Adaptive Culture and Cultural Artifacts - Essay Example

6 March Fostering an Adaptive Culture and Assessing Our Organization’s Culture Strength Adaptive Culture McShane, Olekalns, and Travaglione (425-426) identified at least four characteristic requisites for fostering an adaptive culture; the workforce has to (1) “embrace an open-systems perspective;” (2) “take responsibility for the organization’s performance;” (3) acknowledge the need for “continuous improvement;” and (4) have a “strong learning organization.” To acquire such requisites entails hard work from both organization and its workforce.

This hard work includes the fluidity of information-sharing from the internal (organization) to the external environment (stakeholders). While the organization needed to know every accurate detail about its stakeholders, the latter also needed to provide an honest and realistic output of needs or wants that are to be fulfilled. In other words, information is the framework of those mentioned requisites; its timing and accuracy significantly determine the capability of the organization to process and integrate it with the organizational processes and practices.

Moreover, all other aspects that serve to shape an organizational culture has to be taken into consideration -- its level of impact on organizational culture should determine its ability to be incorporated in the whole adaptive culture-framework. While in general, these aspects are conveniently referred to as processes and practices, in specific it includes policies, competencies, reinforced norms, et cetera. A more binding reinforcement for an organization aspiring an adaptive culture is the top management’s commitment.

Additionally, the organization’s people should be tirelessly reminded of the purpose of such adaptive culture. Both commitment and purpose are consistent ‘reinforcers’ of any desired organizational culture, and adaptive culture is no exception. Cultural Artifacts I think that our organization has a relatively strong culture. First, because everybody knows what and who we do for; more than just profit or bonuses, we serve people. Every business unit, whether directly or indirectly involved, recognized its part in the whole value chain.

In other words, each of us, from top to the bottom level, could identify ourselves in the organization’s collective mantra. Moreover, this recognition is reinforced through the individual integration of our own task to the company’s core task. Second, our Human Resource Recruitment filters the entrant workers; they make sure that the individual’s goals are well aligned or approximately paralleled with the company’s. Moreover, the HR people look at the adaptive competency of the aspiring entrant -- the ability to adopt the company’s mantra into his or her own.

Third, while our organization had an existing culture, it was set to be flexible and open to changes, as well as feedback either from the top management, to the middle, and first-level employees. Additionally, our organization continuously listens to and solicits from the external environment. In fact, the organization both internally and externally, expresses its appreciation for the collaboration it had grown to establish with its stakeholders. This commitment to check on external feedback had successfully cascaded in the middle and first-line employees.

Evidently, our culture reaped more rewards in establishing a strong organizational culture. Our culture being adept to the external environment has continuously provided us the ability to be receptive of change. Everybody in the organization has recognized change to be the common factor of our efforts to provide the best service to our customers. Work CitedMcShane, Steven L., Mara Olekalns, and Tony Travaglione. Organisational BehaviourOn The Pacific Rim. 3rd ed. New South Wales: McGraw-Hill Australia, 2010. Print.