Organizational culture refers to the shared value, beliefs, behavior, customs, norms, attitudes, assumptions and hopes that are shared by people or group of members in an organization and the way they work with each other. It is also a combination of understandings which is shared by a group of people. It has a strong influence & effect on employee's behavior as well as their performance.
There is one example of organization culture like when working within a company, they have their own culture e.g. burger king, they have same uniform code for the employees which includes in rules and regulation of the company (work place environment) but other company's they obviously have different dress code so it is organization culture that they all have same dressing sense during the work. It has a powerful and long-term effect. Staff has benefits to communicate with each other. It is very cooperative that has internal focus on the authorized of the employees. There are good team work, partnership, power sharing and responsibility. All have a friendly nature and the atmosphere is like a family. Feel in relation and inter-relation. It is an adaptive culture and stable.
Ethnic culture refers to sizable group of people having a common culture, racial, traditions, language, religion and nationality etc. in other words it is the way of life a group of people or society who have pattern of thoughts, behavior, rituals, beliefs and traditions like Indian groups of people. There are some differences between these two cultures:
Ethnic cultural people behave according to their traditions, backgrounds but in organization culture they behave as a rule on their work as well another culture.
Ethnic culture may create impact on their leadership styles, communication, attitude, behavior, thinking, thoughts and team work but organizational culture create a great effect because corporate culture is the greatest strength for an organization.
Both cultures have attachments of individuals. Leaders can change their style to train their employees.
Both have a variety and diversity in their culture. There are involving a no. of people in the culture.
Organization culture is created by own business variety of people. It creates by management, owner, employees or manager. Ethnic cultural create by combination of common people and common group of same nation or religion.
Organization culture's duration may be too short, quickly changed and depends upon company. It is flexible as per company or market requirement but ethnic culture have long duration because they attach to them religion, traditions and nation so it's very hard to change their culture.
Leadership example from a culture:
Each organization has its own culture perceptions which influence the leadership styles. Leader of the company will need to adapt the cultural perception and internal values in order to greatest approach the individual needs of the worker. This is the routine, rituals, and the way we do things. E.g. in supermarkets there are lots of staffs from different culture like Chinese, Maori an, Indian, kiwis, Fiji's etc. its direct effect on the leadership styles of a leader. Leaders have to change their leadership style according to cultural environment. He should treat equal with all cultural people with in the organizations. An expert leader needs to find ways to discuss with followers from a variety of cultural backgrounds. There are five cultural dimensions in the organization are:
Power distance: it refers to the extent to which members of the organization expect & accept that power must be shared unequally. It based on power, authority, responsibility, status and wealth on the person (like the family). Low PD cultures expect more equal sharing of power. Mangers and staff are considering almost as equals and using good team work. They use more democratic leadership style.
Individualism or collectivism: In individualism, everyone expect to care for their family, there is a lack of interpersonal relation and less sharing of responsibility, but in collectivism, extent to which people pride, strong, reliability & cohesive in the organization & families. People are devoted to their organization & families.
Masculinity & femininity: it refers to the distribution of roles between men and female with values and traditional roles. Men allowed being responsive and women can work hard for qualified success. In new generation women and men working together in many professions. Men describes here masculine and women are feminine.
Uncertainty Avoidance Index: it relates to the tolerance of societies for uncertainty and doubt. It tries to reduce confusing situations whenever possible by rules & strict laws. They accept new change and tolerate risk.
Long Term Orientation: it refers to create long term & short term plans and actions. It has a strong work ethic, values & traditions. They believe in achieving goals with saving and having patience.
So Culture influences on leadership styles and helps conclude whether the style is democratic, autocratic, and participative or delegate.
Our culture perception will be impact on our behavior. My culture perception would recommend power distance (high/low power), it can be influence the leadership style of the leader because leader & there members act together on several levels as their equal and share power equal. I give above example of the super market, there leaders have responsibility to take a decision and followers follow their decision. But they might talk to employees before taking decision and share problems with followers, get their suggestions to take a decision. It is good where followers are skillful and their consultation is very necessary. For example, Roster manager consult their employees to get suggestion before shifting roster. It may help motivation and employees feel rights of the firm. They believe in the need to maintain their staffs. It maintains good relation between the staff. They treat equally with their employees from different -2 backgrounds. If need to change their styles then they change their style & behavior to influence the staff. One of my friend working in the supermarket, he said there are good relation with leaders and staff. Leaders are traits including aspects of personality, needs, motives and value. They treat their subordinate with respect and leaders may often socialize with employees.
With high power distance in the organization, employees are often scared to express their ideas and suggestions with their paternalistic boss. But in low power distance, leaders and employees may consult each other. Some time superior treat with employees is strictly and all staffs are depending on their decisions. But for the reputation of the company they treat with respect to their employees that they work well for their company. So it is very important for the leaders to create good power distance with in the company for get a better result from the employees. It influences the leadership style and helps to achieve the organization goals. So we can say if company wants to get its goals, should follow all cultural perceptions to influence the leadership styles.
(iii) Multicultural organization:
It's a mixture of people who have a different -2 culture backgrounds including age, gender, religion, traditions, languages, thoughts, beliefs, customs and attitudes and they work together with in the organization. In simple terms we can say in a work place there is some Indians, Chinese, kiwis, islander and Fiji's people work together it called Multicultural Organization and cultural diversity. There are people from different backgrounds; different countries and religions. Leaders can learn to work with multicultural group of staff and customers. This diversity has brought important achievable benefits such as better decision making, greater creativeness and innovation, and more successful marketing to different variety of customers. It ha some advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages of multicultural organization:
In this organization, they can develop new skills from the various people and have the opportunities to learn many new things which help to the company advantage in all area like sales, production.
They can learn from new culture traditions, religions, languages (like Chinese, Japanese etc) and thoughts. Learn how to relate people from other cultures and adapt of new culture.
It has an effect on culture, personality, climate and environment surrounding there through great team work accepting other culture and the way of doing work.
They have an advantage of adaptation and creative problem solving, because they have allots of ideas, thoughts, views and suggestions from various kind of people.
It has co-operative and adaptive culture because there are diverse of people who know each other and they create their own relation with the other and they know about the other culture and tradition.
Various groups are able to help make better decisions for the organization because all are participative and make better solution to the problems.
Disadvantages of multicultural organization:
They might be facing some difficulties in communication like as sometime they can't understand another cultural language and their problems.
It can be create conflict between the two other cultures. Some people like to work with same environment culture and they don't like to work with another people then it takes fight, make politics.
There are one more disadvantage found in multicultural organization like difficulty in the management when deal wit the different backgrounds people. Sometime situation can't be managed; it is out of control to handle it.
There can be some religious differences. To understand other religions can be a very difficult barrier to overcome. Some People are very devoted about their religious thoughts they don't want to accept another religion, especially which is not understood and not same religion.
There are less & short social interaction. CEO of the company can't communicate with their all employees and communicate through email or mail. It creates more interpersonal problems which can bad effect on the organizations. It can be called high power distance in the organization.
