Organizational Culture and Human
Resources Management
Organizational culture is all about the beliefs, values, and
assumptions that people gain through learning and engaging within a community (Schein,
2004). It helps to cope up with problems through experience. It is known
that these organizational cultures cannot be changed or developed within a very short period of time as it consists of rituals, routines, and many more
components which take time to develop (Zahra et al, 2004).
It has been found that corporate culture is heavily linked
with employee behaviour which indicates that in other words, culture is about
the way people do things within an organization (Baker, 2002). Being a crucial
element within an organization, human resources has a strong connection to a
company's performance through the influence it has on organizational culture
(Armstrong, 2009). Therefore, one can say that corporate culture and human
resource management practices and connected.
As one of the major functions of HRM is employee motivation,
the link between HRM and organizational culture can be explained through
"The competing values framework of organisational culture" (Bradley
and Parker, 2001). According to Bradley and Parker (2001), in the "human
relations model", the focus is on flexibility and internal aspects which
eventually helps to increase the level of employee motivation. In this
framework, training will be used to achieve employee motivation where it leads
to a group culture, which develops trust (Figure 1).
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Source: Adopted from Bradley and Parker (2001) |
Furthermore, Bradley and Parker (2006) explain that
employees tend to want a culture which values human relations. As Gomez (2004)
explains, it is the role of HRM to develop strategies which promote
higher-level performance at work. Essential HRM practices such as recruitment,
selection, training and development and rewarding can influence the employee
behaviour which would support the cause of cultural development within an
organization.
On the other hand, the values which are found within a
culture act as an external impact on human resource practices of a company as
the culture shapes individual behaviour (Dessler, 2013). For example, the case
of Enron Corp can be taken. For a company which has done well financially and
ethically on the surface, the reason for it to ethically breakdown in front of
the questionings from the external sector was identified as the “organizational
culture”. HRM within an organization is dedicated to developing an ethical work
behaviour and no rules can support that process unless the organizational
culture supports such standards. Furthermore,
the case concludes that the workforce needs to feel responsible and accountable
for their behaviour and speak up against unethical actions which is a pattern
that is derived from not laws, but cultural values (Clinton et al, 2006).
It is important for managers/leaders to have an effective
attitude to have better employee relations as a major purpose of HRM. This
facilitates a better organizational culture as the leadership style is being
reflected through it. This means, whatever the culture adopted by the
management, it should be always supported through human resources practices
(Gomez, 2004).
Armstrong, M. (2009). Armstrong’s handbook for human resource management. 11th ed. India
Bradley, L. and R. Parker (2001) Organisational Culture in the Public Sector, Report for the Institute of Public Administration Australia, Australia
Bradley, L., R. Parker. (2006) Do Australian public sector employees have the type of culture they want in the era of new public management? Australian Journal of Public Administration, 65(1). pp.89-99
Clinton, Macintosh, Norman. (2006). Management Control Practice and Culture at Enron: The Untold Story. Advances in Management Accounting. [Online] Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228299701_Management_Control_Practice_and_Culture_at_Enron_The_Untold_Story
Dessler, G. (2013). Human Resources Management. (13th Ed). Pearson Education Inc. Prentice Hall. United States of America.
Gomez, C. (2004). The influence of environmental, organizational, and HRM factors on employee behaviours in Subsidiaries. A Mexican Case study. Journal of World Business.
Schein, E.H.(2004) Organizational Culture and Leadership, (3rd Ed.), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Zahra, S. A., Hayton, J. C., Salvato, C. (2004).
Entrepreneurship in Family Vs. Non- family firms. Entrepreneurship theory and
practice.
Majority of today’s organizational workplaces are represented by four different generations of employees, namely traditionalist (Matures/Veterans), Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y (Millennial) (Gladwell & Dorwart et al., 2010). Managers must understand the values and attitudes of each generation to effectively influence the different generations’ satisfaction (Gladwell & Dorwart et al., 2010). Employees from different generations require different management strategies when it comes to recruiting, retaining and motivating employees (Glass, 2007).
ReplyDeleteFurther there are different types of cultures such as strong, weak and learning cultures which can further explore based on many different attributes (Baker, 2002)
DeleteEmployees tend to want a culture which values human relations. It is the role of HRM to develop strategies which promote higher-level performance at work. Enron Corp's breakdown was due to a lack of cultural support for ethical work behavior. The workforce needs to feel responsible and accountable for their behavior and speak up against unethical actions (Dessler, 2013).
ReplyDeleteThe organizational culture concept became important both because of what it drew attention to and what it enabled. It underlined the fact that organizations were multidimensional, and that how individuals made sense of and felt about them could often be more important than what figures revealed about them (Thompson, 2001).
ReplyDeleteOrganizational culture is a widely used term but one that seems to give rise to a degree of ambiguity. For the past number of decades, most academics and practitioners studying organizations suggest the concept of culture is the climate and practices that organizations develop around their handling of people (Schein, 2004). Furthermore, some proponents suggest that the concept of culture should take on board the way organizations do business as well as the way they handle people. y they handle people.
ReplyDeleteWatson (2006) emphasizes that an important trend in managerial thinking in recent decades has been one of encouraging managers to try to create strong organizational cultures. ‘It has been recognized that it would help managers enormously in the struggle for control if they could get all their employees to subscribe to the beliefs inscribed in a corporate bible - especially if they themselves could write this bible’ (p.256, Watson, 2006).
HRM influences internal work culture and human resource management practices, and therefore human resource management in an organization is very important to understand that the employees are agreeing and in line with the change requirements of the organization culture to perform better(Deller, 2000).
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ReplyDeleteAccording to Martins and Terblanche (2003), culture is deeply associated with values and beliefs shared by personnel in an organization. Organizational culture relates the employees to Organization’s values, norms, stories, beliefs and principles and incorporates these assumptions into them as activity and behavioral set of standards. On the other hand, individuals need supportive organizational culture to help them reach individual objectives. Thus, an organization is a consciously coordinated system where characteristics of individuals, groups and organization interact with each other and effective interaction among them highly depends on organizational culture that shapes the individual performance, (Kozlowski and Klein, 2000).
ReplyDeleteKanungo and his associates (Kanungo & Jaeger, 1990; Mendonca & Kanungo, 1994), asserts that the sociocultural environment affects internal work culture and human resource management (HRM) practices.
ReplyDeleteCulture is learnt over a period of time. Schein (1984) suggests that there are two ways in which this learning takes place. First, the trauma model, in which members of the organization learn to cope with some threat by the erection of defence mechanisms. Second, the positive reinforcement model, where things that seem to work become embedded and entrenched. Learning takes place as people adapt to and cope with external pressures, and as they develop successful approaches and mechanisms to handle the internal challenges, processes and technologies in their organization.
ReplyDeleteAs the ‘caretaker’ of organizations culture, HR should practice below to ensure a smooth continuum of the process (SHRM, 18).
ReplyDeleteBeing a role model for the organization's beliefs.
Reinforcing organizational values.
Ensuring that organizational ethics are defined, understood and practiced.
Enabling two-way communications and feedback channels.
Defining roles, responsibilities and accountabilities.
Providing continuous learning and training.
Sustaining reward and recognition systems.
Encouraging empowerment and teams.
Promoting a customer-supplier work environment.
Recognizing and solving individual and organizational problems and issues.
It is quite evident that organizational culture and HR are complementary components and the inefficiency of either would have a drastic impinge on the other (Singh, A 2013).
The correlation analysis has been used to infer the relationship between variables of HRM practices and organizational culture. A healthy culture is required for utilizing and enhancing employee competencies and to develop people. There is a positive significant relationship between HRM practices and variables of organizational culture operationalized in terms of self-realization, status enhancement, inventive values and socio economic support ( Singh, 2010)
ReplyDeletecore function of organizational culture is to facilitate the development of human potential, including its innovative and creative potential. Organizational culture management is in a direct interaction with human resource management. organizational culture in a context of human resource management (HRM). organizational culture is an environment for a positive or negative development of the human potential (Dubkevics and Barbars, 2010).
ReplyDeleteCorporate culture is a concept of human resource management that is used to promote the common culture within a company and organization. Culture promotes good work relationships and promotes ethical communication between employees. It helps employees make decisions in situations where they do not yet have formal rules or policies in place (Kumar,A.2016).
ReplyDelete