Organizations with friendly employees who all think alike are ________ cultures.
- creative
- communal
- diversified
- sustainable
- service-oriented
Organizations with friendly employees who all think alike are communal cultures.
Communal Culture: An organizational culture type in which employees are friendly to one another and all think alike.
Organizations that have successfully created a ________ culture have been shown to change employee attitudes and behaviors toward customers.
- service
- mercenary
- safety
- fragmented
- creativity
Organizations that have successfully created a service culture have been shown to change employee attitudes and behaviors toward customers.
Service Work: Providing a service that involves direct verbal or physical interactions with customers.
To encourage innovation at the organization, MicroTrac allows its engineers to spend 20 percent of their working time pursuing projects that they are passionate about. This describes a(n) ________ culture.
- service
- creativity
- disruptive
- fragmented
- individualized
Given the importance of new ideas and innovation in many industries, it is understandable that some organizations focus on fostering a creativity culture. Creativity cultures affect both the quantity and quality of creative ideas within an organization. For example, 3M workers in R&D are allowed to spend 15 percent of their time researching whatever they want.
Creativity Culture: A specific culture type focused on fostering a creative atmosphere.
County Medical Center has a good track record of treating patients well and discharging them in a timely manner. Then, in the span of one week, twelve patients suffer post-surgical bacterial infections that are resistant to drug treatment. Shortly afterward, the surgical and patient recovery teams gather to discuss the problem. One cardiac surgeon, Yvette, mentions that she read in a medical journal about a simple but effective method of reducing such infections. It involves encouraging and enforcing hand washing before all new patient contact. The key is to post reminders in every patient room and nurse station. There is also a smart phone app that will beep once every five minutes as a backup reminder. The hospital staff agrees to implement the protocol, and six months later the rate of infection has dropped by more than 50 percent. The hospital is striving to create a ________ culture.
- safety
- diversity
- fragmented
- sustainability
- customer service
In the United States, there were more than 2.9 million nonfatal workplace accidents and 3,800 fatal ones in 2015. It's not uncommon for manufacturing or medical companies to go through a string of accidents or injuries that potentially harm their employees. For these organizations, creating a safety culture is of paramount importance. There is a clear difference between organizations in terms of the degree to which safe behaviors at work are viewed as expected and valued. A positive safety culture has been shown to reduce accidents and increase safety-based citizenship behaviors. A safety culture also reduces treatment errors in medical settings.
Culture: The shared values, beliefs, motives, identities, and interpretations that result from common experiences of members of a society and are transmitted across generations.
Which of the following organizations exemplifies communal culture?
- Jimmy's Chicken Shack, where the wait staff all try to provide excellent customer service but steal each other's customers whenever possible
- Digital FX Studios, a small start-up where the owner and three FX artists collaborate as a group on all projects and talk openly and kindly with each other
- Jeremiad Press, where most employees fraternize daily after work at a local pool hall but spend their time at the office developing their own editorial projects
- Web Development Productions, where programmers are empowered to solve software problems in their own unique ways but often undercut each other in order to get ahead
- National Warehouse Distributors, where the physical demands of the job result in high turnover and mean employees rarely have the opportunity to interact with each other
One popular, general typology divides organizational culture along two dimensions: solidarity and sociability. Solidarity is the degree to which group members think and act alike, and sociability represents how friendly employees are to one another. Organizations with friendly employees who all think alike are communal cultures. There is some evidence that organizations have a tendency to move through the cultures as they get larger. Small organizations generally start out as communal cultures oriented around the owner and founder. As companies grow, they tend to move toward a networked culture because solidarity is harder to foster when groups get really large.
Communal Culture: An organizational culture type in which employees are friendly to one another and all think alike.
At Rolce Technologies, the core design team of 10 employees has daily "stand-up" meetings. All the core design team members gather standing up for a rapid-fire update on current projects. These stand-up meetings are representative of which of the following components of the organization's culture?
- rituals
- solidarity
- espoused values
- physical structures
- enacted values
Rituals are the daily or weekly planned routines that occur in an organization.
Rituals: The daily or weekly planned routines that occur in an organization.
Employees transfer knowledge about a company's culture to other employees through explicit communication, simple observation, and other less obvious means.
Employees learn about most of the important aspects of a company's culture from other employees. They learn through explicit communication, simple observation, and other less obvious means.
Communication: The process by which information and meaning is transferred from a sender to a receiver.
________ are the daily or weekly planned routines that occur in an organization.
- Rituals
- Stories
- Values
- Representations
- Symbols
Rituals are the daily or weekly planned routines that occur in an organization.
Rituals: The daily or weekly planned routines that occur in an organization.
One of the main disadvantages of realistic job previews is that they are very expensive.
One of the most inexpensive and effective ways of reducing early turnover among new employees is through the use of realistic job previews.
Marie is the department manager at Verve, Inc. Marie has created the workplace for her department in a totally open forum. There are no walls or cubicles, and everyone-including Marie-is in one open room. The workspace of Marie's department with no walls or cubicles represents the observable artifact known as a symbol.
Symbols can be found throughout an organization, from its corporate logo to the images it places on its website to the uniforms its employees wear. However, workspaces and open offices represent the observable artifacts known as physical structures.
Marie, the department manager at Verve, Inc., starts every Monday morning with a 60-minute department meeting where each member in the department gets five minutes to report progress; share stories of success and failure; and seek general input, advice, and information. Jeremy is responsible for sharing an anecdote, an account, or a legend about the company for every first Monday of the month to keep everyone reminded of where they work and what is important. What Marie and Jeremy are doing are parts of the observable artifacts component of culture.
Observable artifacts are the manifestations of an organization's culture that employees can easily see or talk about. They supply the signals that employees interpret to gauge how they should act during the workday. There are six major types of artifacts: symbols, physical structures, language, stories, rituals, and ceremonies.
Observable Artifacts: Aspects of an organization’s culture that employees and outsiders can easily see or talk about.
The shared social knowledge within an organization regarding the rules, norms, and values that shape the attitudes and behaviors of its employees refers to organizational
- study.
- culture.
- growth.
- definition.
- dynamics.
Organizational culture is defined as the shared social knowledge within an organization regarding the rules, norms, and values that shape the attitudes and behaviors of its employees.
Culture: The shared values, beliefs, motives, identities, and interpretations that result from common experiences of members of a society and are transmitted across generations.
The three major components to any organizational culture are
- observable artifacts, espoused values, and basic underlying assumptions.
- observable artifacts, hidden artifacts, and semi-public artifacts.
- internal values, espoused values, and external values.
- symbols, physical structures, and ceremonies.
- language, stories, and rituals.
There are three major components to any organization's culture: observable artifacts, espoused values, and basic underlying assumptions.
Basic Underlying Assumptions: The ingrained beliefs and philosophies of employees.