attain its desired goals. Since the culture of a company reflects what is obtainable, there is also the need for the management to ensure that necessary strategies are applied towards attaining such corporate objective (Iloka, 2014). For instance, if a company wants to improve on its performance, it must adopt the right culture (e.g. progressive and horizontal) to increase production, sales and effectively improve on its performance.

In the modern business world, internationalization and globalization had forced corporations towards cultural changes. Such changes should reflect high level of cultural intelligence in order to ensure that the company is culturally aligned with its customers. One of the most highlighted feature in this week’s lecture is the importance of cultural intelligence when it comes to developing a successful organization. Cross-cultural intelligence can be defined to involve acquiring necessary cultural awareness about someone and other people; recognizing the importance of ethnocentrism between these cultures; understanding the outcomes of cultural assumptions; and learning new approaches for improving effective working relations, business styles across global culture, cultural differences in terms of communication style, and the impact of virtual communication on intercultural settings (Goodman, 2012).

In essence, the understanding presented in this week’s lecture is that culture is integral for the success of a company. How a company undertakes its business process and the outcome of such processes can easily be linked to the company’s cultural views. Thus, in a situation where a company desires to advance its performance, a shift in culture (from conventional to progressive or horizontal) is necessary. Finally, it can be concluded that the culture of a company is directly correlated with the company’s performance.

Organizational structure and design

While culture is the way things are done in the organization, structure represent who performs the duties, and when the duties are performed (Iloka, 2014). It is used to analyze the level of accountability and hierarchy in management. There are different structures in an organization but they are grouped as either bureaucratic or non-bureaucratic structure (Deal and Kennedy, 2011).

A bureaucratic structure is a rigid form of structure. This is featured in most of the multination and large firms. There are strict procedures for undertaking designated jobs and job titles are well defined with high level of hierarchy. Thus, accountability is more effective as each job process can be linked directly to a given individual. On the other hand, non-bureaucratic features a flexible corporate structure and it is mostly adopting in small and medium enterprises. There is no definitive job titles or designations are people can be employed to undertake certain tasks that are outside of their defined roles in the company.

No matter the kind of structure within a company, the process is designed to feature corporate culture and objectives. As indicated in the week four lectures, a bureaucratic company will normally adopt conventional culture that is based on hierarchy. Additionally, decision making process will be slow with a slower performance when compared with the flexible setting where employees are empowered to make necessary decisions. Similar with culture, the structure and design of a given company does impact directly on the performance of such company. For instance, a company that desires to improve its performance must be willing to adopt a flexible structure and design that empowers staffs to make certain decisions while also being responsible for the outcome of such decisions. Thus, organizational culture is inter-related with structure and design and they both had direct influence on the performance of a company.

PART B

A personal point of view

From a personal point of view, the arguments are correct. I have experienced working within a progressively cultured company that is based on non-bureaucratic structure. It was an IT firm that offered IT services such as Website designing, SEO marketing, E-commerce and other related services. Considering the variety of services offered, decisions making was make flexible so that staffs can go about their tasks (e.g. coding and testing of codes) without much control from the management, but the staffs are also accountable to the outcome of such decision (that is to say, the website must work as expected).

Such level of control allows the company to deliver higher orders within short period of time. The main factor behind this is that staffs feel highly motivated. Although we work for a company, we feel like it is our own company as we make decisions that relate to our job outcomes. Accountability is also easier and job appraisal more effective because each outcome can be related to a given individual. Employee turnover intention was greatly reduced with performance significantly improved ad sustainable.

Therefore, it is easily understandable that corporate culture and structure have direct influence on the performance of a company, validating all features of week 3 and 4 as delivered in their associated lectures. This is because personal experience shows that under the right culture and structure; employees are motivated, turnover rate is reduced, productivity is enhanced, accountability and appraisal is enhanced, and overall performance of the company significantly improved. In essence, companies that are under performing need to analyze their culture and structure as such could be the bridge between where they are and where they desire to be.

References

Goodman, N. (2012) 'Training for cultural competence', Industrial and Commercial Training, 44 (1), pp.47 - 50.

Iloka, B. C. (2014). Cross-cultural competence: understanding challenges of instilling cross-cultural intelligence in the workforce. Available at: http://ilokabenneth.blogspot.com.ng/2014/03/cross-cultural-competence-understanding.html [Accessed on: 29^th July 2016].

Deal T. and Kennedy A. (2011). Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life. New York, NY: Perseus Books Publishing.