Organizational Culture and its Impact on Productive Performance
Organizational Culture has the power to determine the characteristics of the work environment and quality at the workplace. Defining culture is a difficult and organizations tend to rely on pure assumption when they are hiring an employee who will be the perfect fit for the organization. Culture can be described as the environment which in which the organization functions in (Langton, Robbins and Judge 2013). Culture plays a bigger role in shaping the work environment, building work relationships and defining work processes. Culture often acts like a personality whereby the personality of an individual is made of values, beliefs and assumptions along with habits, upbringing and personal behavior. The main purpose of the given essay is to throw light on the statement-` “It is better to rely on stereotypes than to enter into a relationship with someone from another culture without any idea of what they believe`. The statement will be analyzed based on various theories related to Organizational behaviour theories (Wilson 2017). The statement will be analyzed and the problems to the statement along with the merit of building organizational relationships with people belonging to the same culture.
Very often organizations tend to believe that they should be surrounded by employees who are one with their cultural fit. A fit can be described as a situation whereby there exists congruence between the different values and norms of the employee engaged and the organization (Samnani 2013). According to the psychologist John Morse, a good cultural fit between various members of the organization has various positive outcomes. This fit may be a result of various reasons like a similar culture, similar background and others. A fit of the different employees of an organization or between the organization and the employee may result in a greater job satisfaction (Wilson 2018). If the employees believe that they are similar to others and that they can share their feelings with each other then it increases their job satisfaction. Secondly, working with the employees with a similar culture helps them in their identification with the company which helps in building the trust. It helps them in becoming more committed and the turnover rate and the employees then reflect superior job performance.
Cultural fit has also shown a benefit with the mental and physical health. The correlation between cultural fit and positive outcome is 0.43 which states that cultural fit is important for job satisfaction (Lawrence and Lee 2013).However, as globalization has increased; cultural diversity has become very important. An organization is a storehouse of various activities and these activities require specialized experiences and efforts. It is often not possible for a single company to hire culturally similar people who possess all essential quality required. It is very important to go against these stereotypes. An organization starts believing that working with the same people will help it to prosper but this is not the case and engaging in a diverse workforce and workplace relationship is actually beneficial for the organization (De Vries 2013). Given below are certain reasons, why an organization should engage in relationships with employees from diverse backgrounds.
Cultural Fit between Employees and Organizations
Cultural Diversity in workplace is very important as it strives to make all individuals in an organization feel that they are equal and helps the people belonging from all socio economic backgrounds comfortable working for the organization. Engaging in relationships with individuals from varied backgrounds in an organization also provides equal opportunities to everyone and helps them to develop in their career. It promotes ethical behaviour in an organization and makes all individual respect one another (Gagné, Sharma and De Massis 2014). It also helps in promotion of equality. Furthermore, diversity has also been proposed by legal considerations and non-discrimination standards. There are penalties if any business organization is unable to comply with the diverse standards. The companies can benefit from engagement with diverse cultures by being exposed to new customers, business partners and internal performance procedures. These help in the improvement of business opportunities. With respect to an organization, the given benefits can be derived from engaging in workforce diverse relationships.
Diverse cultural relationship perspectives help in inspiration of creativity and encourage innovation drive. When individuals interact with people from different backgrounds, a culturally advanced environment develops which promotes sharing of ideas among one another and development of new processes. This is because people belonging to different backgrounds have different experiences which can be deployed easily in the given business environment of the business.
Engaging in diverse culture relationships also help to gain knowledge about local market which then helps in making the given business competitive and profitable. A business which has a diverse range of employees will be able to gather a culturally diverse information which shall act as a competitive advantage for the concerned business (Barry and Wilkinson 2016).This competitive advantage may then be helpful in making the business profitable.
A relationship with an employee who is beyond the cultural background of another individual or the organization may also go a long way in helping to proposer cultural sensitivity, insight and knowledge about the customer and their perceptions. The different employees help in contributing their ideas which then improves the products offered by the business and helps in serving the better market for the firm. It also helps in development of higher product quality and target marketing. The knowledge shared by the employees is then utilized by the different members of the organization to improve their target customer base.
Furthermore, a culturally diverse talent pool helps an organization to attract and retain the best talent available in an organization. An organization should be working with the best talent available and this can be possible only when the organization employs people based on their capability and not on their cultural background (Arnulf et al. 2014). When the best talent available is hired in an organization then the organization will be easily able to perform well and stand out amongst its competitors in the business environment.
Benefits of Engaging in Relationships with Employees from Diverse Backgrounds
According to Davenport (2015), diverse teams whereby the employees have a stronger relationship with one another tend to perform better. The logic behind this is quite simple and believes that the expertise of all cultures can be utilized to achieve greater results. It goes a long way in offering a broader range of products and services to the customers by taking in the experience and ideas of the various members of the organization. Each culture has a different approach and thinking and this might come in useful when an organization will be able to utilize this in actual business practice.
The Resource Based theory of cultural diversity management tends to show the impact of the implementation of varied diversity at workplace on the organizational resources. There are various resources available at work which needs to be used in an organization like financial capital, physical and human capital. The given set o resources tend to enhance the operations of the business (Alas and Mousa 2016). It is the duty of the organization to see to it that these resources are utilized efficiently and the production of the business is improved. The given theory states that from the point of view of the business, cultural diversity within an organization encourages better performance as compared to a homogenous workforce performance. When culturally diverse workforce is present in the organization then the innovation is improved. Furthermore, the firms who have diverse management practices experience lower levels of workforce turnover and better performance.
Various organizations have realized the importance of employing a culturally diverse workforce and this leads to a better performance (Robbins, Judge and Langton 2013). These organizations include companies like Samsung, Apple, FedEx, Woolworths and others. However, as observed a culturally diverse environment is beneficial and the company can foster an environment using various methods like conducting multicultural events. These events may range from professional events to cultural events and can bring the various employees closer to one another. The various members in an organization need to accept the change with an open mind and ignore the stereotypes that exist in an organization. Engaging in relationships which are culturally diverse will help in building relationships where one can learn something different and new as well.
Therefore it can be stated that an organization needs to incorporate a culturally diverse workforce as it is beneficial. Individuals within an organization very often tend to have a stereotype that they should only engage in employment relations with those who belong to the same culture because they are not aware of the thinking of others. However, this should not be the case and the employees and organization should foster an environment that will enable the formation of relationships with varied backgrounds which are useful. The essay has used the Resource Based Diverse theory and reflected how engaging in the relationships with the different culturally diverse relationship is beneficial for all dimensions of an organization and its employees.
References
Alas, R. and Mousa, M., 2016. Organizational culture and workplace spirituality. International journal of emerging research in management and technology, 5(3), pp.285-314.
Arnulf, J.K., Larsen, K.R., Martinsen, Ø.L. and Bong, C.H., 2014. Predicting survey responses: How and why semantics shape survey statistics on organizational behaviour. PloS one, 9(9), p.e106361.
Barry, M. and Wilkinson, A., 2016. Pro?social or pro?management? A critique of the conception of employee voice as a pro?social behaviour within organizational behaviour. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 54(2), pp.261-284.
Davenport, T.O., 2015. Thriving at work: How organizational culture affects workplace fulfillment. People and Strategy, 38(3), p.38.
De Vries, M.F.K., 2013. Organizational paradoxes: Clinical approaches to management. Routledge.
Gagné, M., Sharma, P. and De Massis, A., 2014. The study of organizational behaviour in family business. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 23(5), pp.643-656.
Langton, N., Robbins, S.P. and Judge, T.A., 2013. Fundamentals of organizational behaviour. Pearson Education Canada.
Lawrence, P. and Lee, R., 2013. Organizational Behaviour (RLE: Organizations): Politics at Work. Routledge.
Robbins, S.P., Judge, T. and Langton, N., 2013. Fundamentals of organizational behaviour. W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library.
Samnani, A.K., 2013. The early stages of workplace bullying and how it becomes prolonged: The role of culture in predicting target responses. Journal of business ethics, 113(1), pp.119-132.
Wilson, F.M., 2017. Organizational behaviour and gender. Routledge.
Wilson, F.M., 2018. Organizational behaviour and work: a critical introduction. Oxford University Press.