Organizational Cultures - Essay Example

To begin with, organizational culture is the personality or a face of an organization. Organizational culture consists of the assumptions, stereotypes, believes, values, norms, and artifacts of the members of taken organization (McNamara). The corporate culture of organization can be easily seen simply by the way people relate to each other, the way they communicate, whether they possess esprit de corps, etc. Briefly, it can be said that the basic functions of organizational culture are to give the staff a sense of identity, to promote commitment, and to enhance stability in the corporation.

There are different types of organizational cultures just like there are different types of personal cultures. Herein I would like to present the following four types of cultures. Academy Culture is a culture in which employees are highly trained and tend to stay in the organization, while working their way up the hierarchical pyramid. Examples of such organizations are universities, hospitals, and large corporations. Baseball Team Culture is the culture where each employee is in high demand and can easily get employment elsewhere.

Good examples of organizations with such cultures are fast-paced, risky companies, such as investment banking, advertising, PR agencies, etc (Curry). Club Culture is a culture which is comprised of employees who are trained to work in closely-knit groups. Examples of organizations possessing this type of culture are the military, as well as law and notary firms. Fortress Culture, is the most unstable culture from the mentioned above, because in its framework employees do not know whether they should expect to be laid off or not (Curry).

Examples of organizations possessing fortress culture are savings and loans companies and car manufacturing companies (McNamara).Organizational culture can also be described in regard to three levels that were first introduced by Edgar Schein, a professor who has left a notable mark in the field of organizational culture. The fist and most visible level is behaviors and artifacts. This evident level consists of behavior patterns and external expression of culture. Artifacts and behavior usually tell us what the group of people is doing, though when observing behaviors it is impossible to understand the reasons behind the particular actions (National Defense University).

At the next level of culture are values. Values bring about and determine behavior, they give us explanations that are behind the actions of staff, however, they are not directly observable, as behaviors are. The last and deepest level of culture is the level of assumptions and beliefs. Once understanding