What is Organisational Culture

People recognise organisational culture when they see it. Take Google for example. We all know their ubiquitous logo, the stories about their campus and canteen, the casual atmosphere and dress code. Google has a strong organisational culture that is well recognised and known.

But outside of a funky office space and dress code that allows sneakers, what is organisational culture? How do you develop one and in what ways do employees react?

For organisations, their culture is a vehicle to design and influence employee behaviours and a means to communicate overarching thoughts and a vision of what it means to be a member of the company. Culture sets shared rules that govern cognitive and affinitive behaviours and the means whereby they are shaped and expressed.

We can observe organisational culture within company practices and the more overt elements of an organisation such as office layout or furniture.

Practices can be formal such as company policies, codes of conduct, standard operating procedures as well as job descriptions, job bands and an organisation chart. It can also include more informal practices such as clothing and dress code, and communication style of meetings.

Other observational by-products of culture are company logos, the technology an organisation uses (think Mac or PC, and what connotation that may give off), the architecture or layout of the office or premises, social events and the story of the company’s founding. We all know of the story of Facebook from the movie.

Organisational culture plays into everyday work lives from the clothes we choose to wear, to water cooler chatter, to meeting structure and frequency, to what mementos we display on our desks. That’s if we have an allocated desk in the age of hot desks.

Management can engineer organisation culture through company philosophies, CEO addresses, mission statements and these tend to focus on the collaborative, shared story of what ‘we’ do in a business. Internal expert opinion and external testimonials can also be used to generate objective stories giving credibility and independence to the culture a company wants to promote.

Strong, successful organisational cultures act as mechanisms of control. It will make people act in a certain way and do certain things. It will direct the required efforts by employees through controlling underlying experiences, thoughts and feelings that drive their actions. Often it will be instilled implicitly and subtly without employees knowing it and it’s often de-centralised. Companies will see engaged employees with high job satisfaction and a strong commitment to company goals.

However, this can sound quite sinister and comes across as a means of repressing and capturing individual’s souls.

On occasion, organisations can come across almost cult-ish, where the boundary between brainwashing and individual thought becomes lost. What does this do to an individual’s sense of worth and self? Do people really embrace a strong organisational culture or do they feel like a tool at the direction of the company? Certainly, there is an argument that the higher you go up the management chain, the price of power is submission.

Response to culture is most commonly seen through the expression of commitment and role embracement. But it can also be seen through demonstrations of self-aware behaviours – the employee that shows independence but also buys into company process and methodology is often more effective and has a greater connection amongst colleagues and peers.

Successful organisational cultures will embrace the normative and cognitive control mechanisms but also leave room for the individual. They will encourage a distinct separation between work-self and personal-self, they will allow employees to hold a fair relationship with their employer, and they will encourage independent thought framed by common sense and lack of emotional attachment.

Matthew Woodall is an Energy sector Search specialist with over 20 years in the industry. For further insights and regular industry updates please connect with him on LinkedIn.