Organizational culture is fundamentally about symbolic meaning and as such cannot be managed. Discuss - Essay Example

The key factors that have contributed to the importance of organisational culture are globalisation, extensive networks of society and dynamics of ever changing social aspects that have created a work environment that has a diverse culture worldwide (Lann, 2008). Organisational culture plays a pivotal role in allowing the organization to gain a competitive edge in its industry and also becoming successful in the business world with a huge market share. The employees are the key elements that make or break the firm as they are ones who execute the objectives and goals of the organisation.

It is important for the organisations to adapt to the organisational culture as required because diversions may lead to conflict of opinion and interest in the organisation. Both the employers and employees need to work together with each other in complete harmony so that desired level of success and results can be achieved by the firm. Within the last two decades of the 20th century, the practitioners and scholars have been approaching the firms from soft perspectives of individuals as human beings who join the corporations with particular beliefs and values.

These beliefs and values play an important role towards the behaviour and attitudes of the employees in the organisation. . t things for human beings as reflected in the Elton Mayo theory, hence organisations should ensure that they value their employees in all perspectives. Satisfied employees tend to be more productive at workplace and they also tend to respect their organisational culture. According to Gareth Morgan, cited by Ravasi and Schultz (2006), the cultural perspective is one of the interesting and possible metaphors that can be used to understand the functioning and operations of an organisation.

The main areas that are focused by the researchers following this perspective are interpreting the ways people do their thinking so that their feeling and actions can be easily conceptualised by the set of values that have been encompassed in the broader perception of culture (Sun, 2008). The thought process of an individual impacts the way job roles are handled at work and also impacts the way employees perceive things at workplace. The perception of employees are also dependent upon their treatment in the organisation by the supervisors and peers.

This cultural perspective has both limitations and strengths and has made valuable contributions in the field of organisational research. During the studies by many researchers, one of the primary virtues of cultural metaphor was identified that directed the attention towards the significance of symbolic interaction in the organisation. Before the development of symbolic-interpretive perspective, the major emphasis was on the functionalist perspective which stated that culture is an integral part of the organisation that is defined by the management (Bako, 2010).

The symbolic-interpretive perspective was valued by the researchers because it allowed them to study how the organisations have strong roots in their shared systems of meaning. It