When coming into or starting an organization, many things need to be decided upon for that organization. The organization’s mission statement, its business plan, and its structure are a few of the many things that need to be decided for that organization. One element that is extremely important to establish within an organization is the organization’s culture. An organization’s culture is extremely significant within an organization, and an organization’s culture can be determined from a variety of different types of cultures. Organizational culture can also be called a corporate culture and is defined as the set of shared, taken-for-granted implicit assumptions that a group holds and that determines how it perceives, thinks about, and reacts to its various environments. Each and every organization has its own type of organizational culture that sets it apart from other organizations. One reason organizational culture is vital to an organization is because the type Continue reading
Organizational Development
Five Important Organizational Cultural Models
Culture is often said “to eat strategy for breakfast” the implication that, regardless of how good a strategy is, unless specific initiatives are concentrated on changing people’s attitudes, behaviours and work practices, the strategy will fail. Understanding culture of an organisation can be quite the task especially in large companies with a number of employees and staff being very diverse culturally. With the help of Cultural Models, understanding the cultural situation becomes easier. Following are some of the existing Cultural Models. 1. Edgar Schein’s Model Edgar Schein’s model is one such which helps interpret what the cultural position is within the firm. To Schein, culture is dynamic and multi-faceted; it cannot be easily judged as good/bad, strong/weak, or effective/ineffective. Culture is contextual and lives within us as individuals as well as within groups of people. Edgar Schein believed that as employees go through various changes and adapt to the external Continue reading
Organizational Chart – Meaning, Definition, Features, Types, Advantages and Limitations
Organizational structure of a company can be shown in a chart. Such chart indicates how different departments are interlinked on the basis of authority and responsibility. It is a simple diagrammatic method of describing an Organizational structure. It indicates how the departments are linked together on the basis of authority and responsibility. Such organizational chart provides information of the organizational structure at a glance. Organizational chart is like a blue print of a building. It indicates the number and types of departments, superior-subordinate relationship, chain of command and communication. According to George Terry, organizational chart is “a diagrammatical form which shows important aspects of an organization, including the major functions and their respective relationships, the channels of supervision and the relative authority of each employee who is in-charge of each respective function”. Features of Organizational Chart The definition noted above indicates the following features of Organizational charts: Organizational chart is a Continue reading
The Nature of Organizational Change
Organizations introduce changes through people. Unless the people are willing to accept the need and responsibility for organizational change, intended changes can never be translated into reality. In addition, individuals have to learn to adapt their attitudes and behavioral patterns to constantly changing environments. Management of change involves both individual and organizational change. Individual change is behavioral change, which is determined by individual characteristics of members such as their knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, needs, expectations and skills. It is possible to bring about a total change in an organization by changing behaviors of individual members through participative and educative strategies. Although, the degree of difficulty involved in the change and the time taken to bring about the change will depend on the target of change. The attitudes towards change are largely dependent on the nature of the situation and the manner in which changes are initiated and executed. Changing individual behavior Continue reading
Process Consultation
The process consultation view has been advocated by Schein since late 60’s (first edition 1969). It belongs to activities of organization development (OD). OD is one of part of the organization processes which aim improving organizational and individual effectiveness. Process consultation (PC) is one of the OD techniques, enlisted with sensitivity training (self €improvement), survey feedback (introspection),team building (socializing), and role negotiation (changing roles and perception. The main argument of Schein for process consulting is to help people in organizations to help themselves. Process Consultation is the creation of a relationship with the client that permits the client to perceive, understand, and act on the process events that occur in the client’s internal and external environment in order to improve the situation as defined by the client. Edgar Schein, (1969) Process Consultation: Its role in organization development Process consultation is the reasoned and intentional interventions by the consultant, into the Continue reading
Process of Team Building
Team building attempts to improve effectiveness of the team by having team members to concentrate on: Setting goals and priorities for the team. Analyzing how team’s goals and priorities are linked to those of the organization. Analyzing how the work is performed. Analyzing how the team is working, and Analyzing the relationships among the members who are performing the job. The process of team building is a collection of steps which lead to a specific change in the approach among people, to make effective teams. Various steps of team building process are not one-shot action, rather, they are repetitive and cyclical. 1. Problem Sensing There are a number of ways in which problems of a team can be obtained. Often the team itself defines which aspects of team building it wishes to work on. This problem can better be identified in terms of what is hindering group effectiveness. At this Continue reading